great essay. would like to hear about its downfall and also about the trial of socrates, as i have run into these things being brought up to argue against athenian democracy.
Thank you, Max. Those are two important issues you ask about. In terms of its downfall, Athens simply got conquered by Phillip of Macedon, losing the Battle of Chaeronea in 338. They carried on for a little longer, but then Alexander, Phillip's son, cemented autocratic rule.
There's a lot of irony here, given that Alexander was of course tutored by Aristotle, and also that Macedonia's military technology and strategy had been appropriated from Athens itself. Athens had inadvertently given its enemy the tools of their destruction.
Having said that, some scholars emphasize that Athens's democratic institutions carried on in a limited fashion into the Hellenistic period and even under Rome. They weren't entirely snuffed out all at once. But their autonomy and radicalism were lost.
The execution of Socrates is a more complex event that bears some explanation. In the late 5th century, a new philosophical movement took root in Athens led by the Sophists. These intellectual gurus attracted a following among the rich, privileged young men among Athens's upper classes--basically, their finance bros.
It's too much to get into the intricacies of this new philosophy, and not all Sophists thought alike. But in essence, they critiqued the view of human nature and civic virtue that undergirded the democratic regime. First, they questioned the existence of absolute truth, suggesting instead that what appears true to each person is true for that person. This relativism undermined the idea that there could be universal principles upon which to base political decisions.
They extended this relativism to ethics, arguing that justice and virtue were merely social conventions rather than objective realities. Likewise, they taught that persuasive speech could triumph regardless of truth. While perhaps descriptively true all too often, they were in essence giving license to such behavior, instead of discouraging it. This threatened the ideal of democratic deliberation based on shared values and honest debate, suggesting that political success depended more on persuasive technique than on truth or justice.
Whatever they thought they were doing intellectually, the effect the Sophists had on these young, ambitious, entitled men was dangerous. These dudes came from the very aristocratic families that resented the democracy for curtailing their power. For decades, they nursed dreams of restoring their oligarchic power. The teachings of the Sophists was fuel to their fire, as they hosted various symposiums around the city where they'd do things like get drunk and break expensive furniture and such (just like their aristocratic descendants to today!).
The most dangerous of them was this guy Alcibiades, who built a powerful faction within the city and Assembly and led quite the libertine, hyper-aggressive lifestyle. He was the one that convinced the Assembly to mount its disastrous invasion of Sicily in 415. Once the fleet and army were in Italy (Alcibiades with them) his followers back home staged a kind of Brooks Brothers riot in which they smashed various sacred statues in this one location.
The city leaders were on edge and in response they tried Alcibiades in absentia. He learned of his conviction while in Sicily, and promptly defected to Sparta--Athens's major rival in this whole Greco world war that was underway! He told the Spartans all of the Athenian plans; Sparta then dispatched a fleet that caught the Athenians unaware and destroyed them. Stranded in Sicily, the army was cut apart and eventually surrendered, the survivors being imprisoned in an open quarry until they expired.
Once word of this disaster reached Athens, it proved the death knell to the democratic regime, thoroughly discrediting them. The oligarchic families staged a coup that toppled the regime, and eventually another coup installed what became known as the Thirty Tyrants, who enacted a bloody crack down on the city. Their reign was short-lived, maybe a year, but it was only the intervention of Sparta that allowed the democrats to come back to power. The Spartans had won the war but they saw the chaos and tyranny now afoot in Athens as too unstable for their liking, so they helped restore the democracy in 403.
What does Socrates have to do with any of this? While he didn't consider himself a Sophist--in fact, he argued with them a lot, it seems--he engaged in a similar style of philosophical questioning and he attracted followers from that same finance bro set. Some of them later took part in the oligarchic coups, in fact, and were even counted among the Thirty Tyrants. His trial thus took part against this tumultuous backdrop and their was some legitimate cause for the democrats to fear his influence. His teachings undermined the traditional beliefs they deemed necessary for a healthy democratic society.
When it came to the trial itself, Socrates didn't do himself many favors. He struck a defiant tone that the jury found disrespectful. Then, after he was found guilty, he further dug his own grave by giving them a really difficult decision. Once convicted, Socrates was given a sentence of death by the prosecution. According to their conventions, the defendant was allowed to propose an alternative sentence. At first, Socrates mocked the whole affair by proposing that he be given free meals for life. Then he proposed a small fine, which again underscored to the jury that he wasn't contrite or remorseful.
Whether or not he should have been, they then had to make the choice of death--which would send a clear signal that this was serious, thereby protecting the democracy--or essentially letting him off the hook. They chose the former, and he drank the hemlock (after giving a very long speech, at least in The Apology!).
This brings up the influence of Plato on how we think of the Athenian democracy. His dialogues make Socrates out to be the hero, of course, and the reader can't help but be sympathetic to him. But the truth is that Plato was very anti-democratic in thought. The Republic is explicitly anti-democratic, characterizing democracy as mob rule in which the ignorant commoners are swayed by demagogues to fits of passion. His ideal state is one where paternalistic guardians exercise "enlightened" totalitarian rule, with everyone else assigned to various castes and forced to lead a rather severe ascetic existence to promote reason. Even poets are banned from his ideal city, since they can arose emotions that dethrone reason.
But there's another reason that Plato painted such a dark picture of Athenian democracy: he came from one of those very aristocratic families I mentioned, with their oligarchic fantasies. In fact, Critias, the leader of the Thirty Tyrants, was a relative, and his uncle also took part in the coup. In sum, he came by his elitist, hierarchical views honestly, and he poured them into his literary works. His pupil, Aristotle, held a much more balanced view of democracy.
Nick, this is the best concise account of the Athenian breakthrough, how Assembly by lot was a key foundation for the exceptional performance of the Athenian state. The citizenship and assembly was only made up of Athenian citizens who ruled a network of city states by force and didn't cede the same local governance to its regions. Imagine how much more intelligence, wisdom and knowhow we could tap into and channel where this same kind of system is supported by technology and spread to every neighborhood, town and state....
Thank you, Scott. You're so right--imagine what we could achieve by marrying universal citizenship with democracy by lot, and a democratic foreign policy to boot.
Thank you so much for telling this story so clearly! I have real trouble in following the chronology of the amazing achievements of Greek individuals and how that maps onto political developments. Can it really be that the great Greek thinkers appeared mostly in those two democratic centuries? Is the cause and effect so clear?
I think it's fair to say that the full efflorescence of Athens--what we call "Classical Greece"--did coincide with the lifespan of the democracy in the 5th and 4th centuries. That efflorescence began earlier, though, in the 8th century as the Greek "Dark Ages" came to an end and the Archaic Period began, basically the Greeks' version of a renaissance.
From the 8th through the 6th centuries, you see the recovery of the population in the Greek world, the rise of its economy, and the creation of the city-states. This coincides with the oligarchic period in Athens, under the Areopagus, and the reforms of Solon. The beginnings of the cultural achievements occur in this period too, with the pre-Socratic philosophers emerging in this era. But it really doesn't come to fruition until the democracy emerges at the end of the 6th century.
The theatre makes for a great case study, as it exemplifies the particular way Athenian democracy handled the relationship between the elites and the Demos. Athens never expropriated the aristocrats, even in its most radical phase. Rather, the regime created new ways for the elites to accrue honor by putting their wealth toward public goods. This patronage became kind of a tacit agreement between the rich and the demos: "In exchange for pouring your private wealth into the public sector, we won't confiscate your land."
The theatre festivals where the great playwrights produced their works were sponsored on a rotating basis by aristocrats, who tried to outdo each other in lavishing resources upon the festival. All the great tragedians emerged during this time, from Aeschylus to Euripides.
The field of military innovation is an even clearer example. It's quite evident from the histories that the coming of democracy was what enabled tiny Athens to defeat mighty Persia. One of the first decisions the new regime had to make was how to respond to the invading forces--fight on land, fight on sea, or evacuate the polis. The democratic process allowed Athens to aggregate the collective knowledge of its people, who chose to fight on sea.
That proved the right choice, which exemplifies how a democracy is superior to an autocracy. The latter system throttles knowledge flows and innovation, because the ruler centralizes everything in an effort to stay in control. Democracies allow all that information and specialization to flow and produce emergent intelligence and economic growth.
That's what I've gathered from the secondary literature, anyway. But I am certainly no expert! Did you father have an opinion about this?
Sorry to drop the ball on this exchange – am walking in Turkey – thank you for these additional thoughts! The role of the theatre is particularly interesting. My father certainly thought that democracy was what the ancient Greeks themselves attributed their accomplishments to. In his utopia, he also had the wealthy channel their search for prestige into public works. (He also added in a pretty severe inheritance tax to encourage them). Am not sure how that would all work with today's plutocrats, but lots of lessons there anyway.
I wonder if the "secret" had more to do with a culture embracing "zoon politikon" -- an understanding of the citizen as a political animal (in the best sense) -- rather than the mechanism of governance.
great essay. would like to hear about its downfall and also about the trial of socrates, as i have run into these things being brought up to argue against athenian democracy.
Thank you, Max. Those are two important issues you ask about. In terms of its downfall, Athens simply got conquered by Phillip of Macedon, losing the Battle of Chaeronea in 338. They carried on for a little longer, but then Alexander, Phillip's son, cemented autocratic rule.
There's a lot of irony here, given that Alexander was of course tutored by Aristotle, and also that Macedonia's military technology and strategy had been appropriated from Athens itself. Athens had inadvertently given its enemy the tools of their destruction.
Having said that, some scholars emphasize that Athens's democratic institutions carried on in a limited fashion into the Hellenistic period and even under Rome. They weren't entirely snuffed out all at once. But their autonomy and radicalism were lost.
The execution of Socrates is a more complex event that bears some explanation. In the late 5th century, a new philosophical movement took root in Athens led by the Sophists. These intellectual gurus attracted a following among the rich, privileged young men among Athens's upper classes--basically, their finance bros.
It's too much to get into the intricacies of this new philosophy, and not all Sophists thought alike. But in essence, they critiqued the view of human nature and civic virtue that undergirded the democratic regime. First, they questioned the existence of absolute truth, suggesting instead that what appears true to each person is true for that person. This relativism undermined the idea that there could be universal principles upon which to base political decisions.
They extended this relativism to ethics, arguing that justice and virtue were merely social conventions rather than objective realities. Likewise, they taught that persuasive speech could triumph regardless of truth. While perhaps descriptively true all too often, they were in essence giving license to such behavior, instead of discouraging it. This threatened the ideal of democratic deliberation based on shared values and honest debate, suggesting that political success depended more on persuasive technique than on truth or justice.
Whatever they thought they were doing intellectually, the effect the Sophists had on these young, ambitious, entitled men was dangerous. These dudes came from the very aristocratic families that resented the democracy for curtailing their power. For decades, they nursed dreams of restoring their oligarchic power. The teachings of the Sophists was fuel to their fire, as they hosted various symposiums around the city where they'd do things like get drunk and break expensive furniture and such (just like their aristocratic descendants to today!).
The most dangerous of them was this guy Alcibiades, who built a powerful faction within the city and Assembly and led quite the libertine, hyper-aggressive lifestyle. He was the one that convinced the Assembly to mount its disastrous invasion of Sicily in 415. Once the fleet and army were in Italy (Alcibiades with them) his followers back home staged a kind of Brooks Brothers riot in which they smashed various sacred statues in this one location.
The city leaders were on edge and in response they tried Alcibiades in absentia. He learned of his conviction while in Sicily, and promptly defected to Sparta--Athens's major rival in this whole Greco world war that was underway! He told the Spartans all of the Athenian plans; Sparta then dispatched a fleet that caught the Athenians unaware and destroyed them. Stranded in Sicily, the army was cut apart and eventually surrendered, the survivors being imprisoned in an open quarry until they expired.
Once word of this disaster reached Athens, it proved the death knell to the democratic regime, thoroughly discrediting them. The oligarchic families staged a coup that toppled the regime, and eventually another coup installed what became known as the Thirty Tyrants, who enacted a bloody crack down on the city. Their reign was short-lived, maybe a year, but it was only the intervention of Sparta that allowed the democrats to come back to power. The Spartans had won the war but they saw the chaos and tyranny now afoot in Athens as too unstable for their liking, so they helped restore the democracy in 403.
What does Socrates have to do with any of this? While he didn't consider himself a Sophist--in fact, he argued with them a lot, it seems--he engaged in a similar style of philosophical questioning and he attracted followers from that same finance bro set. Some of them later took part in the oligarchic coups, in fact, and were even counted among the Thirty Tyrants. His trial thus took part against this tumultuous backdrop and their was some legitimate cause for the democrats to fear his influence. His teachings undermined the traditional beliefs they deemed necessary for a healthy democratic society.
When it came to the trial itself, Socrates didn't do himself many favors. He struck a defiant tone that the jury found disrespectful. Then, after he was found guilty, he further dug his own grave by giving them a really difficult decision. Once convicted, Socrates was given a sentence of death by the prosecution. According to their conventions, the defendant was allowed to propose an alternative sentence. At first, Socrates mocked the whole affair by proposing that he be given free meals for life. Then he proposed a small fine, which again underscored to the jury that he wasn't contrite or remorseful.
Whether or not he should have been, they then had to make the choice of death--which would send a clear signal that this was serious, thereby protecting the democracy--or essentially letting him off the hook. They chose the former, and he drank the hemlock (after giving a very long speech, at least in The Apology!).
This brings up the influence of Plato on how we think of the Athenian democracy. His dialogues make Socrates out to be the hero, of course, and the reader can't help but be sympathetic to him. But the truth is that Plato was very anti-democratic in thought. The Republic is explicitly anti-democratic, characterizing democracy as mob rule in which the ignorant commoners are swayed by demagogues to fits of passion. His ideal state is one where paternalistic guardians exercise "enlightened" totalitarian rule, with everyone else assigned to various castes and forced to lead a rather severe ascetic existence to promote reason. Even poets are banned from his ideal city, since they can arose emotions that dethrone reason.
But there's another reason that Plato painted such a dark picture of Athenian democracy: he came from one of those very aristocratic families I mentioned, with their oligarchic fantasies. In fact, Critias, the leader of the Thirty Tyrants, was a relative, and his uncle also took part in the coup. In sum, he came by his elitist, hierarchical views honestly, and he poured them into his literary works. His pupil, Aristotle, held a much more balanced view of democracy.
So, that's a lot longer than I intended! But it gives you the basic idea. For more on Plato's views and the role of his family in Athenian politics, I recommend this piece: https://jacobin.com/2023/04/plato-republic-athens-democracy-aristocracy-tyrants
thank you for such a thorough response. super interesting. i've only read bits and pieces of this before.
So interesting to consider the journey of Athenian democracy vs Roman rule. Thank you for this good read and important for our times!
You're welcome, Kate! Thank you for reading.
Nick, this is the best concise account of the Athenian breakthrough, how Assembly by lot was a key foundation for the exceptional performance of the Athenian state. The citizenship and assembly was only made up of Athenian citizens who ruled a network of city states by force and didn't cede the same local governance to its regions. Imagine how much more intelligence, wisdom and knowhow we could tap into and channel where this same kind of system is supported by technology and spread to every neighborhood, town and state....
Thank you, Scott. You're so right--imagine what we could achieve by marrying universal citizenship with democracy by lot, and a democratic foreign policy to boot.
Thank you so much for telling this story so clearly! I have real trouble in following the chronology of the amazing achievements of Greek individuals and how that maps onto political developments. Can it really be that the great Greek thinkers appeared mostly in those two democratic centuries? Is the cause and effect so clear?
I think it's fair to say that the full efflorescence of Athens--what we call "Classical Greece"--did coincide with the lifespan of the democracy in the 5th and 4th centuries. That efflorescence began earlier, though, in the 8th century as the Greek "Dark Ages" came to an end and the Archaic Period began, basically the Greeks' version of a renaissance.
From the 8th through the 6th centuries, you see the recovery of the population in the Greek world, the rise of its economy, and the creation of the city-states. This coincides with the oligarchic period in Athens, under the Areopagus, and the reforms of Solon. The beginnings of the cultural achievements occur in this period too, with the pre-Socratic philosophers emerging in this era. But it really doesn't come to fruition until the democracy emerges at the end of the 6th century.
The theatre makes for a great case study, as it exemplifies the particular way Athenian democracy handled the relationship between the elites and the Demos. Athens never expropriated the aristocrats, even in its most radical phase. Rather, the regime created new ways for the elites to accrue honor by putting their wealth toward public goods. This patronage became kind of a tacit agreement between the rich and the demos: "In exchange for pouring your private wealth into the public sector, we won't confiscate your land."
The theatre festivals where the great playwrights produced their works were sponsored on a rotating basis by aristocrats, who tried to outdo each other in lavishing resources upon the festival. All the great tragedians emerged during this time, from Aeschylus to Euripides.
The field of military innovation is an even clearer example. It's quite evident from the histories that the coming of democracy was what enabled tiny Athens to defeat mighty Persia. One of the first decisions the new regime had to make was how to respond to the invading forces--fight on land, fight on sea, or evacuate the polis. The democratic process allowed Athens to aggregate the collective knowledge of its people, who chose to fight on sea.
That proved the right choice, which exemplifies how a democracy is superior to an autocracy. The latter system throttles knowledge flows and innovation, because the ruler centralizes everything in an effort to stay in control. Democracies allow all that information and specialization to flow and produce emergent intelligence and economic growth.
That's what I've gathered from the secondary literature, anyway. But I am certainly no expert! Did you father have an opinion about this?
Sorry to drop the ball on this exchange – am walking in Turkey – thank you for these additional thoughts! The role of the theatre is particularly interesting. My father certainly thought that democracy was what the ancient Greeks themselves attributed their accomplishments to. In his utopia, he also had the wealthy channel their search for prestige into public works. (He also added in a pretty severe inheritance tax to encourage them). Am not sure how that would all work with today's plutocrats, but lots of lessons there anyway.
I wonder if the "secret" had more to do with a culture embracing "zoon politikon" -- an understanding of the citizen as a political animal (in the best sense) -- rather than the mechanism of governance.