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How Do Democracy and War Affect Each Other? – the Case Study of Ancient Athens

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How Do Democracy and War Affect Each Other? – the Case Study of Ancient Athens This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of the revised version of an article which has been accepted for publication by Polis following peer review. For information on the publisher authenticated version please go to: http://www.imprint.co.uk/polis/polis.html. HOW DO DEMOCRACY AND WAR AFFECT EACH OTHER? – THE CASE STUDY OF ANCIENT ATHENS David Pritchard1 Abstract: This article considers the state of research on the two-way relationship of causation between politics and war in ancient Athens from the attempted coup of Cylon in 632 BC to the violent overthrow of its democracy by the Macedonians in 322. Also canvassed is how a closer integration of Ancient History and Political Science can enhance the research of each discipline into the important problem of democracy’s effect on war-making. Classical Athens is well known for its full development of popular politics and its cultural revolution, which clearly was a dependent variable of the democracy. By contrast, few are aware of its contemporaneous military revolution, which saw the classical Athenians intensify the waging of war and gain an unrivalled record of military success and innovation. Although a prima facie case exists for these military changes being due to popular government, ancient historians have conducted very little research on the impact of democracy on war. In the last decade our discipline has also witnessed the collapse of the longstanding understanding of the affect of military changes on political developments in ancient Greece, which means we can no longer explain why Athenian democracy emerged and was consolidated during the classical period. For the sake of ameliorating this situation the article proposes new directions 1 Department of Classics and Ancient History (A14), School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. E-mail: [email protected] Page 1 and a social-science approach for research into the military and non-military causes of Athenian democratisation and the relative effect of Athenian democracy on warfare. At a time when established democracies face complex challenges of foreign policy such research into the case study of ancient Athens is of real contemporary relevancy. I HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Classical Athens is famous for what is arguably the only fully developed democracy of pre-modern times and for its cultural revolution, which helped lay the foundations for the arts, literature and sciences of the ancient and modern worlds. In 508 BC the Athenian dmos (‘people’) rose up against a leader once again aiming for tyranny, expelled him and the foreign troops backing his attempt, and arrested and executed his upper-class supporters.2 They could no longer tolerate the internecine struggles of the elite and demanded an active role in the decision-making of the city. This was quickly realised by the reforms of Cleisthenes, which made the assembly and a new popular council of five- hundred members the final arbiters of public actions and laws.3 By the early 2 Ath. Pol. 20.1-21.2; Herodotus 5.65.5-74.1. J. Ober, The Athenian Revolution: Essays on Ancient Greek Democracy and Political Theory (Princeton, 1996), pp. 32-52; D.M. Pritchard, ‘Kleisthenes and Athenian Democracy: Vision from Above or Below?’, Polis, 22 (2005), pp. 136-57, pp. 141-4 with bibliography. 3 M.H. Hansen, The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes: Structure, Principles and Ideology, trans. J.A. Crook (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., 1991), pp. 33-6; Page 2 450s the people had consolidated their new dmokratia (‘democracy’) by making decisions on an increasing range of public affairs and by taking over entirely the administration of justice and the oversight of magistrates.4 Admittedly Athenian leaders were still members of the upper class, struggling for pre-eminence with each other.5 Now, however, their rivalries were played out in ag&nes or political debates, with the final decision to support this or that politician resting with predominantly non-elite assembly-goers and councillors.6 To win over such notoriously boisterous and censorious audiences, politicians M. Ostwald, From Popular Sovereignty to the Sovereignty of Law: Law, Society and Politics in Fifth-Century Athens (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1986), pp. 15-28; C. Meier, The Greek Discovery of Politics, trans. D. Mclintock (London, 1990), pp. 53-81. 4 E.g. Ath. Pol. 25.1-26.2; Plutarch Cimon 15.1-2. Hansen, Athenian Democracy, pp. 36-8; D.M. Pritchard, ‘From Hoplite Republic to Thetic Democracy: The Social Context of the Reforms of Ephialtes’, Ancient History, 24 (1994), pp. 111-40, 133-5. 5 For the social background of Athenian leaders, see, for example, J. Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People (Princeton, 1989), pp. 104-26. 6 For this performance dynamic and its concomitant popular culture, see J.Ober, ‘The Orators’, in The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought, ed. C. Rowe and M. Schofield (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 130-41; C. Pelling, Literary Texts and the Greek Historian (London, 2000), pp. 1-17; D.M. Pritchard, ‘“The Fractured Imaginary”: Popular Thinking on Military Matters in Fifth-Century Athens’, Ancient History, 28 (1998), pp. 38-61, 38-44; J. Roisman, J. The Rhetoric of Manhood: Masculinity and the Attic Orators (Berkeley, 2005), pp. 3-6. Page 3 were forced to negotiate and articulate the self-perceptions, norms and perceived interests of lower-class Athenians.7 Out of this dynamic of elite performers and mass adjudicators emerged a strong popular culture, which supported the liberty and political capability of every citizen, the rule of law, and the open debating of policies and ideas.8 We now know several other Greek poleis (‘city-states’) experimented with popular government in the course of the sixth century.9 As such the invention of democracy can no longer be attributed to Athens.10 However, in contrast to the 7 E.g. Aeschylus Suppliant Women 483; Plato Republic 492b-c. Hansen, Athenian Democracy, pp. 146-7. 8 For the popular ideology of Athenian democracy, see R.K Balot, Greek Political Thought (Oxford, 2006), pp. 48-85; R. Brock, ‘The Emergence of Democratic Ideology’, Historia, 40 (1991), pp. 160-9; E.W. Robinson, The First Democracies: Early Popular Government outside Athens (Stuttgart, 1997), pp. 45-62; K.A. Raaflaub, ‘Contemporary Perceptions of Democracy in Fifth-Century Athens’, Classica et Mediaevalia, 40 (1989), pp. 33-70. 9 Robinson, First Democracies, pp. 65-122. The reliability of the surviving evidence for political arrangements in half of the 17 early democracies Robinson identifies has been called into question (M.H. Hansen, Review of Robinson, First Democracies, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, September no. 17 [1999]). 10 But its invention can still be attributed to the Greeks, since attempts to push this to the Levant or Mesopotamia (e.g. B. Isakhan, ‘Engaging “Primitive Democracy”: Mideast Roots of Collective Governance’, Middle East Policy, 14.3 [2007], pp. 97-117) founder for lack of evidence for the political power of assemblies in earlier city-state cultures; see G. Barjamovic, Page 4 other democracies of the Greek world the Athenian example avoided the stasis or civil-strife which destroyed so many others and, with the exception of short periods of oligarchy in 411 and 404, enjoyed two centuries of unbroken operation.11 In addition the Athenian democracy handled a significantly larger amount of public business, while its strong fiscal position meant it could pay assembly-goers, councillors, jurors and magistrates, allowing a wider social spectrum of citizens to be politically active.12 As a consequence, the ideological and practical development of the Athenian democracy was very much fuller than any other of pre-modern times. Indeed no subsequent democracy has ever ‘Civic Institutions and Self-Government in Southern Mesopotamia in the Mid-First Millenium BC’, in Assyria and Beyond: Studies Presented to Mogens Trolle Larsen, ed. J.G. Dercksen (Leuven, 2004), pp. 47-98; Robinson, First Democracies, pp. 16-25. 11 For the other democracies of classical Greece, J.L. O’Neil, The Origins and Development of Ancient Greek Democracy (Lanham, Maryland, 1995). For the ubiquity of violent regime-change as a result of civil strife and foreign intervention, see M.H. Hansen, Polis: An Introduction to the Ancient Greek City-State (Oxford, 2006), pp. 125-6; M.H. Hansen and T.H. Nielsen, An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis (Oxford, 2004), pp. 124-9; and especially H.-J.Gehrke, Stasis: Untersuchungen zu den inneren Kriegen in den griechischen Staaten des 5. und 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. (Munich, 1985). 12 For studies of political participation in classical Athens, see, for example, D.J. Phillips, ‘Participation in Athenian Democracy’, Ancient Society: Resources for Teachers (the journal is now Ancient History), 11 (1981), pp. 5-48; D.M. Pritchard, ‘Tribal Solidarity and Participation in Fifth-Century Athens: A Summary’, Ancient History, 31 (2000), pp. 104-18; R.K. Sinclair, Democracy and Participation in Athens (Cambridge, 1988). Page 5 enjoyed the same extraordinary levels of engagement and participation among its citizens.13 For example, the weekly assembly-meetings of classical Athens were attended by several thousand, while in the fourth century two thirds of the city’s thirty-thousand citizens willingly served on the Council of Five Hundred.14 Not without reason Athens has been an inspiration for modern democrats since the nineteenth century.15 George Grote and other leading liberals of Victorian England assiduously employed this example of a prosperous and stable democracy to build political support for extending the right to vote.16 Athens today is celebrated as the ancient predecessor of our 13 M.H. Hansen, ‘The Tradition of the Athenian Democracy A.D.
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