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Ancient Greece: The Historical Needle’s Eye of Modern and Political Thought

Kurt A. Raaflaub

Texts and Bibliographies

1. On the origins of Greek culture: Meier, Christian, A Culture of Freedom: and the Origins of Europe (Oxford 2011).

2. On archaic Greek history: Anthony Snodgrass, : The Age of Experiment (Berkeley 1980); Oswyn Murray, Early Greece (2nd ed. Cambridge MA 1993); Robin Osborne, Greece in the Making, 1200-479 B.C. (London 1996); Jonathan Hall, A History of the Archaic nd Greek World, ca. 1200-479 BCE (2 ed. Malden MA and Oxford 2014); K. A. Raaflaub and Hans van Wees (eds.), A Companion to Archaic Greece (Malden MA and Oxford 2009).

3. Ancient and modern democracy: Dunn, John (ed.), Democracy: The Unfinished Journey, 508 BC to AD 1993 (Oxford and New York 1992); Wood, Ellen M., “Democracy: An Idea of Ambigous Ancestry.” In J. Peter Euben, John R. Wallach, and Josiah Ober (eds.), Athenian Political Thought and the Reconstruction of American Democracy (Ithaca NY 1994) 59-80; Ober, Josiah, and Charles Hedrick (eds.), Dēmokratia: A Conversation on Democracies, Ancient and Modern (Princeton 1996); Barry S. Strauss, “Geneaology, Ideology, and Society in Democratic ,” in Ian Morris and Kurt A. Raaflaub (eds.), Democracy 2500? Questions and Challenges (Dubuque IA, 1998) 141-54.

4. On criticism of democracy from antiquity to early America: Roberts, Jennifer T., Athens on Trial: The Anti-Democratic Tradition in Western Thought (Princeton 1994); Ober, Josiah, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule (Princeton 1998).

5. On the emergency of democracy and dēmokratia, and the working of democracy: Hansen, Mogens H., The in the Age of , new, augmented ed. (Norman OK, 1999); Raaflaub, Kurt A., Josiah Ober, and Robert W. Wallace, Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece (Berkeley 2007). On constitutional terminology: Meier, Christian, The Greek Invention of Politics (Cambridge MA 1990) chapter 7. On political values: Raaflaub, Kurt, The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece (Chicago 2004); Raaflaub, “Equalities and Inequalities in Athenian Democracy,” in Ober and Hedrick, Dēmokratia (section 3 above) 139-74. See also other chapters in the latter volume.

6. On reflections about government and 5th century debates about democracy: Kurt Raaflaub, “Archaic and Classical Greek Reflections on Politics and Government,” in Hans Beck (ed.), A Companion to Government (Malden MA and Oxford 2013) 73-92; Raaflaub, “Contemporary Perceptions of Democracy in Fifth-Century Athens,” Classica et Mediaevalia 40: 33-70.

7. On cultural influences of the ancient Near East on early Greek culture: West, M. L., Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient (Oxford 1971); West, The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic

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Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (Oxford 1997); Burkert, Walter, The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (Cambridge MA 1992); Burkert, Babylon — Memphis — Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture (Cambridge MA 2004).

8. On Near Eastern “ancestors” of Greek democracy: Jacobsen, Thorkild, Toward the Image of Tammuz and Other Essays on Mesopotamian History and Culture (Cambridge 1970: containing essays on “primitive democracy”; for discussion, see Robinson, E. W., The First Democracies: Early Popular Government outside Athens [Stuttgart 1997] 17-22); Fleming, Daniel, Democracy’s Ancient Ancestors: Mari and Early Collective Governance (Cambridge 2004).

9. On forms of “collective governance” in the ancient Near East: Fleming (last section); Schemeil, Yves, La Politique dans l’ancien Orient (Paris 1999); Momrak, Kristoffer, Popular Power in Ancient Near Eastern and Archaic Greek Polities (Dissertation University of Bergen, Norway, 2013).

10. On the as a “citizen state” and its role in : Hansen, Mogens H., “The Polis as a Citizen State,” in Hansen (ed.), The Ancient Greek City State (Copenhagen 1993) 7-29; Raaflaub, Kurt A., “Homer to : The Rise of the Polis. The Written Evidence,” ibid. 41-105; Hansen, Polis and City-State: An Ancient Concept and Its Modern Equivalent (Copenhagen 1998). See also chapters in books listed in (1) and (2) above. On the concept of citizenship: Manville, P. Brook, The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens (Princeton 1990); Whitehead, David, “Norms of Citizenship in Ancient Greece,” in Anthony Molho, Kurt Raaflaub, and Julia Emlen (eds.), Athens and Rome, Florence and Venice: City-States in and Medieval Italy (Stuttgart and Ann Arbor 1991) 135-41; Wood, E. M., “The Demos versus ‘We, the People’: From Ancient to Modern Conceptions of Citizenship,” in Wood, Democracy against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism (Cambridge 1995) 204-37.

11. On the comparison between various types of city-states: Griffeth, Robert G., and Carol G. Thomas (eds.), The City-State in Five Cultures (Santa Barbara CA and Oxford 1981); Molho et al., Athens and Rome (section 10 above); Mogens H. Hansen (ed.), A comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures (Copenhagen 2000); Hansen (ed.), A comparative Study of Six City-State Cultures (Copenhagen 2002).

12. On “epic society” and the role of leaders, assemblies, and soldiers: Finley, M. I., The World of Odysseus (2nd ed. London 1977); Latacz, Joachim, Homer: His Art and His World (Ann Arbor 1986); Raaflaub, Kurt, “Homeric Society,” in Ian Morris and Barry Powell (eds.), A New Companion to Homer (Leiden 1997) 624-49; Raaflaub, “Politics and Interstate Relations in the World of Early Greek Poleis: Homer and Beyond,” Antichthon 31 (1997) 1-27; Raaflaub, “Homeric Warriors and Battles: Trying to Resolve Old Problems,” Classical World 101 (2008) 469-83. See also Finkelberg, Margalit (ed.), Homer Encyclopedia (3 vols., Malden MA and Oxford 2011).

13. On the Greek polis and its egalitarian foundations: Morris, Ian, Archaeology as Cultural History (Malden MA and Oxford 2000), part III; Raaflaub, Kurt A., and Robert W. Wallace,

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“‘People’s Power’ and Egalitarian Trends in Archaic Greece,” in Raaflaub et al. 2007 (in section 5 above) 22-48.

14. On the Greeks’ need to find their own solutions for their own problems: Meier (section 1 above).

15. Humans are responsible for their own well-being or suffering: Homer, Odyssey 1.26-42: (Zeus is speaking in an assembly of the gods) “Ah, how shameless—the way these mortals blame the gods. / From us alone, they say, come all their miseries, yes, / but they themselves, with their own reckless ways, / compound their pains beyond their proper share…”; Solon, fragm. 4.1-6 West: “Our city will never be destroyed by the fate / of Zeus or the plans of the immortal gods, / for Pallas , our protector,… holds her hands over us. / But the citizens themselves, lured by wealth, want to bring / this great city down with their recklessness.”

16. On the Greek invention of laws: Gagarin, Michael, Early Greek Law (Berkeley 1986); Gagarin, Writing Greek Law (Cambridge 2008); Thomas, Rosalind, “Written in Stone? Liberty, Equality, Orality, and the Codification of Law,” in Lin Foxhall and A.D.E. Lewis (eds.), Greek Law in Its Political Setting: Justifications not Justice (Oxford 1996) 9-31; Farenga, Vincent, Citizen and Self in Ancient Greece: Individuals Performing Justice and the Law (Cambridge 2006); Hawke, Jason, Writing Authority: Elite Competition and Written Law in Early Greece (DeKalb IL 2011). On Near Eastern and Greek Law: Raaflaub, Kurt A., “Early Greek Political Thought in Its Mediterranean Context,” in Ryan Balot (ed.), A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought (Malden MA and Oxford 2009) 37-56.

17. The Earliest Greek Law (from Dreros on , c. 650-600 BCE): “This has been decided by the polis: When a man has been Kosmos [supreme magistrate], for ten years that same man shall not be Kosmos. If he should become Kosmos, whatever judgments he gives, he himself shall owe double, and he shall be useless [without active citizen rights] as long as he lives, and what he does as Kosmos shall be as nothing…” (#11 in Fornara, Charles W., Archaic Times to the End of the . Translated Documents of Greece and Rome, vol. 1 [2nd ed. Cambridge 1983] p.11).

18. On the lawgivers (mediators, or “straighteners”): Meier, Greek Invention (section 5 above) 40-52; Wallace, Robert W., “Charismatic Leaders,” in Raaflaub and van Wees, Companion (section 2 above) 411-26.

19. ’s “Great Rhetra,” the first polis constitution: , fragm. 4 West: The god-honored kings shall be leaders of the council (or: first in debate), / they who care for the lovely city of Sparta, / and the elders of revered age, and then the men of the people, / responding in turn to straight proposals. / They shall speak what is good and do everything justly / and counsel nothing for the city (that is crooked). / Victory and power (kratos) shall accompany the mass of the people (demos). / For Phoibos has so revealed this to the city. , Life of Lycurgus 6: When you have built a temple to Zeus Sullanius and Athena Sullania, divided the people into ‘phylai’ and into ‘obai’ [civic subdivisions] and established a council of thirty members, including the ‘archagetai’ [the ‘leaders’], then from time to time hold

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an ‘appella’ [assembly] between Babyka and Knakion [probably locations], and there introduce and rescind measures; but the people (demos) must have the deciding voice [literally: victory] and the power (kratos). Between these [locations] they held their assemblies, having neither halls nor any other kind of building for the purpose… When the masses were thus assembled, no one of them was permitted to make a motion, but the motion laid before them by the councillors and kings could be accepted or rejected by the people. [Scholars debate whether the following was part of the original rhetra or a later addition.] But if the people should adopt a distorted [“crooked”] motion, the councilors and kings shall have the power of adjournment. On Sparta, see Cartledge, Paul, Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta (London 1987); Cartledge, Spartan Reflections (Berkeley 2001); Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History, 1300-362 B.C. (2nd edn. London 2002); J. F. Lazenby, The (Warminster 1985); Stephen Hodkinson, Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta (London 2000); Nino Luraghi and Susan E. Alcock (eds.), Helots and Their Masters in Laconia and Messenia: Histories, Ideologies, Structures (Washington DC 2003). See also relevant chapters in titles listed in section 2 above. On fighting and early Greek warfare: Cartledge, Paul, “The Birth of the Hoplite: Sparta’s Contribution to Early Greek Military Organization,” in Cartledge, Spartan Reflections (above) 153-66; Raaflaub, Kurt, “[War and Society in] Archaic and ,” in Raaflaub and Nathan Rosenstein (eds.), War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (Washington DC 1999) 129-62; van Wees, Hans, Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities (London 2004); Donald Kagan and Gregory F. Viggiano (eds.), Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece (Princeton 2013).

th 20. The reforms and constitution of Solon (early 6 century): Solon, Fragm. 36 West: Of the things for which I summoned the people to assemble, / did I finish before I had achieved all? / I might call to witness in the justice which time brings / the greatest and best mother of the Olympian deities, / (5) Black Earth, from which I removed / the markers that were fixed in many places [indicating debt], / the Earth which once was enslaved but now is free. / To Athens, to their home of divine origin, / I brought back many who had been sold, / (10) some unjustly, some justly, / and some who had fled out of dire necessity, / who no longer spoke the Athenian tongue / after wandering in many places. / Others, who were subjected there [in Attica] to shameful slavery, / fearing the whims of their masters, I set free. / (15) These things I achieved by my power, / harnessing together force and justice; / and I persevered in my promises. / I wrote down ordinances for bad (lower class) and good (elite) alike (homoiōs), / providing straight justice for each man… , Constitution of the Athenians 6-9 (selections): 6. On gaining control of affairs Solon liberated the people, both immediately and for the future, by forbidding loans on the security of the person; and he enacted laws; and he made a cancellation of debts, both private and public, which the Athenians call the “Shaking-off of Burdens,” since by means of it they shook off the weight lying on them… 7. Solon established a constitution and enacted other laws… The laws were inscribed on kyrbeis [cylindrical bronze pillars; elsewhere we are told he wrote the laws on axones, whitened boards mounted on rotating axels]…, and everyone swore to observe them…. He organized the constitution as follows: He divided the citizens into four classes by an assessment of wealth, as they had been divided before: the five-hundred-bushel class, the horsemen, the rankers (zeugitae), and the labourers (thetes). He distributed among the five-hundred-bushel class, the horsemen and the rankers the major offices, such as the nine and the treasurers…,

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assigning offices to the members of each class according to the level of their assessment. To those registered in the labourers’ class he gave only membership of the assembly and -courts. 8. Solon instituted a council of four hundred, one hundred from each tribe [civic subdivision], and appointed the council of the to guard the laws, just as previously it had been overseer of the constitution… Seeing that the city was often in a state of strife, and that some of the citizens through apathy accepted whatever might happen, he enacted a special law to deal with them [the “stasis-law”], that if when the city was torn by strife anyone should refuse to place his arms at the disposal of either side he should be outlawed and have no share in the city. 9. The following seem to be the three most democratic features of Solon’s constitution: first and most important, the ban on loans on the security of the person; next, permission for anyone who wished to seek retribution for those who were wronged; and third, the one which is said particularly to have contributed to the power of the masses, the right of appeal to the jury- court—for when the people are masters of the vote they are masters of the state. Plutarch, Life of Solon18-19: (18) Solon was anxious to leave all the offices of state as he found them, in the hands of the rich, but at the same time to give the masses a share in the other processes of government which they had never before possessed, and he therefore took a census of every citizen’s property. Those who received an annual income of 500 measures or more of wet and dry produce, he placed in the first class and called them pentakosiomedimnoi (500-measures-men). The second class consisted of men who could afford a horse, or possessed an income of 300 measures, and these because they paid a “horse tax,” were known as Knights or Horsemen (). The third class were the zeugitai (“yoked men” [either because they owned a yoke of oxen or because they fought “yoked” in the tight formation of the hoplite ]), whose yearly income amounted to 200 measures of wet and dry produce. The rest of the citizen body were known as thetes; they were not entitled to hold office and their only political function consisted of sitting in the assembly or on a jury. This latter privilege appeared at first to be worth very little, but later became extremely important, because the majority of disputes were finally settled before a jury. Even in those cases which Solon placed under the jurisdiction of the magistrates, he also allowed the right of appeal to the polular court (heliaia)… Solon considered that the common people were still weak enough to need further protection, and so he gave every citizen the privilege of going to law on behalf of any one whose rights had been infringed. If a man was assaulted or suffered violence or injury, anybody who had the ability and the desire to do so was entitled to bring a suit and prosecute the offender. In this way the lawgiver wisely accustomed the citizens as members of one body to feel and sympathize with one another’s wrongs…. (19) [Besides the already existing Council of the Areopagus, which was composed of men who had held the annual office of ,] he formed a second chamber consisting of 400 men, 100 being drawn from each of the four tribes [phylai, units into which the citizens were divided]. Its functions were to deliberate public business in advance of the general assembly, and not to allow any matter to be brought before the people without its having been previously considered… On Solon: ch. by Antony Andrewes in Cambridge Ancient History III.3 (2nd ed. 1982), and relevant chs. in the titles listed in section 2 above; Meier, Christian, Athens: A Portrait of the City in Its Golden Age (London 1999); Blok, J.H., and A.P.M.H. Lardinois (eds.), Solon of Athens: New Historical and Philological Approaches (Leiden 2006).

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21. On voting and counting votes: Larsen, J.A.O., “The Origin and Significance of the Counting of Votes,” Classical Philology 44 (1949) 164-81; Stavely, E.S., Greek and Roman Voting and Elections (London 1972). On influencing the vote, see 6:24 (415 BCE): There was a passion for the enterprise which affected everyone alike… The result of this excessive enthusiasm of the majority was that the few who actually were opposed to the expedition were afraid of being thought unpatriotic if they voted against it, and therefore kept quiet. On voting and the secret ballot in the law courts: Boegehold, Alan L., The Lawcourts at Athens: Sites, Buildings, Equipment, Procedure, and Testimonia (Princeton 1995). On voting and the secret ballot in Rome: Taylor, L.R., Roman Voting Assemblies from the Hannibalic War to the Dictatorship of Caesar (Ann Arbor 1966); Staveley (above); Lintott, Andrew, The Constitution of the Roman Republic (Oxford 1999) 46-49, 205.

22. On councils and the “probouleutic” (predeliberating) function: On probouleusis: Andrewes, Antony, Probouleusis: Sparta’s Contribution to the Technique of Government (Oxford 1954); De Laix, R.A., Probouleusis at Athens: A Study of Political Decision-making (Berkeley 1973); , P.J., The Decrees of the Greek States (Oxford 1997) 475-501. The in Sparta: Schulz, Fabian, Die homerischen Räte und die spartanische Gerusie Düsseldorf 2011; see also the titles listed in section 19 above. Councils in Athens: Wallace, R.W., The Areopagus Council to 307 B.C. (Baltimore 1989); Rhodes, P.J., The Athenian (Rev. ed. Oxford 1985).

23. On representative councils: The Law of Chios (600-550 BCE): Let him appeal to the council of the people. On the third day after the Hebdomaia [Apollo festival, 7th day of every month] that council shall assemble which is the people’s, which can inflict fines, and which consists of fifty men from a tribe. The other business shall be transacted which concerns the people and especially the issue of every case of appeal which arises in every month… (Fornara [section 17 above] #19). Solon’s council of 400 has 100 members per tribe, the council on Chios and ’ council of 500 have 50 per tribe. See Rhodes, Athenian Boule (section 22) and, on representation, Larsen, J.A.O., Representative Government in Greek and Roman History (Berkeley 1966).

24. On Cleisthenes’ tribal reform (-thirds-tribes): Traill, J.S., The Political Organization of Attica: A Study of the Demes, Trittyes, and Phylai, and Their Representation in the Athenian Council (Princeton 1975); Traill, Demos and Trittys: Epigraphical and Topographical Studies in the Organization of Attica (Toronto 1986). On the Demes: Whitehead, David, The Demes of Attica (Princeton 1986). On civic subdivisions in Greek poleis: Jones, Nicholas F., Public Organization in Ancient Greece (Philadelphia 1987). Generally on Cleisthenes’ reforms: ch. by Martin Ostwald in Cambridge Ancient History IV (2nd ed. 1988); Meier, Christian, “Cleisthenes and the Institutionalization of the Civic Presence in Athens,” in Meier, The Greek Discovery (section 5 above) 53-81; Ober, Josiah, “The Athenian Revolution of 508/7 B.C.E.,” in Ober, The Athenian Revolution: Essays on Ancient Greek Democracy and Political Theory (Princeton 1996): ch. 4; Anderson, Greg, The Athenian Experiment: Building an Imagined Political Community in Ancient Attica, 507-490 B.C. (Ann Arbor 2003).

25. On the beginnings of political thought in Greece: Raaflaub, Kurt, “Homer and the Beginning of Political Thought in Greece,” in Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 4

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(1988): 1-25; Raaflaub, “Poets, Lawgivers, and the Beginnings of Political Reflection in Archaic Greece,” in Rowe, Christopher, and Malcolm Schofield (eds.), The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought (Cambridge 2000) 23-59.

26. On Solon’s political thought and his “theory of political causation”: Solon, fragm. 4 West: Our city will never be destroyed by the fate / of Zeus or the plans of the immortal gods, / for Pallas Athena, our protector, great-spirited daughter / of a mighty god, holds her hands over us. / (5) But the citizens themselves, lured by wealth, want to bring / this great city down with their recklessness. / The common people’s leaders (demou hegemones) have a mind to do injustice, / and much grief is about to come from their great hubris, / for they do not know how to hold excess in check, nor to give order to / (10) the pleasures of their present feast in peace. / They are tempted into unrighteous acts and grow rich… / Sparing the property neither of the public nor of the gods, / they go on stealing, by force or deception, each from the other, / nor do the solemn commitments of Justice (Dike) keep them in check; / (15) but she knows well, though silent, what happens and what has been happening, / and in her time she returns with certainty (pantôs) to extract revenge; / for it comes upon the entire city [or: every city] as a wound beyond healing, / and quickly it happens that foul slavery is the result, / and slavery wakens internal strife (stasis) and sleeping warfare (polemos), / (20) and this again destroys many in the pride of their youth, / for from enemies’ devising our much-adored city is afflicted / before long by conspiracies so dear to wicked men. / Such evils are churning in the home country, but, of the impoverished, / many have made their way abroad on to alien soil, / (25) sold away, and shamefully going in chains of slavery… / In this way the public evil comes home to each man / and the outer doors can no longer hold it back; / it leaps high over the courtyard wall and finds you / anywhere, even if you hide in your inmost bedroom. / (30) This is what my spirit tells me to teach the Athenians: / bad order (dysnomia) brings the most evils to a city; / while good order (eunomia) makes eveything fine and orderly… Fragm. 9 West (Laws of politics are like laws of nature): As from the cloudbank comes the storm of snow or hail, / and thunder follows from the lightning flash, / exalted men portend the city’s death; the folk / in innocence (naively) fall slave to tyranny. / Raise them too high, and it’s not easy afterwards / to hold them. Now’s the time to read the signs. See Jaeger, Werner, Five Essays (Montreal 1966); Raaflaub, “Poets, Lawgivers” (section 25 above); Meier, Culture of Freedom (section 1 above) ch. 21. 27. Cleisthenes and the “Theory of Polis Integration”: see section 24 above. 28. , , and the “theory of universal citizen participation”: On Hippodamus of and his sketch of an ideal state: Aristotle, Politics 1267b24-1268a16. On the breakthrough of democracy in the mid-5th century (’ and Pericles’ reforms): Raaflaub, in Raaflaub et al., Origins of Democracy (section 5 above) 105-54. The myth of Protagoras: , Protagoras 320c-323a: (summarized) Initially, humans were ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of nature because they had developed language, crafts, and skills, but did not yet have political knowledge (politikē technē). When they banded together and founded communities, they treated each other unjustly and scattered again, becoming vulnerable und being destroyed by wild animals and disasters. Zeus feared, therefore, that the human race would be entirely killed off. He sent Hermes to bring them respect for others and justice (aidōs, dikē), intending these to bring order to cities and be the communal bonds of friendship. Upon Hermes’ question of how to distribute these gifts, “To everyone,” said Zeus, “and let all share in them. For

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there would be no citiesif only a few people shared in them as they do in the other kinds of specialized knowledge…” See also Aristotle, Politics 3.11 on the theory of cumulative qualification: The theory that the people at large should be sovereign rather than the few best would seem to be defensible, and while it presents some difficulty it perhaps also contains some truth. There is this to be said for the Many. Each of them by himself may not be of a good quality; but when they all come together it is possible that they may surpass—collectively and as a body, although not individually—the quality of the few best. Feasts to which many contribute may excel those provided at one man’s expense. In the same way, when there are many [who contribute to the process of deliberation], each can bring his share of goodness and moral prudence; and when all meet together the people may thus become something in the nature of a single person, who... may also have many qualities of character and intelligence.

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