The Demos in Demokratia.Pdf
The Classical Quarterly 1–20 © The Classical Association (2019) 1 doi:10.1017/S0009838819000636 THE DĒMOS IN DĒMOKRATIA* The meaning of dēmokratia is widely agreed: ‘rule by the people’ (less often ‘people- power’), where dēmos, ‘people’, implies ‘entire citizen body’, synonymous with polis, ‘city-state’,orπάντες πολίται, ‘all citizens’.1 Dēmos, on this understanding, comprised rich and poor, leaders and followers, mass and elite alike. As such, dēmokratia is interpreted as constituting a sharp rupture from previous political regimes.2 Rule by one man or by a few had meant the domination of one part of the community over the rest, but dēmokratia, it is said, implied self-rule, and with it the dissolution of the very distinction between ruler and ruled.3 Its governing principle was the formal political equality of all citizens. In the words of W.G. Forrest, between 750 and 450 B.C. there had developed ‘the idea of individual human autonomy … the idea that all members of a political society are free and equal, that everyone had the right to an equal say in determining the structure and the activities of his society’.4 * Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2013 meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, the 2015 meeting of the Northeastern Political Science Association and the department of Classics at Yale in 2016. In addition to those audiences, I thank Cliff Ando, Victor Bers, Paul Cammack, Paul Cartledge, David Grewal, Kinch Hoekstra, David Lewis, John Mulhern, Hari Ramesh, Gunnar Seelentag, George Scialabba, Richard Tuck, John Tully, Jane Mansbridge, Josiah Ober, John Zumbrunnen, two anonymous referees and my colleagues in the department of Political Science at Yale, where this research was completed.
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