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Schlosser, Joel Alden. "Herodotus’s Political Ecologies." Democratic Moments: Reading Democratic Texts. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. 9–16. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 24 Sep. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350006195.ch-002>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 24 September 2021, 03:51 UTC. Copyright © Xavier Márquez and Contributors 2018. You may share this work for non- commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. CHAPTER ONE Herodotus’s Political Ecologies Joel Alden Schlosser Rule by the majority on the other hand, bears that fairest of all titles: ‘Equality before the law’. Not only that, but it has this second quality: it gives rise to none of the actions which a monarch characteristically takes. Those in office have their authority courtesy of a lottery, and wield it in a way that is strictly accountable. Every policy decision must be referred to the commonality of the people. That is why I give it as my opinion that we should abolish monarchy and foster the rule of the masses. Everything, after all, is contained within the multitude.1 Democracy began in ancient Greece and Herodotus’s Histories offer the first description of democracy in Greek literature. The Histories chronicle the interactions between the Greek city-states and their powerful neighbours in the Near East, interactions that culminated in the Persian invasions of Greece in 490 and 480 BCE. Herodotus delves far into the past to explain this conflict, following the Persians’ rise to mastery over a multi-ethnic and multi-continental empire. Herodotus himself was born on the edge of this empire, along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean in what is now Turkey. While we have few details of his life, the Histories testify to his travels: visits to the Black Sea region and Scythia, perhaps Babylon, Phoenicia, Palestine and especially Egypt where he sailed up the Nile to Elephantine. He also shows great familiarity with the Greek world, and became a citizen of Thurii, a pan-Hellenic colony in southern Italy, later in his life. 10 DEMOCRATIC MOMENTS While tracing the long development of conflict between the Greeks and the Persians, Herodotus develops a distinctive approach to understanding a wide variety of human and non-human phenomena, including political phenomena. In what commentators have called the ‘Constitutional Debate’, Herodotus transcribes a discussion he purports took place among a group of seven Persian elites after they had taken power from a usurping group, the Magi. In this episode, three Persians – Otanes, Megabyzos and Darius – argue for a democracy, oligarchy and monarchy, respectively, as the new regime they should adopt. These arguments offer the first comparative approach to political regimes in ancient Greek political thought. They also anticipate many of the key concepts and arguments that would develop and flower in the centuries to follow.2 At the present moment, democracy is often considered the only legitimate political regime. Encouraging democracy abroad is regarded as a worthwhile endeavour; no one would wish to be known as opposing democracy. Herodotus’s treatment of democracy merits our attention because it stands against these conventional opinions. In the Constitutional Debate, democracy does not emerge as the most choiceworthy regime, both in the particular moment of the narrative and across the whole of Herodotus’s Histories. Herodotus instead illuminates the specific ecologies, that is, the interdependent physical, intellectual and cultural factors that make different political regimes possible and desirable for a given situation. And he introduces principles of balance and equality – isonomia, is¯egoria and isokratia – that can orient successful political life within a given political ecology. Herodotus thus develops a view of democracy as situated in a particular ecology and not always the best or only way of achieving a sustainable and fair regime. In the first of the speeches, the Persian noble Otanes introduces democracy with a flourish: the rule of the many, he says, has the fairest of names – isonomia. Isonomia might best be translated ‘equality of law’.3 Everyone makes the law and everyone is subject to it. As we see in the passage at the beginning of this chapter, Otanes elaborates the meaning of isonomia through its three constituent parts: rule by lot, accountability procedures and making all resolutions refer to the public. While Otanes speaks as a Persian, these three components of a regime took fullest form in the Athens of Herodotus’s day.4 ‘Rule by lot’ meant that nearly all political offices were filled by lotteries. The agenda-setting Council of 500 was filled by lot, the administration of law was in the hands of the People’s Courts (also chosen by lot) and juries had extensive discretionary scope. Accountability procedures meant that all government officials were subject to giving an account of their tenure both before and after their terms of office. They were also liable to recall and punishment. Orators could be held to account for advice through other laws. All resolutions were referred to the public. Each of these measures lay within the power of the people as embodied in the Assembly and the law courts. HERODOTUS’S POLITICAL ECOLOGIES 11 Otanes’s allusions to Athens also bespeak the contingency of the Athenian democracy – and of successful democracies more generally. At this point in the narrative, Herodotus’s account has already given us many stories about how Athens became Athens. Athens’ distinct topography, including coast, plains and hills, created the possibility for three different factions (1.59). When these came into conflict, Peisistratos, the famous Athenian tyrant, took power in large part because of his ability to trick the Athenians using their own customs. In one of these instances, Peisistratos returned from having been driven out of power by dressing a tall and strikingly beautiful women in a full suit of armour, placing her in a chariot and declaring that Athena herself was bringing Peisistratos home to her acropolis (1.60). The Athenian democracy, however, only came about when the Peisistratids were overthrown, a defeat instigated by the chance event of the capture of their children, which threw them into such confusion that they were forced to accept terms (5.65). Cleisthenes, who emerged as the leader after the Peisistratids were deposed, enlisted the common people and created the organizational structure that became emblematic of democracy. The example of Athens suggests the accidents and contingencies that inform any particular democracy. Indeed, isonomia, the word Otanes uses to describe democracy, does not necessarily equate to the democratic institutions he lists.5 Equality under law could well exist within an oligarchical regime: power is distributed in the state on the basis of equality yet the authority to issue law and be bound to it could well exist in representative systems with strong executives, as we see today. When Otanes concludes that ‘the many is the whole’, it points to the indeterminate nature of democracy. Majority rule, isonomia, rule by lot, accountability procedures and popular sovereignty name components that may or may not be sufficient for democracy. Herodotus makes his readers extraordinarily aware of the particular conditions that create a democracy as well as the paradoxes involved. Athenian democracy arose in a dynamic ecology of geography, history, personality and contingency. The subsequent speech by Megabyzos responds directly to Otanes’s claims. This speech ostensibly advocates an oligarchy, yet much of it focuses on the negative aspects of empowering the people (d¯emos). The people cannot be easily subdued, let alone directed or governed. They are like ‘a stream swollen in the winter’.6 They lack education and have never seen anything good or decent. Let the enemies of Persia be ruled by democracies, Megabyzos declares. The Persians themselves should choose the best men to rule. This speech is full of critiques of democracy common during the fifth century BCE, and many commentators pass over it to focus on Darius’s. Yet the choice of language here is important: the image of a stream swollen in winter is Homeric. Homer uses it to describe the irresistible vehemence of heroes, while Theognis employs it to indicate the overflowing, impulsive mass of people.7 With this metaphor, Megabyzos invokes a broader sociological phenomenon. Megabyzos describes the nature of crowds. 12 DEMOCRATIC MOMENTS Megabyzos’s claim about crowds has support elsewhere in the Histories. One of Athens’ first acts as a democracy is to punish and enslave the neighbouring Boeotians and Chalcidians for aiding Kleomenes in his attack (5.77); their freedom seems to include the freedom to dominate others, flooding over them like a swollen river. Nor is the Athenian dēmos predictable: We already encountered the story of the Athenians’ being tricked by Peisistratus; Herodotus offers a corresponding story later when he describes the Athenians falling for the claims of Aristagoras of Miletus when he inveigles the Athenians to join the Ionian revolt against the Persians. Herodotus comments: ‘This seems to suggest . that a crowd is more easily fooled than a single man’ (5.97). Even the Persians, who with Cyrus can collectively preserve their status as rulers (9.122) also hold that rule by one man is necessary to drive people past their natural inclinations (7.103). Herodotus raises the question of the nature of crowds but doesn’t answer how they can be directed or predicted. The metaphor of the swollen stream suggests a natural tendency, one that can perhaps be diked or dammed but only so far. At the foundation of Megabyzos’s argument for an oligarchy, then, is the idea that this structure would provide the most effective crowd control.
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