IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY: INSTITUTIONAL DESIGN AND THE CITIZENSHIP LAW OF 451/450 BC AS AN ATHENIAN STRATEGY FOR EMPIRE PAPER SUPPORTED BY THE 2016–2017 PENN PROGRAM ON DEMOCRACY, CITIZENSHIP, AND CONSTITUTIONALISM FELLOWSHIP ALEXIS D. MONTOURIS CIAMBOTTI CLASS OF 2018 SUPERVISOR: PROFESSOR JEREMY J. MCINERNEY APRIL 20, 2017 TABLE OF CONTENTS I. PROLEGOMENA………………………………………………………………………...1 II. METHODOLOGY……………………………………………………………..…………9 III. ATHENIAN LAW: HISTORICAL AND EPIGRAPHICAL EVIDENCE A. PRECEDENT……………………………………………………………………….11 B. ADDRESSING MODERN CONFLATION……………………………………………..21 3 C. THE DECREE RELATIVE TO ERYTHRAE (IG I 14)………………………………...22 IV. ATHENIAN CONSCIOUSNESS: DRAMA AND CONTEMPORARY DOCUMENTS A. THE TRAJECTORY OF EMPIRE: ATHENIAN HEGEMONY AND IMPERIALISM IN AESCHYLEAN DRAMA…………………………………………………………35 B. AESCHYLUS’ PERSIANS…………………………………………………………...38 C. THE ATHENIAN NAVY AND AESCHYLUS’ PERSIANS………………………………60 D. AESCHYLUS’ SEVEN AGAINST THEBES…………………………………………….65 i. THE “SHIP OF STATE” ……………………………………………………68 ii. THE POLIS: NARROWING CONSCIOUSNESS EVIDENCED THROUGH QUANTITATIVE ASSESSMENT……………………………………………..72 E. AESCHYLUS’ SUPPLIANT WOMEN…………………………………………………79 F. AESCHYLUS’ ORESTEIA…………………………………………………………...84 V. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………87 VI. BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………….89 FIGURES AND TABLES 3 FIG. 1: GREEK TEXT OF IG I 14, THE PACKARD HUMANITIES INSTITUTE ……………24 FIG. 2: Πολι/Poli-DERIVATIVES IN AESCHYLEAN TRAGEDY………………………….74 FIG. 3: Πολε/Pole-DERIVATIVES IN AESCHYLEAN TRAGEDY………………………...75 FIG. 4: COMBINED RELEVANT Πολι/Poli- AND Πολε/Pole-DERIVATIVES IN AESCHYLEAN TRAGEDY………………………………….……………………75 APPENDICES APPENDIX I: AESCHYLUS’ PERSIANS………………………………………………105 APPENDIX II: AESCHYLUS’ SEVEN AGAINST THEBES……………………………….114 APPENDIX III: THESAURUS LINGAUE GRAECAE DATA FOR FIGURES 2, 3 AND 4, Poli- AND Pole-DERIVATIVES IN AESCHYLEAN TRAGEDY………………….…117 I. PROLEGOMENA The Athenian assembly in 451/450 BC passed the Citizenship Law (CL) as a measure of strategic institutional design, here defined in terms of the composition of a political body, to ensure that Athenian interests would maximally inform future imperial domestic and foreign policy.1 The CL strategically homogenized every democratic institution in Athens in the immediate posterity, and the assembly of 451/450 BC used the CL to narrow the composition of the electorate in the political institutions such that every vote on every policy, case, or agenda maximally represented Athenian interests. Although the CL was unprecedented in its substantive alterations to citizenship, its application for strategic institutional design finds definitive epigraphical precedent only in the Decree relative to Erythrae of the mid-450s BC.2 The CL existed within an immediate legal context of institutional redesign abroad prosecuted by Athens. Textual and contextual assessment of the Erythrae Decree illustrates that Athens attempted to ensure her interests abroad by strategically recomposing the electorate of the decision-making body (the boulē3) in Erythrae.4 In this way, Athens ensured that all future Erythraean policy proposals could remain consistent with Athenian interests.5 Mirroring this foreign policy in the domestic sphere shortly thereafter, the CL embodied the same Athenian recognition of the strategic value of institutional design, and Athens recomposed the decision-making electorate such that it would pass policies most beneficial to the Athenian empire. In so doing, Athens again used the law as a strategic weapon to control future policy.6Athens turned her foreign policy inward, recomposing her own institutions and filled 1 Blok, 2009, 141. See discussion of Blok below, pp. 3 – 7. 2 Tod, 1933, 48. I will refer to this legal action as “the Erythrae Decree” as a syncopated form of its name. 3 See definition of boulē and ekklēsía below, pp.6–7. 4 Tod, 1933, 48. See below Part III § B. 5 See pp.22–33 below, and Balcer, 184, 382–3. 6 Kittrie, 2016. After reading sections of Kittrie, 2016, I considered the modern examples of lawfare in comparison to the work I was pursuing. Based on this exposure, I herein argue that Athens likewise strategically used law to 1 them with Athenian interests. In this way, the Citizenship Law transitioned Athens from an externally imperial power to a transparent empire.7 achieve her interests. In fact, Athens prosecuted many legal measures to achieve its interests. Montouris Ciambotti, 2015, passim. Harrison tends to focus on fourth-century jurisprudence (Harrison and MacDowell, 1971 and 1998, Vols. I and II, see, for example Vol. I, pp.1–3); however, there is ample inscriptional evidence for the nautodikai’s existence in the fifth century (P.J. Rhodes, “Nautodikai,” Brill’s New Pauly Online; Lanni states, “From the fifth century, cases involving merchants had been tried by a board of magistrates known as nautodikai. We know very little about the procedures used in these cases during the fifth and early fourth century,” Lanni, 2006, 151). It is their function that is contested. (Harrison, “We are less well informed about these magistrates, since they had been superseded by Aristotle’s time and therefore get no mention in the Ath. Pol. We first hear of nautodikai in a decree dated about 444 B.C.; all we can say about this piece of evidence is that it shows them presiding over a court that has nothing to do with merchants”(Harrison and MacDowell, 1971 and 1998, Vol. II, 23). For example, regarding judges who oversaw trade: We seem to have evidence for cases where the merchant calling of the litigant (certainly when he was defendant; only conjecturally when he was plaintiff) brought the issue before the nautodikai, and similarly with cases where the citizen status of the defendant was at stake. There is not so much in common between these two types of case as is sometimes supposed. In both the status of the parties has some relevance, and it is perhaps legitimate to assume that in a good many alien cases the defendant would have been of foreign merchant extraction; but that is about all (Harrison and MacDowell, 1971 and 1998, 24). Athens was a naval superpower and naval control was especially important in geopolitics: see Hale, 2009, passim; Jordan, 1972, passim; Straus, 2004, passim; Herodotus, Robin Waterfield, and Carolyn Dewald, 2008, trans. by Robin Waterfield, Hdt. Hist. 8.3, 1, 44, for example. See Edward Cohen, 1973, 5–6; and Starr, 1989, 5, 24–25. The courts and ethnocentricity, Montouris Ciambotti, 2015, passim; Boegehold, 1995, 17, 37, 43, 47, 97, 125, 137; MacDowell, 1978, 117; military service is compulsory but metics were at a disadvantage with property, taxation, marriage, etc., as Lanni points out (for metics’ status, see also Gauthier, 1972, passim, and Whitehead, 1977, passim): Despite their importance to the Athenian economy, metic status was not a privilege. Metics were required to have an Athenian citizen as a sponsor (prostatês), to pay a monthly tax, and to serve in the military but were not permitted to exercise political rights, to own real property, or to marry a citizen, and had more limited legal rights than citizens. Despite the legal and political liabilities of metics, not all these men were considered to be of a lower class or status than citizens. One of the richest men in Athens was Pasion the banker, an ex-slave who spent much of his life as a metic before being granted citizenship. Moreover, Athens’ exclusive aristocratic club (hetaireiai) were known to admit metics (Lanni, 2006, 19). More generally, see, A.R.W. Harrison and D.M. MacDowell, 1971 and 1998, Vol. I: 1–22; Vol II: 23–27; Adriann Lanni, 2006, pp. 1–22; 33–38; 76–79; 84–87; 93–94; 97; 105–109; 138; 149–153; Edward Cohen, 1973, bes. Chapter 3: “Historical Development of the Dikai Emporikai:” 159–168; see especially P. Gauthier, 1972, 149–154 and passim. 7 For alternative arguments, see Davies, Dec., 1977–Jan., 1978; MacDowell, 1978; Ostwald, 1986; Rhodes, 1981, 331–334; Samons II, 2016, 89–90; and Stewart, Winter 1995. Blok summarizes “Current Interpretations” in Blok, 2009, 146–154. Given the preeminence of Rhodes’ assessment, the most relevant portion of his findings is included: A.P. is the only text to offer a motivation for Pericles’ law: διὰ τὸ πλῆος τπων πολιτῶν (cf. Arist. Pol. III.1278A 26– 34, arguing that cities define their citizenship generously when short of men, strictly when citizens are plentiful; but VI. 1319B 6–11 argues that the leader of democracies are generous in order to enlarge and strengthen the δῆµος), an explanation which accords ill with the view of 26. i that the period after Ephialtes’ reform was one of heavy losses in war. Most commonly modern scholars have either written of a jealous desire to ensure that the increasingly valuable privileges of Athenian citizenship, and especially µισθοφορία, were not shared too widley (e.g. Walker, C.A.H., v1. 102 – 3), or else have rejected A.P.’s explanation and have seen in the law an attempt to preserve the racial purity of the citizen body (e.g. Busolt, G.G., III. i. 337 – 9, Hignett, H.A.C., 255, 346); more eccentrically, Jacoby saw a ‘party political’ threat to Perciels’ opponents in general and to Cimon in particular (Supp. i. 477– 81)…Jacoby’s explanation of Pericles’ change in the law may be ruled out in the absence of any evidence of a threat to Cimon and other known µητρόξενοι (Rhodes, 1981, 333). 2 The CL simultaneously reflected an evolving social consciousness among the Athenian voters; namely, narrowing their focus from the Athenian state writ large to its relationship with the individual citizen.8 Dramatic performances reflected the collective social identity and sentiments in Athens, and Aeschylus’ productions prior to the CL illustrate this narrowing focus. For this reason, I will examine Aeschylus’ Persians (472 BC.),9 Seven against Thebes (467 BC),10 Suppliant Women (sum dated from 475–456 B.C. (“‘Excepting 458, the year of the Oresteia’”11)),12 and Oresteia (458 BC),13 examining thematic and linguistic trends to reconstruct the social and historical consciousness of the Athenian electorate that passed the CL in 451/450 BC.