Institutions, it seems, need to celebrate their origins and 1993 was marked out as the 2,500th anniversary of the invention of democracy, with celebrations in Athens, a special exhibition of Classical sculpture “from the dawn of democracy” at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and the endowment of a two-year “Democracy 2500” Junior Research Fellowship in Aegean Studies at St Peter’s College Oxford. The anniversary was calculated on the assumption that democracy first appeared at Athens with the reforms of Cleisthenes around 508 (see further pp. 238-43): indeed, Herodotus (6.131) explicitly says that it was Cleisthenes who established the democracy at Athens. And yet, at a meeting of historians, archaeologists, and literary critics, held at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC in 1993, Cleisthenes’ contribution to the institution of democracy was called into question by many of the participants. Some put its invention later, in the fifth century; others earlier, at the beginning of the sixth century. But some credence was also given to a third viewpoint - namely, that the origins of democracy are intertwined with the origins of the polis itself and therefore date back to the eighth century.
We have already seen (pp. 80-1) that the number of archaeologically retrieved graves in Athens and Attica increases sharply in the course of the eighth century; the same seems to be true of the Argolid. Although these data have been variously interpreted as evidence for either higher fertility rates or else higher mortality rates, a recent influential thesis proposes that the increase in known mortuary disposals is a consequence of the fact that a broader cross-section of
A History of the Archaic Greek World: ca. 1200-479 BCE, Second Edition. Jonathan M. Hall. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
The political community was now granted access to formal - and hence archaeologically visible - burial and that this marks the first manifestation of what might be termed a “middling ideology.” This middling ideology, which finds literary expression in the verses of Hesiod and of elegiac poets such as Tyrtaeus, Solon, Hipponax, Phocylides, Xenophanes, and Semonides, excluded women, slaves, and outsiders to construct a community of equal male citizens. As a reaction, there emerged an “elitist ideology” - most clearly discernible in the Homeric epics and in the lyric poetry of Sappho, Alcaeus, and Anacreon - which “blurred distinctions between male and female, past and present, mortal and divine, Greek and Lydian, to reinforce a single distinction between aristocrat and commoner.” With the collapse of this elitist ideology in the final quarter of the sixth century, the argument continues, “the general acceptance of middling values made democracy a real possibility” (Morris 2000: 163, 185).
A reflex of this dichotomy between an elitist and a middling ideology has been suggested, for Athens, through the visual field of funerary commemoration in the distinction between free-standing kouroi, detached from the world around, and the individuals portrayed on relief stelai, who are typically implicated in the society of the polis. This, however, is to ignore the fact that the differential pattern appears to be due to regional imperatives: while relief stelai are common in city cemeteries, funerary kouroi are found primarily outside the city, in the paralia and mesogaia regions (p. 244). In seventh-century Crete, two distinct ceramic styles are in use contemporaneously: one is a polychrome style with manifest influences from Near Eastern art while the other is more austere, constituted primarily of simple linear bands. The fact that the orientalizing pottery tends to be associated with wealthier burials might again lead us to suspect that a distinction between an elitist and a middling ideology is being communicated through ceramic style, but caution is necessary because both orientalizing and simpler vessels are sometimes found within the same burial plots.
Needless to say, ideology is, by definition, not the same as reality. It was argued in chapter 6 that, for much of the Archaic period, the governance of communities was in the hands of aristocracies such as the Bacchiadae at Corinth, the Eupatridai at Athens, and the Basilidai at Ephesus. We have also seen that the earliest laws were designed to regulate potential conflict among aristocratic officeholders by setting fixed procedures, competences, and terms of office and that the rise of tyranny needs to be viewed against the background of internal friction among elites rather than a desire to champion the cause of a middle class. The realities “on the ground” need not preclude a latent ideology of egalitarianism and yet, a closer examination of those poets who are supposed to have espoused a middling ideology raises some doubts. Certainly, as we saw in chapter 7, the view that Tyrtaeus celebrates the hoplite phalanx as an expression of citizen egalitarianism finds little support in the verses that actually survive.
Let us begin with Phocylides, an elegiac poet from Miletus who, according to the Suda, flourished during the fifty-ninth Olympiad of 544-541. In an often cited fragment, Phocylides proclaims that “Many things are best for those in the middle (mesos); it is in the middle that I want to be in the polis” (fr. 12). Many have taken mesos here to have a socioeconomic connotation and, indeed, this is precisely what Aristotle (Pol. 4.9.7), who quotes this fragment, intends us to assume when he writes that “the polis wishes to be composed of people who are as equal and similar as possible, and this exists especially among the middling people.” But Aristotle is notorious for wrenching quotations from their original context and employing them as “sound-bites” for the development of theories that were more appropriate to his own day. Alternatively, it has been argued that what Phocylides is actually advocating is to avoid being associated with extreme factions within the polis. In fact, when set against the other extant fragments, it is difficult to view Phocylides as the archetypal man of middling means. His charge (fr. 1) that the inhabitants of Leros, an island south of Samos, are “base” (kakoi) may be an expression of local, rather than sociopolitical, chauvinism but typically elitist terms such as aristos, esthlos, and agathos, together with their cognates, abound in his poems. When he asks “What gain is noble birth to those who are not accompanied by grace in words or thought?” (fr. 3), it is not immediately clear that it is the concept of high birth itself that is his target. His advice to “Avoid being the debtor of a base man (kakos) lest he pains you by asking for repayment at an inopportune moment” (fr. 6) hardly marks him out as a man of the people. Those suspicions are strengthened by his exhortations both to obtain a rich farm to guarantee wealth (fr. 7) and to secure a livelihood in order to pursue arete or “excellence” (fr. 9) as well as by his description of the circulation of wine and conversation in that most aristocratic of institutions, the symposium or drinking-party (fr. 14).
Solon’s attempts to stand between warring factions at Athens in the early sixth century (see below) have often led to him being viewed as a middling man and, according to Plutarch (Sol. 1-2), it was partly a lack of inherited wealth that drove him to make his living from commerce. And yet Plutarch is also emphatic that he belonged to one of the noblest families of Athens, deriving his descent from the mythical king Codrus, and the elitist tone that underlies much of his surviving poetry is unmistakable. Thus, his description of how he gave to the common people (demos) “as much privilege as is sufficient” (fr. 5) or how the demos would best follow its leaders “if they are not given too much license nor overly oppressed” (fr. 6) betrays the perspective of somebody who clearly did not see himself as a member of the demos. His observation that a wretched or cowardly man (deilos) “thinks that he is a good man (agathos) and that he is handsome (kalos), even though he lacks pleasing looks” (fr. 13.39-40) is typical of aristocratic prejudice. Similarly, his explanation that it did not please him “to share the rich fatherland equally between esthloi and kakoi” (fr. 34) is hardly couched in middling terminology.
Ultimately, the elegiac poets do not really challenge the aristocrats’ right to rule: in fact, given that most scholars believe that their verses were composed for performance at aristocratic symposia, it could hardly be otherwise. What is more of a concern is the correct comportment that aristocrats should adopt and the necessity of avoiding abuse of the delicate relationship of reciprocity between elite leaders and the communities over which they governed. Three themes in particular stand out. Firstly, rule should be in accordance with some overarching sense of justice. Solon notes that the leaders of the demos will suffer many ills for the great violence that arises from their unjust minds and pleads that good order (eunomia) is the only solution to the city’s ills (Document 6.1). Phocylides is more succinct: “in justice there is, in a word, the sum of excellence” (fr. 10). Secondly, the pursuit of wealth is less important than the quest for virtue and excellence. As Solon puts it, “I long to have money but I do not wish to acquire it unjustly for justice always arrives later” (fr. 13). Thirdly, the conspicuous flaunting of material trappings comes to be regarded as an unnecessary and vulgar provocation. Xenophanes (fr. 3) derides his fellow Colophonians for learning “useless luxury (habrosyne)” from the Lydians and going around the agora in purple robes with their hair drenched in perfumes, and Phocylides (fr. 11) observes that men who are elaborately dressed think themselves wise but are, in fact, empty-headed.
It is precisely this repugnance towards corruption and injustice rather than the principle of aristocratic rule itself that lies behind Hesiod’s criticism of the “bribe-devouring basileis” (WD 36-41). All too often, Hesiod is regarded as offering a view “from below,” but alongside the persona of Hesiod the farmer there is also Hesiod the divinely inspired bard, a poet who participates in the thoroughly aristocratic world of funerary games (654-5) and who has an acquaintance with Near Eastern thought and literature that can hardly have been common among Boeotian smallholders. One of the more intriguing passages of Works and Days is the fable of the hawk and the nightingale (202-12). A speckled nightingale, Hesiod explains, was once snatched away by a hawk and begged for pity. The hawk replied: “Good sir, why do you scream so? One far stronger than you now holds you and you will go where I lead, even if you are a minstrel. If I wish, I will make you my meal, or else I will let you go. But whoever sets himself up against those who are stronger lacks sense: he will not prevail and will suffer pains in addition to his disgrace.” A great deal of ink has been spilled over the interpretation of this passage and many have been troubled by the apparent amorality of the message. Ultimately, however, it is difficult to read it as anything other than an unapologetic assertion that the vice-like rule of the community’s leaders conforms to the laws of nature.
As already noted, much of the Archaic poetry that we possess originated in the context of the symposium, which constituted a primary focus of elite culture down to the end of the Classical period. While the institution of commensality among an exclusive group, accompanied by music, is already attested in Homer (e. g. Od. 17.270-1), the practice of reclining on couches (klinai) to eat and drink in a luxurious setting was borrowed from the Near East - certainly by the early seventh century and perhaps even earlier. Visual representations of the symposium are attested on Archaic Corinthian and Laconian vases and are one of the commonest scenes found on Attic Black Figure and Red Figure pots - especially those with a specifically sympotic function, such as the krater (the large bowl in which wine was mixed with water), the amphora and hydria (for holding wine and water respectively), the oinochoe (a pouring jug), and various types of cups. More than simple receptacles that passively illustrate an elite lifestyle, these lavishly decorated pots actively contributed to the rituals of the symposium by means of visual puns and allusive imagery. Notwithstanding arguments that such ceramic vessels were cheap imitations of more costly metallic wares, their elite connotations are virtually guaranteed by the fact that many of our best-preserved examples were found in wealthy graves as far away as Etruria. Furthermore, if Theognis could worry about the erosion of class distinctions (p. 145), the symposium offered an especially effective means of recruitment as younger men were inculcated through education into the elite worldview of their elders - often in the context of homosexual relationships.
An all too common danger in studying the Archaic Greek world is that of “reading backwards.” Because we have the luxury of looking to the end, of knowing how the story turns out, we are sometimes tempted to endow earlier events with a teleological inevitability. Yet, to suppose that it was a latent egalitarianism, emerging first in the course of the eighth century, that made democracy ultimately possible is to ignore the fact that democracies were not established everywhere in Greece. Although the evidence often derives from later authors, there is some reason to suppose that by ca. 500, some form of non-aristocratic governance existed in Achaea, on the islands of Chios and Naxos, and at Ambracia in western Greece, Heraclea on the shores of the Black Sea, Megara, Cyrene, Croton, and possibly Sicilian Acragas as well as, of course, Athens. What is notable is the omission from this list of powerful poleis such as Corinth, Argos, Thebes, Miletus and, most obviously, Sparta. But, more importantly, the thesis fails to capture the truly revolutionary achievement that is implied in the word the Greeks used to describe this type of government.
The actual term demokratia is not attested until the later fifth century though it is paraphrased by Aeschylus in the Suppliant Maidens (604, 699), a play that was probably first performed in the later 460s. This is also the probable date of a gravestone commemorating an individual named Demokrates. It can hardly be accidental that this was precisely the moment at which the Athenian statesman Ephialtes instituted what modern scholars term the “radical” democracy by severely limiting the powers of the aristocratic council of the Areopagus (Aristotle, AC 25). The word demos is used in the Homeric epics to denote the free inhabitants of a community excluding the immediate leadership - probably a legacy of its employment in the Mycenaean period (p. 71) - but in the verses of Archaic poets it typically indicates the non-elite population of the polis. To speak, then, of the demos as exercising kratos or “power” is to draw attention to the fact that the masses have wrested power away from the formerly governing aristocracy. It is worth noting that, while notions of equality and freedom of speech would be intrinsic to the Classical Athenian democracy, linguistically-speaking the term itself carries no connotations of egalitarianism. In fact, it has been argued that concepts such as egalitarianism, the rule of law and civic liberties only began to become regularly associated with democracy after its reconceptualization at the end of the eighteenth century of our era. The Ancient
Greek word for equality before the laws, isonomia, seems to have been used as a slogan by the late sixth-century Athenian reformer Cleisthenes when he wanted to enlist the support of the demos against his aristocratic rivals (see p. 237). But there is nothing inherent in the term isonomia that defines how widely equality should be distributed and it has been conjectured that it originally signified those very principles of power sharing and rotation of office among the elite that we have already considered (pp. 142-4).
It is perhaps understandable in this day and age, when wars are allegedly fought to impose democracies, that western ideologues should choose to regard democracy as the perfection of a natural and innate principle of egalitarianism. But even if the Athenian democracy of the fifth and fourth centuries is the direct predecessor of modern western democratic traditions - a dubious prospect at best - its inception was the consequence of a revolutionary usurpation of power on the part of the masses rather than the extension to a broader constituency of a latent egalitarianism that is, in any case, hard to document in the written sources. When considering the formation of the political community in Archaic Greece, it is important not to confuse political participation with egalitarianism.
That said, neither should we underestimate the important consequences that resulted from an ideology of political participation. The necessity to secure broad, community-wide consensus for decisions required debate, persuasion, and critique - all qualities that fostered a self-reflective mode of critical analysis that lies at the core of the earliest philosophical and scientific speculations. In the early sixth century, Thales of Miletus, whose mathematical and astronomical research allowed him to predict the solar eclipse of 585, appealed to natural phenomena - rather than divine causation - to explain the world around him; his propositions were taken up and debated, later in the century, by Anaximander and Anaximenes, both also from Miletos, Heraclitus of Ephesus, and Xenophanes of Colophon. That the earliest intellectuals, conventionally known as the pre-Socratics, should have hailed from the multicultural ambit of Ionia is hardly surprising given the much longer tradition of scientific knowledge in Egypt and the Near East, especially Mesopotamia, but the capacity to challenge and dispute received doctrine was facilitated by the relatively non-authoritarian regimes of the Greek world. Furthermore, normative Greek religious practices, unlike those of the Near East, were not based on sacred texts or closely guarded hieratic knowledge - thus allowing, for example, Xenophanes (frs. 15-16) to criticize anthropomorphic conceptions of the gods.
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