We begin with the sources (see Rhodes, above, Chapter 2, with bibliography): how, and how reliably, do we know about the history and workings of Athenian democracy? Depending on the time period, this question prompts different answers.
The fourth century is illuminated mainly by three categories of evidence. One is the Constitution of the Athenians, produced late in the century in Aristotle’s school (whether by the master himself or one of his pupils: Rhodes 1993: 58-63). It is the only survivor of a set of over 150 constitutions that formed the empirical base of Aristotle’s Politics (Nicomachean Ethics 10.9 1181b18-24), even if the Ath. Pol. (and probably the entire collection of constitutions) was in fact published after Politics (Rhodes 1993: 58-61). It is not to be confused with its namesake, by Pseudo-Xenophon, mentioned above. Its first part sketches the evolution of democracy from the late seventh to the early fourth century (1-41), the second its working in the author’s time (42-69). Both parts are invaluable, although the latter takes much for granted and the former needs to be used with caution: it is organized too schematically around a sequence of competing ‘‘progressive’’ and ‘‘conservative’’ leaders, reflects the strengths and weaknesses of the sources employed, and reveals all too clearly the scarcity of available information and the author’s lack of awareness about the differences between his own and earlier times. Recent commentaries (Rhodes 1993; Chambers 1990), translations (Moore 1975; Rhodes 1984), and interpretations (Keaney 1992; Pierart 1993; Maddoli 1994) make the work accessible and help us navigate through the many difficulties it poses, although a great deal of work remains to be done here.
Beginning at the end of the fifth century and throughout the fourth many political speeches, whether given in the assembly or council, law courts, or at communal celebrations (such as the funeral ceremony), were recorded and published (Kennedy 1963). About 150 of these survive, by Antiphon, Andokides, and Lysias (a metic and speechwriter) from early in this period, by Demosthenes, Aischines, and a few others from later, and by Isokrates, who was not an active politician himself and wrote sample or literary speeches. About two thirds are forensic orations. That they were generally addressed to large groups (hundreds or thousands) of Athenian citizens makes this ‘‘corpus of Attic orators’’ immensely valuable. The orators knew the attitudes and concerns of their audiences and used the language and arguments they expected to be most effective. Especially prosecution speeches in public trials often contain ‘‘long passages about the structure and working of democratic institutions and well-formulated defenses of the ideals of popular government’’ (Hansen 1999: 13). The corpus offers unique insights (Ober 1989). (It is easily accessible in bilingual editions in the Loeb Classical Library and by Aris & Phillips, and in a new series of annotated translations published by the University of Texas Press.)
By the early fifth century, Athenians began to record important public decrees and documents in stone. The number of such inscriptions increased greatly with the multiplication of political decisions necessitated by the Athenian empire, and again in the fourth century. Their subject matter comprises political decrees, laws, financial and other public accounts of officials and committees, treaties, contracts, honors bestowed on citizens and non-citizens, lists of inventories, state debtors, victors at athletic and dramatic competitions, officials, councilmen, war casualties, and much more. As Hansen (1999: 12) observes, ‘‘over 20,000 inscriptions have been found just in Attika, most of them fragmentary, and several thousand of them are public documents from the golden age of democracy. For the fourth century alone we have some 500 decrees, ten laws, over 400 accounts and inventories, and fifty odd inscriptions with the names of prytaneiC (members of the council’s executive committee) and other councilors. The restoration and interpretation of these texts requires special skills and experience; the discipline that specializes in these tasks is called epigraphy (Bodel 2001). The Attic inscriptions to 403 are available in IG 13 (for those later than 403: IG 22); for the more important ones, we have good translations (e. g., Fornara; Harding) and Greek texts with commentaries (M&L; R&O). We should add here that, unlike their Hellenistic and especially Roman counterparts, Greek coins of the archaic and classical period offer little political information (Howgego 1995: 63-4).
With the partial exception of inscriptions, the types of evidence discussed so far have no equivalent in most of the fifth century. Hence the most detailed analyses of democracy (e. g., Ober 1989; Hansen 1987, 1999) focus on the fourth century. Yet other categories of sources, themselves mostly absent in the fourth century, illuminate the democracy of the fifth from different perspectives: the political pamphlet by the ‘‘Old Oligarch,’’ history, and drama.
Herodotos, a citizen of Halikarnassos in Asia Minor and later of Thourioi in southern Italy, spent time in Athens and was closely familiar with this city (Moles 2002; Fowler 2003). Writing in the 430s and 420s about the Persian Wars and their long prehistory (Lateiner 1991), he does not cover events after 479 but throws light on the early stages of democracy and offers pointed comments that reflect contemporary judgments of it; in fact, signs of his constant interaction with democracy’s impact on Greek society and politics in his own time are quite pervasive (Fowler 2003; Bakker et al. 2002: 185 n. 111). Recent work illuminates his intellectual and political context (Thomas 2000; Munson 2001; Raaflaub 1987; 2002).
Thucydides, a politician and general who was forced to leave Athens in 424 and spent the rest of the war in exile (5.26.5), started to collect material and draft his report early in the long and bitter ‘‘Peloponnesian War’’ (1.1; 5.26), but wrote or revised much of it after the war (de Romilly 1963; Hornblower 1987). The work is unfinished, breaking off abruptly in 411. It focuses on power politics, foreign relations, and war; domestic issues and constitutional developments, like religion and social or economic aspects, enter the picture only when they are immediately relevant to the progress of the war. Naturally, political decisions concerning the war were highly relevant; so were the circumstances and methods in and by which they were reached. Thucydides therefore comments frequently on ‘‘democracy in action,’’ mostly through a series of often antithetical speeches that explain crucial decisions (e. g., concerning the Sicilian expedition in 415, 6.8-26). Such episodes, together with Perikles’ Funeral Oration or the eulogy on Perikles (2.65), contribute to an analysis of the nature, strengths, and weaknesses - or the ideal and deterioration - of democracy. Vignettes on the civil war in Kerkyra (3.82-4) and the plague in Athens (2.47-55) dissect the illness and disintegration of society and community under extreme pressures imposed by war and epidemic. Similarly, Thucydides uses a debate in Syracuse about how to react to Athens’ aggression (6.32-41) and the oligarchic coup in Athens in 411 (8.45-98) to analyze the ideological differences between democracy and oligarchy and the nature of oligarchy (Raaflaub forthcoming). Although incorporating what could be learned about the arguments actually used, Thucydides' speeches are his own products, highlighting motives, goals, and specific problems, and serving as interpretive tools (1.22.1; Stadter 1973; Hornblower 1987: ch. 3; Rusten 1989: 7-17). Two sets of thorough historical commentaries (Gomme et al. 1945-81; Hornblower 1991-6) help illuminate his often difficult text, and a Brill Companion on Thucydides is forthcoming.
Xenophon’s Greek History (Hellenika) picks up where Thucydides breaks off, and ends in 462. The author shows less depth and analytical acumen than his predecessor (Gray 1989; Dillery 1995), but contributes importantly to the history of democracy as well as oligarchy by describing the final phase of the Peloponnesian War (1.1-2.2) as well as the tyranny of the Thirty and its overthrow (2.3-4; Krentz 1995). A fragment, preserved on two papyri, of another, anonymous, continuator of Thucydides (the Hellenika Oxyrhynchia) is valuable not least because it illuminates the early fourth-century oligarchic constitution of the Boiotian Confederacy (16.2-4; McKechnie & Kern 1988). Otherwise, the rich historical production of the fourth century survives only in numerous fragments.
Old Comedy, represented by Aristophanes’ eleven extant plays (MacDowell 1995; Cartledge 1995), was highly and immediately political. Taking advantage of a culture of almost unlimited freedom of speech (Henderson 1998), the poet assaulted and parodied not only intellectuals (Euripides in Thesmophoriazusae, Sokrates and the sophists in Clouds) and the city’s predilection for war and failure to seek peace (in Acharnians, Peace, and Lysistrata) but also the practices of democracy and its corrupt demagogues or fanatically committed jurors (especially in Knights and Wasps), and the demos’ habits in assembly (in Acharnians and Ecclesiazusae). Comic humor feeds on wild exaggeration, but the plays identify some of the major problems the (or some) Athenians perceived in their democracy (Henderson 1990, 2003; Ober 1998: ch. 3 with bibliography; McGlew 2002; Spielvogel 2003). By contrast, tragedy, older in origin and more dignified, chose its plots almost exclusively from myth; it very rarely took a stand on current political issues but, by dramatizing problems that agitated the community at the time, it helped raise political awareness and, in turn, informs us about some of these issues. The extent to which tragedy’s political and ethical dilemmas reflect specifically Athenian or even democratic concerns is much debated (e. g., Goldhill 2000; Rhodes 2003; cf. Said 1998; Boedeker & Raaflaub 2005), but some of Aischylos’ (Suppliants, Eumenides), Sophokles’ (Antigone), and Euripides’ plays (Suppliants, Phoenician Women) unquestionably throw light on then current discussions on political and constitutional issues (Meier 1990: ch. 5; 1993; Gregory 1991; Croally 1994).
These, however, are just the main groups of sources. Because democracy had a broad and deep impact on every aspect of Athenian life, politics, and culture, and its policies affected most of the rest of Greece, reactions to democracy are visible in virtually all extant authors (Raaflaub 1989).
World History
