I'm currently reading a book about the golden age of Athens and its democracy ("Athens" by Christian Meier, originally published in German in 1993, English translation 1998), and have also read an excellent novel "The Last of the Wine" (1956) by one of my favorite authors, Mary Renault, which deals with that same era. Although I strongly share the concern that freedom and democracy are in grave jeopardy in the United States, I have some issues with Alexander Tyler's historical analysis as described below.
I'm not sure which other "greatest civilizations" Tyler may have had in mind besides the Athenian republic, but the sequence through which he says the "greatest civilizations" of the world "always progressed" does not correspond with what I've learned about ancient Athens. The growth of liberty and democracy in Athens seems to have been associated with a *decline* in spiritual faith and an increase in rationality, rather than spiritual faith being the font of liberty. Pericles, the dominant figure in Athens golden age of democracy, was according to Christian Meier a student of the philosopher Anaxagoras, who "regarded ... reason as the central force in the universe. Pericles wanted his city to be governed by it as well. Anaxagoras's studies in the natural sciences, including anatomy and astronomy, are said to have convinced Pericles to renounce all superstition."
But the conditions that led to the emergence of democracy are complex, and deserve more study. Christian Meier's book contains much interesting material, but also wanders a lot; he could have used a better editor. He writes (on p. 303),
"We assign the beginning of democracy in Athens and in Greece to the year 462-461 (B.C.E.), and that beginning resulted from a negative act, the demolition of the Areopagus. [The Areopagus was the council of aristocrats which had been the primary governing body prior to this.] But the conditions for democracy's emergence had existed for some time. Cleisthenes had laid the foundation, which in time fostered a strong sense of self-confidence and political aptitude among the citizenry. 'The people' had only needed to be freed of the aristocratic council's authority to govern on their own."
In another section of the book (p. 164), Meier describes Cleisthenes' reforms. Here is part of that description:
"He set up self-government in the small settlement units everywhere in Attica [the land area surrounding Athens, which was really part of the same political unit headed by Athens], a self-government based on equal rights. Then he created a complex system to connect citizens from all the regions and foster cooperation among them. This system served at the same time to create awareness of the rural population's will in Athens. He set up 'demes' new tribes, and a Council of Five Hundred. A deme was normally made up of a village or small town, though sometimes several hamlets were combined into one deme. Athens was subdivided into several demes and the city of Brauron into two. This resulted in 139 local units, each including at least a hundred citizens, in most instances several hundred, and occasionally over a thousand. The deme members administered the communal property in their district, conferred about work to be done, kept the local religious cults going, and organized festivals. The demes had priests and officials and, most important, a communal council, in which members of the middle class, even in rural areas, must have had a meaningful voice and opportunity to get elected. This 'grass-roots democracy' was able to connect with a neighborhood solidarity that went far back in history."
Of course this "self-government" had its limitations, even after the rule of the nobility was more firmly ended in 462. "Some Sophists [a school of rationalist philosophers despised by Socrates for charging fees to teach their knowledge] went so far as to claim that all human beings -- freemen and slaves, Greeks and barbarians -- were alike," writes Meier on p. 409, "but this was a radical, marginal idea, and never served as the starting point for further thinking. It was never an idea that had practical or political consequences."
The proximate cause of the end of the Athenian republic/democracy was Athens' defeat in the Peloponnesian War, which began around 431 B.C.E., by Sparta, which led to Sparta installing its handpicked rulers in Athens (Sparta was ruled by kings). Ironically, Sparta, which had been the dominant Greek power before the rise of Athens (a rise that coincided with its embrace of democracy), had freed Athens from the rule of the tyrant Hippias in 510 B.C.E., after a failed assassination attempt against him in 514 B.C.E. "By this time," writes Meier, "tyranny was on the decline in Athens; the citizenry was no longer willing to tolerate it." He distinguishes tyranny -- rule by one autocratic man -- from rule by the noble class, which was the norm prior to 462-461 B.C.E. "Strife arose among the various aristocratic factions that revived after the tyrant was expelled, and Cleisthenes lost the 508-507 [B.C.E.] election for chief archon to a nobleman named Isagoras. But Cleisthenes reacted quickly with a bold attempt to win the common people over to his camp and mobilize them to participated in politics.
As far as I can tell from my reading, the outcome of the Peloponnesian Wars had little or nothing to do with Athenians voting themselves benefits from the public treasury, but had much to do with Athenian arrogance and empire-building, as well as the popularly elected leaders making poor military decisions. Toward the beginning of the war, Athens apparently held a stronger military position and could have made peace with Sparta on favorable terms, but declined to do so, and eventually over the course of the war which lasted many years was forced to surrender in 404 B.C.E.on very unfavorable terms. Of course people using democracy to vote themselves benefits could have gradually become the norm, given more time -- the "Golden Age" of Athenian democracy lasted less than a century.
The situation was also a lot more complex than Athens-good, Sparta-bad. A couple generations before the Peloponnesian War, around 477 B.C.E., the leaders of Athens formed and led an organization called the Delian League, composed of a number of independent Greek city-states which united under Athenian leadership to resist attempts by the Persian empire to conquer Greece. A couple of these cities supplied their own military forces to the combined might of the League, but most of them instead contributed varying amounts of payments to Athens for purposes of military defense, principally building and funding its navy which was the key to Athens' military power (Sparta was militarily stronger on land, but weaker at sea; the Spartans could not readily invade Athens itself because the city was protected by walls). After the Greeks won their fight against the Persians and the threat of external invasion receded, the Delian League's raison d'etre was gone. Some cities tried to leave the League, but Athens prevented this with military force, punishing those who sought to regain independence and stop paying what essentially became tribute. Sparta enjoyed a fair amount of sympathy among Greeks for championing the "liberation of Greece" and freeing these cities from Athenian domination. Meanwhile however, many of the city-states had internal conflicts between democratic and oligarchic forces, with the democrats/republicans usually (always?) siding with Athens while the oligarchs were often supported by Sparta. Further complicating the picture, both the Athenians and the Spartans held considerable numbers of slaves, as presumably the citizens of other Greek city-states did as well. I surmise that the Spartan slaves may have been treated somewhat worse, as Sparta was apparently more concerned about the possibility of a slave uprising, but Athens was by no means an unqualified champion of freedom, although Meier notes that, "Whereas many cities demanded respectful behavior of slaves, extracting it with cudgels if necessary, in Athens slaves differed from other Athenians neither in dress nor bearing. The city needed them desperately, as well as metics [resident aliens] to maintain its maritime power [large numbers of rowers were required for the ships], and so they were treated with respect."
While I understand the importance in contemporary political terms of asserting that certain actions are forbidden by the U.S. Constitution and may not be done by a simple legislative majority, the substantive definitions of a "republic" and a "democracy" remain poorly defined. To speak as if they are totally different institutions may be making too much of the distinction between requiring a super-majority to do something, versus requiring a simple majority. Alexander Tyler's claim that "in a democracy, the majority rules in ALL cases" is not helpful. Has a majority ever ruled in ALL cases in any nation? Who counts for purposes of determining a majority? It's important to be mindful of the fact that placing limits on majoritarian rule can work both for and against the interests of freedom. While it can limit the ability of majorities to oppress minorities, it can also limit the ability of the people to prevent would-be tyrants and oligarchs from accumulating centralized, top-down control. So a political system that is more of a "republic" is not necessarily going to result in more libertarian public policy than a system that is more of a "democracy" (indeed, as Marcy points out, policies and conditions favorable in some ways to liberty and the common good can exist even under autocratic or oligarchic regimes, although I think such systems of governance are more likely than not to be bad for individual freedom and prosperity, and thus should never be pursued as a libertarian goal). But whether republican or democratic ideals are more desirable depends I think upon the particular circumstances and details of the rules being considered. For reasons such as these, I often use the terms "democracy" and "republic" and their adjectives fairly interchangeably.
Athenian democracy was in some ways superior, and in some ways inferior, to that of the United States today. It was markedly inferior in the sense that slaves and women had no legal voice in the governance of the polis (then again neither did slaves and women in post-independence America). But I'm getting the sense that it was superior in a number of other ways that are not as widely known. I'll post more about that in another message.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
