Athenian democracy an imperfect system that led to mob rule, says classics prof

bu.edu/bridge ^ | 4 February 2005 | Brian Fitzgerald

[Ohioan]

Thanks.

[stuartcr]

And the fact that they are dead, doesn't make it any easier either.

[Verginius Rufus]

The decisive battle that led to Athens' surrender in 404 B.C. was fought at Aegospotami in 405, a naval battle won by Lysander of Sparta, although Xenophon makes it sound like it wasn't much of a battle since the Athenians were taken off-guard. The Spartans had a lot of allies, both from mainland Greece and from places like Ephesus, Miletus, Chios, and Rhodes. Anyway, it was a naval battle, so it wasn't won by the infantry.

An inscription honoring Lysander was discovered at Delphi which reads:

Lysander dedicated this statue
after his victory in the swift ships.
He has destroyed the power of Athens
and crowned Sparta the undefeatable:
the acropolis of Greece:
and the country of beautiful dances.
Ion of Samos wrote this poem.

[KC_Conspirator]

Sure, Athens did punish small states, especially those that threatened its navy. Athens was all about trade.

I will say this - liberals can make the comparison between themselves and Alcibiades - who defected (after being accucsed) to Sparta and gave away the Athenian war plan. An act of treason.

[harrowup]

That is what made both the founders and the Athenians elitists; that is Plato's mistress couldn't vote and neither could Jefferson's.

[irish_links]

You are correct. If I recall correctly, the Athenians sued for peace on Sparta's terms after the naval battle. The Spartans ended the Athenian democracy and installed a pro-Spartan oligarchy to power. An occupation by Spartan troops was probably not necessary.

[Verginius Rufus]

That's right...Athens sued for peace after the naval battle (some months later...they were blockaded by land and sea so were running short of food). The pro-Spartan oligarchy of the Thirty Tyrants was set up a little later with Lysander's assistance. The Athenian oligarchs later hired a Spartan garrison to help them maintain control of Athens.

[donmeaker]

Now it ain't fair to assert that Jefferson had a mistress. The DNA don't prove it, all we are left with is that one of the Jefferson men, (probably Randolph,) fathered one of her later children. Her first child was not related to Jefferson.

At that time, the vote was thought to be a family vote. Certainly women who were married influenced their husbands. Nowadays we forget that. So by that reasoning, Jefferson's wife was represented.

[scire_licet]

Good article. I think a lot of people are missing the point of Samons book. I wouldn't claim to know exactly what he thinking, but it seems to me that he's just trying to say that we should be careful when looking to any previous system of goverment for guidance, especially when we tend to idealize that government, as in the case of Ancient Athens. Many good things came from Athens - art, philosophy, drama. But to attribute those things merely to the fact that Athens was a democracy is misguided, and the history of Athens merits a closer look before we say that Athenian democracy is the model for our own form of government (which it has already been pointed out, is not a democracy, since the government and policy are controlled by elected representatives, not directly by the people.)

The foundations of the Persian empire were begun with the Delian League, and with the defeat of the Persians at the Eurymedon River and the Peace of Callias, the need for the Delian League ended, and yet the Athenians still required their 'allies' to pay tribute. They used the money for their own good, moving the treasury to Athens, iniating the Periclean Building project, paying themselves for jury duty and public service.

The Athenians were overeager, always wanting more - more money, more power, more land, as shown when they sent an expedition to Sicily in the midst of their war with Sparta. This pleonexia eventually proved to be their undoing. I think you can draw parallels between America and Athens, you have to be careful doing it, but I don't think that human nature has changed as much as we might like to think it has over the past 2500 years. Athens instituted it democratic form of government in other greek states, more to insure their alliance rather than for the good of the people of those states. They also commited horrendous acts of violence against their allies, killing all the men and enslaving the women and children of Melos.

I guess the point of this rather long diatribe is that we should be careful when looking for political advice from a society as far removed from ourselves as Ancient Athens is, especially when most of us don't understand the history, or significance of that democracy. America has turned a simple form of government, albeit erroneously labelled, into a sort of religion, worshiping the ideas of freedom and liberty merely for themselves, not that which they allow us to attain. We need to stop paying lip service to an "idea" of government, expecting it to solve all our problems, and then bemoaning its flaws when it doesn't. Instead, we should stop looking to the political arena for answers, and instead try to understand what it is about our society that makes it so great, or not so great, and what we can do to change it, and ourselves, before our love of democracy blinds us to our true faults. The Ancient Athenians at least got something right: when a politican was being vetted for public office, they were asked if they took care of their parents, fulfilled their citizenship duties, and practiced the state religious dutifully. It was more than just about preserving freedom to do something, or liberty from something; it was about the nature of society as a whole, and the individuals role within it.