THE HELLENISTIC POLIS AND CONTEMPORARY METHODS IN THE STUDY OF POLITICS AND POLITICAL THOUGHT

Modern political and social theory have long stood in a fruitful, mutually reinforcing relationship with historical study of the Greek polis and its political thought. This relationship has been rooted in theoretical and historical study of the city of Athens, as a paradigmatic and problematic democracy, especially during its classical period of imperial and cultural flourishing (c. 478–322 BCE). Greek historians interested in contemporary social and political theory, and contemporary theorists interested in the Greek polis, have tended to dedicate less attention to other Greek cities, and to other periods in the history of the Greek polis. There has been relatively little focus, for example, on the subsequent Hellenistic period (c. 323–31 BCE), from the death of Alexander the Great to the establishment of the Roman principate.

Although leading philosophies of the Hellenistic period, especially Stoicism and Epicureanism, have played an important role in discussions of ancient and modern ethics and sociology, the Hellenistic city itself has not figured so prominently in those debates. This is partly because the Hellenistic polis was long regarded as a poor, emasculated and depoliticised shadow of the classical polis, especially of imperial Athens. Hellenistic shadow-poleis were seen as eclipsed by the much more expansive Hellenistic kingdoms and their courts, and then by the developing Roman Empire. This disparaging assessment has been dispelled by recent decades of Hellenistic scholarship, which have demonstrated the vitality and range of Hellenistic civic life, institutions and thought: far from ‘dying at Chaironeia’, the Greek polis remained a dominant social, cultural and political form, which helped to shape the ever more interconnected Mediterranean of the Hellenistic kingdoms and then the Roman Empire. This has now prompted innovative contributions which have sought to bring the Hellenistic polis into the ongoing contemporary debate about the Greek city and modern citizenship.

In this chapter, I focus on one way in which study of the Hellenistic polis can harness methods and approaches of contemporary political and social theory.

INTRODUCTION

Pericles is usually presented as a great statesman and an astute politician who was, for many years, the undisputed leader of the Athenians and the initiator of the great building projects on the Acropolis. This chapter argues that he was probably even more astute than modern scholarship has suggested. At the same time, our analysis demonstrates the usefulness of applying an economic approach to the examination of ancient society.

Over the last few years, economists have been increasingly involved in the analysis of the ancient world, bringing rational-actor models to the fore. Until recently, the position presented by Moses Finley in his Ancient Economy (1973) dominated the field, namely that economic theory was of no use in the study of the ancient world. Finley's standpoint has, however, been forcefully questioned, and several humanities scholars now argue for the potential usefulness of an institutional economics approach.

If the same issue is analysed under two different scientific paradigms, it is to be expected that the results will be at least slightly different. It is as though we were looking at the world while wearing different scientific eyeglasses. For one thing, some eyeglasses correct our near vision, whereas others enable us to see things in the distance. Economics generally aims to get rid of the messy details and thereby uncover the structural forces in society. For the humanities, in contrast, ‘God is in the details.’ For another thing, as also explored in other chapters in this volume (especially in Part I), social science and humanities approaches are often based on contrasting assumptions about, and models of, human motivation and decision-making. Many economic approaches make simplifying assumptions about the primacy of material incentives in motivating individuals’ decision-making, which is interpreted mainly as strategic maximisation (though note Lewis’ chapter in this volume on behavioural approaches which insist on a multi-faceted model of human motivation). The core of rationality in the economic paradigm is the assumption that individuals have reasonably well-defined preferences over the outcomes of their actions (and strive for the best outcome for themselves). This is often (but not always) a powerful analytical tool.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SPORT AND MONEY: MODERN AND ANCIENT CONCEPTIONS

There are different opinions about the relationship between sport and money. Euryalos’ speech in the Odyssey displays the view of a warriorathlete who despises merchants. It is directed to the unknown stranger – Odysseus has not yet revealed his identity – who first declines to take part in the Phaeacians’ athletic activity. But the words of Euryalos are too much; Odysseus takes a discus and throws it far further than the Phaeacians did, thus demonstrating who the real warrior-athlete is.

While in these verses sport is connected with glory and opposed to commerce, for Werner Sombart sport is rooted in commerce. That is a strange idea that can only be understood by considering the context of the First World War. Like many intellectuals, the famous economist and sociologist felt it a duty to make his contribution when millions of young countrymen risked their life on the battlefields. In 1915, he published his book Merchants and Heroes, which he dedicated to the German soldiers. In his opinion, the war was a culmination of a long-standing conflict between the world's two leading cultures: the English, commercial culture on the one hand side and the German, heroic culture on the other. In fact, the book is a sharp invective against England and almost every aspect of the English tradition. The English, Sombart claimed, lacked any noteworthy contribution to philosophy, arts or music; they were only devoted to commerce. Sport is a part of this picture. According to Sombart, sport had its roots in commerce, and sport suppressed the intellect and the war spirit.

INTRODUCTION

I place these two extracts together in order to investigate how Greek historians and social scientists have explored the relationship between democracy, prosperity and inequality. My aim in this chapter is twofold: first, to outline some of the questions asked within the social science literature, particularly that which draws on this passage of Aristotle, and to see how Greek historians might contribute to, indeed critique, these debates; and second, to use some of the frameworks of this literature to explore Greek history in new ways. By placing these in dialogue with one another, I hope to show not only what social science approaches can offer a Greek historian, but also what Greek history might offer a social scientist.

For N. Keith Rutter

Thomas Kuhn argued that ‘paradigm shifts’ occur only in the hard sciences. He would surely have been hard pressed to uphold this view had he lived to witness the sea change that has occurred in ancient economic history during the past decade and a half. Finley's ‘New Orthodoxy’ – which held sway during the 1970s and 1980s, and still retained widespread support until shortly after the turn of the millennium – has now been extensively dismantled. This change has come about through a mixture of theoretical advances (principally the shift towards the New Institutional Economics, or NIE) and a large number of empirical studies, the latter of which have shown that the ancient economy was far from as economically stagnant as the ‘New Orthodoxy’ supposed. But in the shift away from the Finley school, several variables that garnered much attention from substantivists such as Finley and that have an important bearing on economic behaviour have been left behind; and in some ways we now run the risk of replacing the narrow range of interests of the ‘New Orthodoxy’ with a different, but similarly narrow, set of interests that constitute the primary subject matter of a ‘Newer Orthodoxy’ based on NIE. In this chapter I neither propose that we return to the Finley approach, nor abandon the (very profitable) insights of NIE. Rather, I aim to highlight some of those variables that – though once the focus of attention – have been neglected in recent works of ancient economic history, and suggest new ways of looking at them. Rather than choose one ‘school’ over another (an approach that, if it gains enough followers, invariably leads to the calcification of narrow orthodoxies), I aim to graft the insights of several approaches onto the current paradigm, in the hope that this will enrich our methodological toolbox for approaching the economic history of the Greek world.

One striking feature of recent revisionist work on the Greek economy is the extent to which it has sidestepped the main thrust of Finley's argument as to why the economy took the shape that he thought it took.

INTRODUCTION

Technology is a ubiquitous aspect of our everyday world. We use it in all our endeavours, from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep. Although it is hard to ignore in this day and age, classical scholars have shown little awareness of this observation in their research. Technology has primarily been studied from a restricted angle, most notably a technical or economic one. The former perspective views technology as a purely technical force, concentrating principally on tools and techniques. This has resulted in meticulous, descriptive studies of specific technologies, but has rarely led to a more contextual interpretation of their development. The latter approach focuses on technological innovation, and its capability to increase production outputs and trigger economic growth. Since technology is a major determinant of economic development, this is an important angle; however, technological change cannot be appreciated and understood from this perspective alone.

In this chapter, I present a different way of approaching classical technology. Using the sociological theory of SCOTS (social construction of technological systems), I argue that technological change always occurs against the backdrop of interdependent environmental, social, economic and political factors. Without focusing on this entanglement, technological change can never be truly appreciated and understood.

I will apply this approach to the case study of the Athenian silver mines in Laurion, an area of approximately 200 km2 in the south-east of Attica in Greece (Fig. 19.1). Laurion was exploited for its mineral resources from the transition of the Final Neolithic–Early Bronze Age until the late Roman period, with a peak in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. This boost in mining occurred against the background of environmental changes, such as depleting ore bodies, and a range of political and economic events, such as the introduction of coinage, the Persian Wars and the active interference of Athens in the area. Under the influence of these intertwining factors, the area was transformed into a vast industry, leaving behind a remarkably varied infrastructure of mine entrances, spoil heaps, ore-washing workshops and furnaces (Fig. 19.1).

INTRODUCTION

The study of classical Greek politics has historically been dominated by an approach which concentrates on affairs that went on inside the polis: this seems a reasonable position when we consider that the word ‘politics’ derives from the Greek politika (‘polis affairs’), and the fact that the political institutions of Greek city-states demonstrate immense diversity from the archaic period onwards. This approach has an ancient heritage: the Aristotelian project which gave rise to the publication of 158 accounts of the politeiai of Greek states in the late fourth century bc suggests that a significant school of ancient Greek thought also valued the polis-by-polis approach to the history of politics.

However, poleis were not exclusively inward-looking entities: of necessity they faced up to the consequences of the decisions and activity of other communities. Their citizens interacted with members of and the institutions of other communities: they fought as soldiers, and, on visits to other cities, staked claims – both as agents of their polis communities and of their personal interests. On returning to their home cities, politicians made speeches in which they asserted the significance of their activity abroad (e.g. Dem. 6.25–7). Intercommunity activity, therefore, offered a stage and a vehicle for the performance of politics and the transmission of political capital. During the classical period, a number of writers offered observations or commentaries on interpolis patterns of political activity, change and upheaval: Thucydides, in his account of stasis at Corcyra, for instance, made broad statements about the political strife that states experienced and the tendencies of their politicians during the early part of the Peloponnesian War (Thuc. 3.82.1); the empirical sections of Aristotle's Politics (especially book 5; e.g. 1301a19–25) are indicative of a methodology that draws upon examples from across the Greek world in its analysis of political change.

There has been a remedial tendency in recent scholarship on Greek history to challenge the primacy of the polis as the exclusive prism through which to view ancient political phenomena; much has been published to highlight the existence of inter-polis political institutions and exchanges in the shape of alliances, confederacies, interstate arbitration and the disbursal of honorific rewards.

INTRODUCTION

In the Athenian law-courts, wealthy, educated and well-born elites fought one another to prevail as leaders and advisors of the masses. Regulated by the masses’ ideals of a good society, elite competition pushed Athens towards stability, prosperity and cultural immortality. Or did it?

Classical scholarship has long analysed interactions in the lawcourts as a contest among elite litigants and mass jurors. The ‘mass and elite model’ (henceforth, M&E) owes its original elaboration to the work of Josiah Ober (1989). For Ober, Athenian political stability in the fourth century was the product of ideological negotiations between masses and elites carried out through the medium of rhetoric. Rhetorical discourse allowed the Athenians to manage the tensions arising from the existence of economic and social inequality in the context of a democratic system based on political equality. In the decision-making institutions of the polis – including, but not limited to, the law-courts – the masses regulated elite ambition by pitting elite advisors against each other and by bestowing honours on good advisors. In Ober's own words (1989: 333), ‘the ideological hegemony of the masses effectively channeled the fierce competitiveness of elites … into patterns of behaviour that were in the public interest’. In this way, the Athenians were able to reap the benefits of having elite advisors – which were necessary for policy in a direct democracy – while preventing the elite from becoming a ruling elite – because their power was always provisional and subject to the dêmos’ delegation.

For analytical purposes, we make explicit three implicit assumptions in the M&E model:

• Assumption 1 (sociological assumption): Litigation in Athens is a game played by elite litigants and mass jurors.

• Assumption 2 (operative assumption): Elite litigants seek to win over their opponents as a means to gain honour.

• Assumption 3 (operative assumption): Mass jurors have monolithic preferences.

In this chapter, we draw on the findings of two separate bodies of literature, one in classics, and one in political science, to put pressure on these assumptions. Our goal is to provide a more nuanced account of the dynamics regulating decision-making processes in the Athenian law-courts.

Before we continue, however, a note of clarification is in order.

INTRODUCTION

This chapter investigates the spread of wealthy citizens across the 139 demes of Attica, the constituent villages and boroughs of the Athenian state. We look primarily at the number of citizens (or councillors, a proxy for the number of citizens), and the number of wealthy citizens, in each of the demes, and see how closely they are correlated. A close correlation would suggest that one sort of economic opportunity was smoothly spread; a man's origins in a particular deme would be a poor way of predicting whether or not he was wealthy. A weak correlation would suggest that some demes did give their citizens a higher chance of being wealthy. We also consider demes with an unexpectedly high number of wealthy citizens, and ask whether these outliers had anything in common.

LITERATURE REVIEW

A number of scholars have anticipated some of our methods and results. Bresson offered a regression analysis of the number of magistrates and wealthy citizens from the demes of Hellenistic Rhodes. Osborne produced a ‘Wealth Index’ for most of the Athenian demes by ‘taking the number of wealthy men attested per deme from Davies’ work and dividing this by the number of bouleutai provided by that deme’. Taylor provided a regression analysis of known officials against liturgists in the demes. How does our analysis add to theirs? In several ways, we hope.

First, we use a slightly improved dataset. In particular, where our predecessors took paired demes such as Upper and Lower Lamptrai together, we treat them as two separate demes.

Second, we offer a more fine-grained analysis. We look at the distribution not only of the total number of wealthy citizens identified by Davies (1971), but also of various subsets of wealthy citizens. We reflect on the differences in the distribution of wealthy citizens from these different categories. We also think a lot about the differences that the data throws up between individual demes. In particular, we will think hard about demes that are statistical outliers. This goes against Osborne's assertion that ‘the figures for individual demes are clearly too subject to the effect of individual chance attestations to be taken too seriously’. We discuss the reliability of individual results on a category-by-category basis.

INTRODUCTION

In a period of ten years, a series of popular uprisings toppled each of Sicily's powerful fifth-century tyrannies. The revolution in Akragas came first; its tyrant, Thrasydaios, was overthrown shorty after suffering a military defeat in 472/1 (Diod. Sic. 11.53.5). It appears (Diod. Sic. 11.68.1) that several other cities – Gela, Selinous and Himera among them – subsequently overthrew their tyrants and gained their own independence. The second wave came six years later (466), when the people of Syracuse, assisted by both the aforementioned Sicilian Greeks and a number of native Sikels, overthrew the tyrant Thrasyboulos (Diod. Sic. 11.67.6–68.5). According to Diodorus (11.68.5), the Syracusans then ‘liberated the other cities, which were either in the hands of tyrants or had garrisons, and reestablished democracies in them’. And finally, the sons of Anaxilas were overthrown c. 461, resulting in the liberation of both Messana/Zankle and Rhegium (Diod. Sic. 11.76.5).

The democracies established in the wake of these revolutions appear to have survived for several decades. Diodorus (11.68.6) provides explicit (if somewhat debatable) testimony for the democracy at Syracuse: it maintained control of the city, he writes, until the tyranny of Dionysios (i.e. until 406). The evidence for the survival of the democracies in the other Greek cities is not very good. But, in a recent study, Eric Robinson has argued that those regimes were similarly successful. Under the category ‘democracy attested with a high degree of certainty’, Robinson lists Gela (466–405), Himera (466–409), Leontinoi (463–424), Selinous (466–410) and Akragas (472–406). And under the category ‘democracy attested with a lesser degree of certainty’, he lists Kamarina (461–400), Messana/Zankle (466–401) and (Italian) Rhegium (466–401).

It is striking that so many democracies persisted for so long after these revolutions. Revolutions – acts of destruction – are difficult to accomplish. But the subsequent transition to the constructive act of governing is fraught with complex challenges – ancient and modern history tells us that: for example, modern-day Egypt after the socalled Arab Spring, ancient Corinth in 392–386 and the very shortlived democracies in the cities of Achaia in 366–365. It would thus be noteworthy if only one of the new Sicilian democracies survived for any significant amount of time. But, as noted above, several did. How can we account for that fact? Why did so many Sicilian poleis complete the transition to democracy after their individual revolutions?

The ideology of the Spartan homoioi, the ‘equals’, or rather the ‘similars’, masked vast differences in wealth, prestige and power. In such circumstances, personal patronage thrives, as decades of anthropological investigations have shown us. Yet patronage is more commonly associated with Rome, despite the fact that several scholars have shown that patron–client relationships played a role even in democratic Athens, a society earlier thought exempt from this almost universal phenomenon.

In this chapter, I discuss the role of personal patronage in classical Sparta, and the differences between unequal reciprocity in the society of the ‘similars’ and in democratic Athens. I build on the findings of Stephen Hodkinson and Paul Cartledge (Sparta), Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz (Athens) and my own research into patronage in the Roman Republic and the comparative structure of Athenian patronage, in order to demonstrate how patronage is a natural part of all ancient societies. Different systems allow for the institution of patronage to assume different scopes and work through different venues, forcing the phenomenon to adapt to various circumstances. This changes the rates of exchange between patron and client, but does not abolish the institution, as claimed by Paul Millett.

A UNIVERSAL MODEL FOR A UNIVERSAL PHENOMENON: THE ECONOMY OF GRATITUDE

In the same way that archaeologists automatically look for a theatre in a Greek city, a public bath in a Roman city, and council houses, forums/agoras and temples in either, historians should look for patron–client relationships in the written sources, no matter which city is being scrutinised. And our answer to ‘What reason do you have to look for this?’ should be the same as an archaeologist would give if asked why he or she was so sure that somewhere on the site there would be the remains of a theatre, a council house, a temple or an agora: because it would be very strange indeed to find a city without these structures. Even without any success in finding some or all of these typical features, the archaeologist would repeat the old truth: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

INTRODUCTION

It may seem perverse – or even just plain wrong – to claim that hegemony is a neglected topic in the study of Greek interstate politics. The idea that one Greek state could, and did, exercise leadership over a group of other states recurs throughout the classical period, from the Persian Wars down to the campaigns of Philip II and Alexander III of Macedon. Also widespread is evidence that this leadership could, and did, extend beyond the military sphere (the narrow meaning of the Greek word hêgemonia), to encompass a more wide-ranging set of interstate obligations, established and, where necessary, enforced by a dominant power, but relying primarily on voluntary compliance rather than coerced obedience. It is ‘hegemony’ in this wider (modern) sense which has tended to be rather marginalised in modern discussions of classical Greek interstate politics, and which will be the focus of this chapter.

My central contention is that it is both appropriate and helpful to analyse hegemonic power in this period as a mode of interstate behaviour in its own right, rather than to see it, as ancient historians often tend to, merely as a failed or concealed version of imperialism. To support that claim, I will address two themes in particular. My first goal is to add some substance to the basic definition (sketched out above) of hegemony as a form of leadership characterised by willing compliance rather than coerced control, and to show that this form of leadership was (or could be) seen by the Greeks as a viable, even desirable, form of interstate structure. My second – longer, and more difficult – task is to explore whether there is any consistency in Greek views of how that willing compliance could be secured: what, that is, would constitute a ‘legitimate’ mode of hegemonic control and how could it be sustained?

My aim, then, is to show that there is in this period a distinct form of interstate behaviour, which can reasonably be labelled ‘hegemonic’. Ancient commentators on and agents of interstate politics might not have had a single label for this type of behaviour, but they did, fairly consistently, associate certain types of actions with it, and expect certain (largely, but not exclusively, positive) outcomes to result from it.