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THE DĒMOS IN DĒMOKRATIA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2019

Daniela Cammack
Daniela Cammack*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
*
daniela.cammack@berkeley.edu
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Extract

The meaning of dēmokratia is widely agreed: ‘rule by the people’ (less often ‘people-power’), where dēmos, ‘people’, implies ‘entire citizen body’, synonymous with polis, ‘city-state’, or πάντες πολίται, ‘all citizens’. Dēmos, on this understanding, comprised rich and poor, leaders and followers, mass and elite alike. As such, dēmokratia is interpreted as constituting a sharp rupture from previous political regimes. Rule by one man or by a few had meant the domination of one part of the community over the rest, but dēmokratia, it is said, implied self-rule, and with it the dissolution of the very distinction between ruler and ruled. Its governing principle was the formal political equality of all citizens. In the words of W.G. Forrest, between 750 and 450 b.c. there had developed ‘the idea of individual human autonomy … the idea that all members of a political society are free and equal, that everyone had the right to an equal say in determining the structure and the activities of his society’.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 69 , Issue 1 , May 2019 , pp. 42 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2019 

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Footnotes

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2013 meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, the 2015 meeting of the Northeastern Political Science Association and the department of Classics at Yale in 2016. In addition to those audiences, I thank Cliff Ando, Victor Bers, Paul Cammack, Paul Cartledge, David Grewal, Kinch Hoekstra, David Lewis, John Mulhern, Hari Ramesh, Gunnar Seelentag, George Scialabba, Richard Tuck, John Tully, Jane Mansbridge, Josiah Ober, John Zumbrunnen, two anonymous referees and my colleagues in the department of Political Science at Yale, where this research was completed. Translations are my own unless otherwise stated.

References

1 Cartledge, P., Ancient Greek Political Thought in Practice (Cambridge, 2009), 6, 62, 74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, though cf. 57; Dunn, J., Democracy: A History (New York, 2005), 34Google Scholar; Finley, M.I., Democracy Ancient and Modern (New Brunswick, 1985), 12Google Scholar; Harrison, R., Democracy (London, 1993), 2–3Google Scholar; Larsen, J.A.O., ‘Demokratia’, CPh 68 (1973), 45–6Google Scholar, at 46; Raaflaub, K.A., ‘The breakthrough of dēmokratia in mid-fifth century Athens’, in Raaflaub, K.A., Ober, J. and Wallace, R.W., Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece (Berkeley, 2007), 105–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 106; Rhodes, P.J., Ancient Democracy and Modern Ideology (London, 2003), 18–19Google Scholar; Roberts, J.T., Athens on Trial (Princeton, 1994), 14Google Scholar; Sinclair, R.K., Democracy and Participation in Athens (Cambridge, 1988), 15CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the full range of meanings of dēmos in the classical period, see Hansen, M.H., ‘The concepts of demos, ekklesia, and dikasterion in classical Athens’, GRBS 50 (2010), 499–536Google Scholar. Ober, J., ‘The original meaning of “democracy”: the capacity to do things, not majority rule’, Constellations 15 (2008), 3–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Demopolis: Democracy before Liberalism in Theory and Practice (Cambridge, 2017), 18–33 reconsiders the meaning of κράτος; both here, implicitly, and explicitly in ‘The kratos in dēmokratia’ (paper presented at the American Political Science Association annual meeting, August 30, 2018) I defend an interpretation much closer to ‘majority rule’, though on different grounds from those that Ober rejects.

2 Particularly emphasized by Ober, J., ‘“I besieged that man”: democracy's revolutionary start’, in Raaflaub, K.A., Ober, J. and Wallace, R.W., Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece (Berkeley, 2007), 83–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wolin, S., ‘Norm and form: the constitutionalizing of democracy’, in Euben, J.P., Wallach, J.R. and Ober, J. (edd.), Athenian Political Thought and the Reconstruction of American Democracy (Ithaca NY, 1994), 29–58Google Scholar and ‘Transgression, equality, and voice’, in J. Ober and C. Hedrick (edd.), Dēmokratia (Princeton, NJ, 1996), 63–90.

3 Spelled out clearly by Harrison (n. 1), 3. Cf. Brown, W., Undoing the Demos (New York, 2015), 20Google Scholar.

4 Forrest, W.G., The Emergence of Greek Democracy (New York, 1966), 44Google Scholar. Cf. Farrar, C., The Origins of Democratic Thinking (Cambridge, 1988), 11, 104CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Arist. Pol. 1278b, 1290a30–b20; cf. Ps.-Xen. Ath. pol. 2.20; Pl. Resp. 565e.

6 Ober (n. 1 [2008]), 8.

7 Osborne, R., Athens and Athenian Democracy (Cambridge, 2010), 42Google Scholar. Cf. Cartledge (n. 1), 74; Donlan, W., ‘Changes and shifts in the meaning of demos in the literature of the archaic period’, PP 25 (1970), 381–95Google Scholar, at 381; Finley (n. 1), 12–13; Hansen (n. 1), 505–7; Harrison (n. 1), 3; Larsen (n. 1), 45; Ober (n. 1 [2008]), 3; Raaflaub (n. 1), 139; Rhodes (n. 1), 19; Roberts (n. 1), 14, 49; Sinclair (n. 1), 15; de Ste Croix, G.E.M., ‘The character of Athenian empire’, Historia 3 (1954), 1–41Google Scholar, at 22; Wood, E.M., ‘Demos versus “We, the People”’, in Ober, J. and Hedrick, C. (edd.), Dēmokratia (Princeton, NJ, 1996), 121–37Google Scholar, at 126–7. For a contemporary exploration of the same ambiguity with respect to ‘people’, see Agamben, G., Homo Sacer (Stanford, 2005), 176–9Google Scholar.

8 Roberts (n. 1), 49. Cf. Wood (n. 7), 127.

9 Hansen (n. 1), 505–7; Ober (n. 1 [2008]), 8.

10 I will argue below that, although dēmos certainly meant ‘assembly’, dēmos and ἐκκλησία were not in fact synonymous (as Hansen also now believes: see Hansen [n. 1], 507).

11 Hansen (n. 1), 510. ML 5.11, 14.1; RO 31.7, 41.3–4; Aeschin. 2.17; Dem. 18.248, 24.9.

12 See Ober's account of their arm-wrestling match at the 1986 meeting of the American Philological Association in Ober, J., The Athenian Revolution (Princeton, 1996), 107Google Scholar.

13 Ober (n. 12), 117–18.

14 Hansen (n. 1), 514. The same claim appears in Finley, M.I., Politics in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 1983), 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Larsen (n. 1), 45.

15 Aristotle's idea of ‘governing and being governed in turn’ (ἐν μέρει, ‘by parts’, Pol. 1261b4, 1317b2) comes close, but none the less differs from ruling continually over oneself.

16 Hansen, M.H., ‘The dependent polis: further considerations’, GRBS 55 (2015), 863–83Google Scholar; Ostwald, M., Autonomia (Oxford, 1982)Google Scholar.

17 Hansen, M.H. and Nielsen, T.H. (edd.), An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar, especially Appendix 12, 1341–2.

18 Transl. Cartledge (n. 1), 49–50. See also de Ste Croix (n. 7), 22–3.

19 An important exception is Donlan (n. 7). More generally, see Hammer, D., The Iliad as Politics (Norman, OK, 2002)Google Scholar; van Wees, H., Status Warriors (Amsterdam, 1992)Google Scholar; Werlings, M.-J., Le Dèmos avant la Démocratie (Paris, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Hansen, M.H., ‘The origin of the term demokratia’, LCM 11 (1986), 35–6Google Scholar. The earliest possible attestation is IG I3 37.48 (447/6?), in which the letters δ-ε-μ-ο are legible. After that, see Hdt. 6.43, 131; Ps.-Xen. Ath. pol. 1.4–8, 2.20, 3.1, 8–12; Ar. Ach. 618; Antiph. 6.45; DK 251. Note also Aesch. Supp. 604, 699, with Ehrenberg, V., ‘Origins of democracy’, Historia 1 (1950), 515–48Google Scholar (discussed on p. 55 below).

21 I defend this distinction between orators and dēmos in ‘Deliberation in ancient Greek assemblies’ (forthcoming, CPh). In brief, though it is often said that the dēmos (here conceived as encompassing orators and non-orators alike) ‘discussed’ political matters, our sources draw a significant distinction between orators, who addressed the dēmos (δημηγορέω) and advised (συμβουλεύω), and the dēmos which deliberated internally (βουλεύομαι). The very act of coming forward made an orator no longer simply one of the crowd. The fact that he later raised his hand to vote along with everyone else did not mitigate his difference from those who engaged in exclusively collective political action.

22 The dēmos was also implicitly distinct from those on the margins of political life: women, slaves, foreigners. But this article focusses on relations within the formal political community.

23 Cartledge, P., Democracy: A Life (Oxford, 2016), 1Google Scholar.

24 Hence a poor or middling man who became politically influential was no longer, by definition, a man of the dēmos, although he might become one again if his influence waned. The converse does not appear to have been true, however: a wealthy and socially important man who never took a leading political role was not reckoned a man of the dēmos, perhaps because it was assumed that his social status could always translate into political influence if he chose. Cf. Carter, L.B., The Quiet Athenian (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar.

25 Wolin (n. 2 [1994]); Ober (n. 2). Both draw on Arendt, H., The Human Condition (Chicago, 1958)Google Scholar and On Revolution (New York, 1963). The word da-mo actually appears earlier, in the Linear B tablets of the Mycenaean era. For a full catalogue, see Lejeune, M., ‘Le Δαμος dans la société mycénniene’, REG 78 (1965), 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Rancière, J., Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics (New York, 2010), 70Google Scholar.

27 Hobbes, T., On the Citizen, ed. and transl. Tuck, R. and Silverthorne, M. (Cambridge, 1998), 94Google Scholar. On Hobbes's use of ancient Greek democracy, see further Tuck, R., ‘Hobbes and democracy’, in Brett, A., Tully, J. and Hamilton-Bleakley, H. (edd.), Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge, 2006), 171–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 The singularity of dēmos is usually lost in English accounts. Even those who emphasize its corporate character tend to use the plural with ‘people’; e.g. Ober (n. 12), 34–5.

29 See Haubold, J., Homer's People: Epic Poetry and Social Formation (Cambridge, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 When δημόται does appear, it typically refers to the people of a smaller locality, not to members of the ‘national’ dēmos (e.g. Pind. Nem. 7.65; Hdt. 2.172). The δαμότας ἄνδρας mentioned at line 5 of the Spartan Rhetra (Tyrtaeus, fr. 4, a difficult text; discussed on p. 53 below) is an important exception.

31 The definite article thus seems better avoided in English, though it is usually included, as in, for example, A.T. Murray's Loeb translation; Nagy, G., Homeric Responses (Austin, TX, 2003), 74Google Scholar.

32 Cf. Hom. Il. 7.175, 24.1; Od. 2.252; Thgn. 53–60.

33 Aesch. Supp. 517–19, 601–4, 621–4, 942–3.

34 Hom. Il. 1.318, 1.384, 2.779, 10.336, 10.385.

35 Cf. Pyth. 1.87, Isthm. 1.11; Aesch. Eum. 668–9, 683.

36 Pind. Nem. 8.11, 9.18, 10.25, Isthm. 7.28, Ol. 9.96, 10.43, Pyth. 4.191, 6.11, 8.52, 10.8, 11.8; Aesch. Pers. 65–6, 91, 126, 241, 255, Sept. 79, Ag. 638.

37 See further Benveniste, E., Indo-European Language and Society, transl. Palmer, E. (London, 1973), 371–2Google Scholar.

38 Hom. Hymn Dem. (2) 490, Hom. Hymn Ap. (3) 30, 468, Hom. Hymn Art. (27) 13; Hes. Theog. 477, 970, Op. 527; Pind. Ol. 3.16; Aesch. Sept. 46–8.

39 Hom. Il. 3.202; cf. 12.447–8, 16.427, 20.383, 24.481; Od. 4.243, 4.530, 4.610, 4.616, 4.691, 6.282, 8.210, 17.525, 23.11.

40 Hom. Il. 24.21, 37, 658, 665, 712–15, 739, 776, 789.

41 Hom. Od. 2.101, 6.274, 16.75, 19.146, 24.136; cf. 1.359, 21.333.

42 Aesch. Supp. 6–7, 612–14, 942–3, 957, Ag. 129, 456, 1615, Sept. 199; Soph. Ant. 36. See further Carter, D.M., ‘The demos in Greek tragedy’, CCJ 55 (2010), 47–94Google Scholar, at 73–83.

43 Pind. Ol. 5.20, 8.86, Pyth. 1.32. Cf. Hom. Hymn 13.3.

44 Tyrtaeus, Rhetra (see below). Contrast, however, Pind. Ol. 3.16.

45 Pind. Ol. 4.16, 5.10; cf. Dem. 19.254–6; Thgn. 757–64, 773–88; Hes. [Sc.] 105; Aesch. Sept. 130 and cf. 108, 136, 174–9.

46 Hom. Hymn Dem. (2) 93, Hom. Hymn Ap. (3) 175, 278, Hom. Hymn Aphr. (5) 20; Hes. [Sc.] 270. Cf. Thgn. 757–64; Pind. Isthm. 6.65.

47 Hom. Il. 1.19, 4.290, 8.523, 9.328, 15.77, 15.740, 16.830, Od. 9.263; Pind. Isth. 5.36.

48 Pind. Nem. 5.47, Ol. 2.7, 2.92, 5.4, 9.21.

49 Pind. Ol. 7.94.

50 Pind. Ol. 10; Hes. [Sc.] 380; Hansen and Nielsen (n. 17), 31.

51 Hom. Il. 13.815, 15.558, 16.69. Cf. Stob. Ecl. 4.10.1.23, quoting Tyrtaeus.

52 See Thuc. 2.15.3.

53 Hom. Il. 2.29, 5.642, 6.86–8, 6.327, 13.492, 13.625, 15.738, 18.255, 20.52, 21.295; Hes. [Sc.] 270; Hom. Hymn Dem. 2.271; Thgn. 773–88.

54 Thgn. 39–52, 855. Cf. Pind. Nem. 10.23, Ol. 3.16.

55 Hom. Il. 3.49, 24.706, 24.527; cf. Od. 14.43.

56 Hom. Od. 6.3, 11.14; Hes. Op. 527.

57 Hom. Od. 6.177–8, 6.191, 6.195, 7.26, 10.39, 13.233; Hom. Hymn Ap. (3) 468; Thgn. 1211–16.

58 Hom. Il. 2.275, 10.301, 14.144, 18.295, 22.457, Od. 4.63, 7.136, 8.7, 8.26, 13.186. Cf. Od. 6.300, 15.534; Dem. 19.254–6; [Arist.] Ath. pol. 11–12; Diod. Sic. 9.20; Thgn. 39–52, 233–4.

59 Hom. Il. 10.32–3, 11.58, 13.218, 16.605, Od. 7.11.

60 Hom. Il. 8.472, Od. 13.28, 16.375, 22.132. An exception is Il. 5.76–8.

61 Hom. Od. 7.150, Il. 12.210.

62 Hes. Op. 255; Thgn. 849; [Arist.] Ath. pol. 12.5.

63 E.g. Thuc. 4.46, 6.54; Ar. Thesm. 301; Aeschin. 1.25, 1.85.

64 E.g. IG I3 105.

65 Hom. Hymn Dem. 2.149–53, transl. West.

66 On the text, see Wade-Gery, H.T., ‘The Spartan rhetra in Plutarch Lycurgus VI’, CQ 37 (1943), 62–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 38 (1944), 1–9, 115–26; Ogden, D., ‘Crooked speech: the genesis of the Spartan rhetra’, JHS 114 (1994), 85–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 E.g. Hom. Il. 11.304, 15.295, 20.377, 22.458.

68 Hom. Il. 11.328, 12.210, 16.575, Od. 8.35, 8.258–9.

69 Hom. Il. 1.53. Cf. Il. 1.490, 2.50–2, 2.95, 9.10, 12.210, 18.496, 19.34, 19.42; Od. 1.372, 2.7, 3.127, 6.265, 7.44, 8.5, 8.16, 10.114, 16.360, 16.375, 24.412–25; Hom. Hymn Dem. (2) 296–300; Hes. Theog. 88–92; Thgn. 430; Soph. Trach. 639; Eur. El. 708.

70 Hom. Il. 8.489; cf. Il. 1.305, 24.1, Od. 2.67, 2.257. Cf. Od. 1.90, 2.26; Hes. Op. 29.

71 Mill, J.S., ‘Grote's History of Greece (II)’, Edinburgh Review 98 (October 1853), 425–47Google Scholar.

72 Hansen (n. 1), 507.

73 Ar. Ach. 19, 169; cf. Ach. 746–51, Thesm. 84, 301, 329, 375, Vesp. 31, Eccl. 20, 84, Av. 1027; Thuc. 6.8, 6.9.

74 Ar. Eq. 76. Cf. Eccl. 249, Pax 667, 931; Aeschin. 1.26, 1.178, 1.180.

75 Hansen (n. 1), 507 says that ekklēsia never denotes the assembly as an acting subject in Athenian speeches and inscriptions, only in Plato and Aristotle (e.g. Alc. 1.114b, Pol. 1282a29). The usage is however found in ML 5, a fourth-century reproduction of what purports to be a seventh-century inscription on the founding of Cyrene; cf. Graham, A.J., ‘The authenticity of the ὅρκιον τῶν οἰκιστήρων of Cyrene’, JHS 80 (1960), 94–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 104–5.

76 CAAP 175.

77 ML 4, 8, 14. Cf. Aesch. Sept. 1011.

78 IVO 7, discussed by E. Robinson, The First Democracies (Stuttgart, 1997), 108–9. An Athenian parallel is IG I3 105 (c.409), which seemingly quotes from a much earlier text of the bouleutic oath.

79 Hansen, M.H., ‘Demos, ecclesia and dicasterion in classical Athens’, GRBS 19 (1978), 130–1Google Scholar provides what he describes as a conservative catalogue of c.300 examples. I suspect there are many more.

80 Ehrenberg (n. 20), 522.

81 Though see West, M., ‘King and dēmos in Aeschylus’, in Cairns, D. and Liapis, V. (edd.), Dionysalexandros: Essays on Aeschylus and his Fellow Tragedians in Honour of Alexander F. Garvie (Swansea, 2006), 31–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 35–6.

82 Ober (n. 12), 38.

83 Ober (n. 12), 43–4.

84 Ar. Eq. 211–15, Nub. 1093, Vesp. 31, Lys. 514, Eccl. 399.

85 Soph. Ant. 155–61; Aesch. Supp. 517–19.

86 Hansen (n. 1), 502–3.

87 Ar. Eccl. 453; Thuc 1.107, 5.76, 8.64–5; Aeschin. 1.173, 1.191; Arist. Pol. 1304a27, 1304b30–4, 1307b24; IG II3 1.320. Cf. Vlastos, G., ‘Isonomia’, AJPh 74 (1953), 337–66Google Scholar, at 337–8; Hansen (n. 1), 504.

88 In fourth-century Athens this was tempered by the political powers of the popular courts: see Hansen, M.H., The Sovereignty of the People's Court in Athens (Odense, 1974)Google Scholar. For an argument that Athens’ popular courts could in the fourth century be regarded as even more favourable to the common people than the assembly, see D. Cammack, ‘The democratic significance of the classical Athenian courts’, in W. O'Reilly (ed.), Decline: Decay, Decadence and Decline in History and Society (Central European University Press, forthcoming).

89 Hansen ([n. 1], 502–3) adds IG II2 26.8–9 (394–387) with IG I3 110.6–9 (408/7), and IG II2 97.6–8 with 116.27–8 (375/4). It seems possible, however, that in many cases the intended referent may actually have been the assembly.

90 See e.g. Sommerstein, A.H., ‘The theatre audience, the demos, and the suppliants of Aeschylus’, in Pelling, C. (ed.), Greek Tragedy and the Historian (Oxford, 1997), 63–79Google Scholar.

91 Cf. Podlecki, A.J., ‘Κατ’ ἀρχῆς γὰρ φιλαίτιος λεώς: the concept of leadership in Aeschylus’, in Sommerstein, A.H. et al. (edd.), Tragedy, Comedy and the Polis (Bari, 1993), 55–79Google Scholar, at 72: ‘Aeschylus appears to have gone out of his way to emphasize inconsistencies in [Pelasgus’] position as ruler of his city.’

92 See further Landauer, M., ‘The idiōtēs and the tyrant: two faces of unaccountability in democratic Athens’, Political Theory 42 (2014), 139–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hoekstra, K., ‘Athenian democracy and popular tyranny’, in Bourke, R. and Skinner, Q. (edd.), Popular Sovereignty in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, 2016), 15–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

93 Finley, M.I., World of Odysseus (rev. ed.; New York, 1978), 53Google Scholar; cf. 107.

94 Larsen (n. 1), 45.

95 Alternative candidates are isonomia and isēgoria. See Ehrenberg (n. 20); Ostwald, M., Nomos and the Beginning of Athenian Democracy (Oxford, 1969), 97–121Google Scholar; Vlastos (n. 87).

96 Raaflaub, K.A., ‘Introduction’, in Raaflaub, K.A., Ober, J. and Wallace, R.W., Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece (Berkeley, 2007), 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ruschenbusch, E., ‘Zur Verfassungsgeschichte Griechenlands’, in Kinzl, K. (ed.), Demokratia (Darmstadt, 1995), 432–45Google Scholar.

97 Wolin (n. 2 [1994]); Ober (n. 2).