Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece

257 Pages·2007·0.91 MB·English

by  Kurt A. Raaflaub

The Joan Palevsky Imprint in Classical Literature
In honor of beloved Virgil—
“O degli altri poeti onore e lume . . .”
—Dante,Inferno
The publisher gratefully acknowledges
the generous contributions to this book provided by the following:
The Grimshaw-Gudewicz Fund of the Department of Classics,
the Royce Family Fund in Teaching Excellence,
and the Program in Ancient Studies at Brown University
The Magie Fund of the Department of Classics at Princeton University
The Classical Literature Endowment Fund
of the University of California Press Foundation,
which is supported by a major gift from Joan Palevsky
Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece

Origins of Democracy
in Ancient Greece
Kurt A. Raaflaub, Josiah Ober,
and Robert W. Wallace
With chapters by
Paul Cartledge and Cynthia Farrar
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley Los Angeles London
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University of California Press
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University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2007 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Raaflaub, Kurt A.
Origins of democracy in ancient Greece / Kurt A. Raaflaub,
Josiah Ober, and Robert W. Wallace ; with chapters by Paul Cartledge
and Cynthia Farrar.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13, 978-0-520-24562-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-100-520-24562-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Democracy—Greece.—History—To 1500. 2. Greece—
Politics and government—To 146 B.C. 3. Democracy—Greece—
Athens—History—To 1500. 4. Athens (Greece)—Politics and
government. I. Ober, Josiah. II. Wallace, Robert W., 1950–
III.Title.
JC75.D36R33 2007
320.938'5-dc22 2006026246
Manufactured in the United States of America
16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on Natures Book, which contains 50%
post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of
ansi/nisoz39.48–1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper).
CONTENTS
About the Authors / vii
Chronology of Events / ix
List of Abbreviations / xi
1. Introduction / 1
Kurt A. Raaflaub
2. “People’s Power” and Egalitarian Trends in Archaic Greece / 22
Kurt A. Raaflaub and Robert W. Wallace
3. Revolutions and a New Order in Solonian Athens
and Archaic Greece / 49
Robert W. Wallace
4. “I Besieged That Man”: Democracy’s Revolutionary Start / 83
Josiah Ober
5. The Breakthrough of Demokratiain Mid-Fifth-Century Athens / 105
Kurt A. Raaflaub
6. Democracy, Origins of: Contribution to a Debate / 155
Paul Cartledge
7. Power to the People / 170
Cynthia Farrar
Bibliography / 197
Index of primary sources / 225
general Index / 233

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Paul Cartledgereceived his DPhil from Oxford in 1975. He is currently Pro-
fessor of Greek History in the Faculty of Classics and Professorial Fellow of
Clare College, University of Cambridge. His main interests are Greek social,
political, and cultural history, Sparta’s history through the ages, and the
continuing signiWcance of ancient history in our own time. He has edited or
coedited several volumes, including The Cambridge Illustrated History of Greece
(1998) and Money, Labour, and Land: Approaches to the Economies of Ancient
Greece (2002), and recently published Spartan Reflections(2001); The Greeks:
A Portrait of Self and Others,second edition (2002); The Spartans, second edi-
tion (2003); Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past, revised edition
(2005); and Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World (2006). He is cur-
rently writing a specialist history of Greek political thought from Homer to
Plutarch.
Cynthia Farrarreceived her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1984.
She currently directs a project on deliberation and local governance at Yale
University’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS) and teaches in
the Department of Political Science. She explores and pursues strategies for
energizing citizenship, particularly at the local level. Among other projects,
she coordinates the Citizen Deliberations for MacNeil/Lehrer Productions’
national By the Peopleinitiative. She is the author of The Origins of Democratic
Thinking: The Invention of Politics in Classical Athens (1988) and articles on
deliberative democracy.
Josiah Oberreceived his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1980. He is
Mitsotakis Professor of Political Science and Classics at Stanford University.
He works primarily within and between the areas of Athenian history, clas-
sical political philosophy, and democratic theory and practice. His current
vii