Denn eben, wo Begriffe fehlen,
Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein.
—Mephistopheles, in Goethe, Faust I, 1995–96
It has become apparent in the previous two chapters that the Athenians were concerned to achieve the rule of law (a modern phrase, which will require attention in chapter 7). To this end they codified their laws (chapter 3) and they instituted courts which were independent of other public organs (chapter 4). Yet many historians nowadays have been attracted to the study of the Athenian constitution, not because it displays the rule of law, but for a different reason. They have been fascinated by the development and working of democracy in Athens. It would surely not be unfair to say that the theme of democracy is the reason why they consider Athenian constitutional history worthy of study.1
This fascination with Athens as the paradigm of democracy can be explained in part, but only in part, by the literary sources extant. Dēmokratia and words related to it by similarity or contrast occur with some frequency in the writings of Thucydides and Pseudo-Xenophon and in the political works of Aristotle. They are far less frequent in the preserved speeches of the Athenian orators. Those speeches are the best source of information for the way Athenian institutions worked. The people who made the institutions work in the assembly and the courts were not so obsessively concerned with dēmokratia as Aristotle, or from a different point of view Thucydides, or many modern historians. It would perhaps not be fanciful to say that the twentieth-century focus on democracy in Athens reflects a twentieth-century outlook. To recognize an outlook which has been taken for granted is the first step toward transcending it. Hence the task of the present chapter. Section I will offer comparative considerations about modern democracy and Athenian dēmokratia Section II will review the early history of the word dēmokratia, and section III will consider the force which it had in the fourth century.
Democracy is not an object whose presence or absence can be recognized readily by observation. Questions about the nature of democracy in Athens, about its origin and development, are markedly different from such questions as “Were there olive trees in ancient Athens?” and “When did silver currency come to be adopted by the Athenians?” Each of the latter two questions can in principle be answered on the basis of extant evidence which rests, at however many removes, on empirical observation. The question about the beginning of Athenian coinage has led to different answers, but there is no doubt about the meaning of the question. If one asks an apparently similar question about Athenian democracy, if, for example, one asks, “When did Athenian democracy come into being?”, there is room for difference of opinion, not only about the interpretation of the evidence, but also about the meaning of the question. A question about the beginning of Athenian democracy is markedly different from a question about the beginning of Athenian silver coinage.
Some historians have spoken of democracy in a Greek context as if their readers knew without explanation what they meant.2 Others have offered a definition so vague as to have little value, for example, “The Greek word demokratia is the name of a form of government—government by the people.”3 Such a statement needs to be supported with an account of those institutions which, in the writer’s opinion, do and those which do not amount to “government by the people,” and the account of institutions must in turn be supplemented with a study of the Greek usage of the word dēmokratia, to show whether that usage conformed to the chosen set of institutions. Others have made decision by the vote of a majority in a primary assembly the criterion of democracy.4 Yet others have been more cautious. They have recognized that cities which contemporaries called oligarchiai had a primary assembly, which took decisions by the vote of a majority. They have suggested that a property qualification for voting in the assembly constitutes the essential difference.5
The validity of such views can only be determined by looking into the history of the word dēmokratia. In this section three preliminary points will be made. The first can be stated in the following dictum, in which each phrase will require explanatory comment:
As far as is known, in the classical period every Greek city had a primary assembly, which took final decisions on questions of policy by vote of a majority.
Comments:
1. “As far as is known.” Notoriously more is known about Athens than about any other city. The Spartans too had a primary assembly, for which the word given in a document preserved by Thucydides (5.77.1) is ekklēsia Elsewhere the word may have varied; in some places it was aliaia and in others alia (page 163 below, notes 23, 24). These words are widely attested, and so the limits within which the occurrence of a primary assembly is known are broad. There is no evidence against saying that every city had a primary assembly.
2. “In the classical period.” Consideration of the archaic development leading to the primary assembly of the classical period can mostly be postponed to chapter 6. But it should be borne in mind that primary assemblies occur in the Iliad and the Odyssey.6 In the poems no vote is taken. In them sometimes at least the assembly gathers to hear the order which its commanding officer will issue. A line of development can be reconstructed from this condition to the voting assembly of the later Greek state.
3. “Every Greek city.” Federations were not cities, and probably some federations entrusted final decision to a council, which consisted of deputies drawn from the constituent parts of the federation. This is true of the Boiotian federation of 447–386 and may be conjectured of some others.7
4. “A primary assembly.” In some states membership in the assembly may have been restricted by a property qualification. This effect was achieved in Sparta by the requirement of monthly dues to the syssitia. In Athens Antipater imposed a property qualification in 322 (page 6 above). Even where there was a property qualification, the primary assembly was markedly different in size and composition from a mere council. In size the Athenian assembly had a potential membership of about 9,000 even under the restriction imposed by Antipater, and the Spartan assembly in the fifth century was a mass meeting of several thousand, as far as can be discerned, in spite of the protracted decline of the citizen-population.8 In composition, even where there was a property qualification, participation in the primary assembly was not limited to people selected by any procedure of election or sortition, and it was not restricted by any requirement of an oath. A citizen who met the property qualification could take part in the assembly in virtue of his quality as a citizen; he did not need anything additional, such as might qualify him to serve as councillor, officer, or dikastēs.
5. “Which took final decisions on questions of policy.” Decisions on policy must be distinguished from decisions on measures proposed as new laws. As has been seen (pages 41–45 above), in Athens in the fourth century the assembly took part in the procedure for making new laws, but it did not take final decisions on proposed new laws. One can only conjecture whether other cities had a procedure for making nomoi distinct from the procedure for making psēphismata The habit in many cities of attributing the laws to an early lawgiver suggests that they, like the Athenians, had a static concept of law. So it is not improbable that they, like the Athenians, institutionalized their concept of law by putting impediments in the way of changing the laws.
With these explanations in mind one may return to the dictum stated above. Is it true that, in the sense defined by that dictum, every Greek city was governed by a primary assembly? Some illustrations and putative exceptions call for note. Historians have sometimes called Corinth an oligarchy but have not said what they mean by that classification. A corrupt excerpt from Nikolaos of Damascus has been interpreted to mean that a council of eighty members was created on the overthrow of the Kypselidai. The interpretation is likely.9 The creation of a council of eighty in the sixth century does not exclude the existence of a primary assembly in the fifth and fourth centuries or even in the sixth. There is no direct information about the Corinthian constitution in the fifth and fourth centuries. Therefore, importance attaches to a remark made by Demosthenes (20.52–53) about the condition in 394. After the battle of Nemea those in the city planned to exclude the fugitive troops, who included Athenians, from the city wall and open negotiations with Sparta, but a minority opened the gates “against the will of the many” to the fugitives. If the will of the many could thus be recognized and circumvented, there was probably an organ, a primary assembly, in which that will had been expressed.
The question of the role of the primary assembly in Sparta is almost clear. Indeed it is wholly clear, as long as one restricts attention to the best evidence. Thucydides and Xenophon tell of decisions taken by Sparta on important issues in their own time. On each occasion the historians report deliberation and decision in the assembly of Spartan citizens, and they leave the reader to believe that the decision was final.10 Doubt of the final authority of the assembly has arisen because of the last and allegedly added clause of the rhetra reproduced by Plutarch in the Life of Lykourgos 6. The main part of the rhetra provides that measures are to be prepared in the council and presented to the assembly for final decision. But the added clause seems to say that under some circumstances the council, together with the kings, could invalidate a decision taken by the assembly.11 There is uncertainty about the interpretation of this clause, about its authenticity, and about that of the rhetra. It remains true that classical Spartan practice, as attested in the best evidence, conforms to the dictum under discussion.
A relatively clear exception to that dictum is furnished by the rule of the Thirty at Athens in 404/3. Even they came somewhat near to creating a primary assembly, on however restricted a basis, when they drew up a list of 3,000 men who were to enjoy full privileges. It is not clear what privileges were at first reserved to the 3,000. After a time the Thirty disarmed all who did not appear on the list. When Theramenes was about to be tried, Kritias cited a law whereby only members of the 3,000 were entitled to trial before the council of five hundred. Shortly after the execution of Theramenes the Thirty excluded from the city all who were not on the list of the 3,000. After Thrasyboulos and his followers had seized Phyle, the Thirty led the 3,000 as an armed force and some cavalry against him.12
The 3,000 are not known to have functioned as a political assembly. The rule of the Thirty was arbitrary. In modern terms they were a junta; the fifth-century word was dynasteia.13 Even a junta, if it succeeds in maintaining itself, tends to develop habits, which from another point of view are customs. A junta needed some means of making its decisions known for its subjects to act on. Lacking radio, ancient rulers often summoned their subjects to a public place for the purpose of imparting orders to them. Moreover, the Thirty restricted the bearing of arms to the 3,000 and led them into action against Thrasyboulos toward Phyle. In Greek cities a gathering of armed men for military action could easily develop into a political assembly.
Enough has been said to defend the dictum under consideration about the rule of the assembly in the Greek city. Rule by the assembly, in the sense defined, does not characterize only some Greek cities, to be called on that account dēmokratiai It characterizes all Greek cities. The only exception is irregular and arbitrary regimes, such as the rule of the Thirty, and these did not last; either they were overthrown or, if they survived, they developed into more regular governments and they tended to spawn primary assemblies on the way. If anyone wishes to maintain that the constitutional development of Athens was distinctive among Greek cities because it achieved dēmokratia, then by dēmokratia he must mean something other than the rule of the assembly of citizens.
The other preliminary points to be noted here can be treated more briefly. The first concerns differences between ancient and modern meanings. As noted above, some present-day historians have spoken of “democracy” in Athens as if the meaning were known and as if the word meant the same thing both in ancient and in modern contexts. It is not possible at this point in the present inquiry to say whether “democracy” in modern English means the same as dēmokratia in Attic Greek. Before saying that one would have to discover what each word means. Although something will be said below about the meaning of dēmokratia, it would not be profitable to ask what the English word “democracy” means. It scarcely needs to be shown that the English word is used to mean many different things, often in a tendentious manner; the only secure generalization is that any foreign government supported by the United States will be declared by some journalist to be “undemocratic.”
It would accordingly be nugatory to say that ancient democracy differed from modern democracy. On the other hand, it is informative to note that some ancient republics differed from modern republics in a manner pertinent to understanding their forms of government. A modern republic has a legislature and the tasks of the legislature include making laws. But as argued in chapter 3, the Athenians did not regard the laws as things to be made from time to time by a competent authority. They thought that the laws were already there. When challenged to say where the laws came from, they told of an ancient lawgiver. In the fourth century they admitted that the laws might sometimes need to be amended, but they insisted that this should only be done in a reluctant and circumspect manner. If modern democracy, whatever it may be, is characterized by a habit of making laws, it differs in its concept of law from the ancient Athenians.
This consideration about the nature of law has a bearing on the remaining preliminary point. That concerns the tradition of Greek political theory. Theorizing about forms of government is first attested in a remark of Pindar: “In every constitution the straight-tongued man excels, in a tyranny, and when a city is ruled by the turbulent army, and when it is ruled by the wise.”14 The distinction is strictly numerical, between the rule of one man, the rule of the many, and the rule of the few. Since Pindar’s language is allusive, he presupposed the distinction as already known. The numerical distinction was later presented more fully by Herodotos in the Persian debate on forms of government (3.80–83), by Plato (notably at Politikos 291c–303c) and by Aristotle (notably at Ethics 8.1160a31–1160b22). This distinction was the framework in which Greek political theory developed, although ideas of greater refinement were grafted on to it.
The tradition of theory which developed in this framework is for two reasons inadequate for the study of Athens. First, this tradition overlooked the Athenian concept of law. Theorists of this tradition started from the question, who is master in the city?15 They classified authority as exercised by one man, by a few, or by many. They inquired into the means whereby the master, belonging to any of these three kinds, maintains and exercises power. The Athenians on the other hand recognized the ultimate authority of the laws. The assembly could take final decisions on policy by vote of a majority, but the assembly was only authorized to exercise authority within the limits set by the laws, and if the assembly overstepped those limits, the courts provided a remedy through the graphē paranomōn It is perhaps not surprising that in composing his treatise on the Constitution of the Athenians Aristotle overlooked the revision of the laws, carried out in 403–399, and the legislative procedure of nomothesia current in his own day. Those features could not be accommodated within his framework for understanding the Athenian constitution.
Second, the tradition of political theory could not account for the judicial power as it had developed in Athens. As shown in chapter 4, the 6,000 dikastai were a body instituted to exercise judicial power and they were independent of all other Athenian organs. They did not exercise authority deputed to them by another body, for example, by the demos. Consequently, Athenian orators use the term dēmos as equivalent to the assembly (ekklēsia), but they keep it distinct from the courts (dikastēria) and their judges (dikastai).16 Limited by his preoccupation with a master in the constitution, Aristotle was unable to recognize the independence of the judiciary in Athens. Instead he assumed (notably at AP 9.1) that the courts were an organ of the demos. Greek political theorists were preoccupied with assumptions which prevented them from grasping the nature of the Athenian constitution. An inquiry into the way the Athenians managed their affairs and above all into the way in which they thought about managing their affairs should start, not from the ideas propounded by theorists, but from Athenian thought and behavior as reflected by Greek historians and especially by Athenian orators.17
The word dēmokratia and words related to it by similarity or contrast are only a small part of Athenian public life, but scrutiny of them must rely on utterances of historians and orators. By the time of Thucydides and of Pseudo-Xenophon political utterance balanced dēmokratia and oligarchia as contrasting terms.18 Whatever the connotative meaning, oligarchia clung by denotation to Lakedaimon.19 Dēmokratia clung by denotation to Athens. In the Thucydidean funeral speech (2.37.1) Perikles says that the Athenian constitution is called in name dēmokratia The use of the word by a pleader in court in 419/18 is, if possible, even more telling. He says that as a member of the council of five hundred he offered sacrifice and prayers “on behalf of this city” and as a member of the first prytany of the year he offered sacrifice “on behalf of the dēmokratia”.20 The latter passage shows that as early as 419/18 the word dēmokratia could be used as a colorless designation for the current condition of the Athenians.
In other early occurrences the word is not colorless. Herodotos (3.80–83) gives an account of a supposed debate between three Persian grandees on forms of government. One of them, Otanes, argues against setting up a mounarchos and urges instead that they should bring about the rule of the multitude (plēthos). Herodotos elsewhere (6.43.3) refers to the proposal of Otanes as a proposal for dēmokratia The other two grandees, Megabyxos (3.81.2–3) and Dareios (3.82.1 and 4–5), utter the word dēmos to characterize the proposal of Otanes. But Otanes himself does not use dēmokratia or dēmos of his proposal. On the contrary he says (3.80.6): “The rule of the multitude has in the first place the most beautiful name of all, isonomia.” He proceeds to contrast that condition with the arbitrary behavior of a tyrant.
Toward understanding the choice of words by Otanes one must pursue isonomia and Herodotean usage of dēmokratia a little further. Previous studies have shown that isonomia is “not a name for a form of government but for the principle of political equality.”21 The force of the word is clearly apparent in the drinking song in honor of the tyrannicides. Harmodios and Aristogeiton killed the tyrant Hipparchos and made Athens isonomoi.22 Isonomia contrasts with dynasteia.23 Herodotos (3.142.3) makes Maiandrios tell the assembled Samians that he disapproves of the rule of one man and that accordingly he is giving up his own rule and proclaiming isonomia In the same sense Herodotos (5.37.2) tells of the first action taken by Aristagoras of Miletos, when he launched the Ionian Revolt: “In the first place in name he gave up his tyranny and created isonomia for Miletos.” Someone less devoted to isonomia, a tyrant for example, might prefer a less attractive word. At the Danube Histiaios persuaded his fellow-tyrants to resist the blandishments of the Skythians and preserve the bridge for Dareios. He argued that the tyrants owed their rule to Dareios and would be overthrown if the power of Dareios collapsed; “for, he said, each of the cities would rather have dēmokratia than tyranny” (4.137.2). In the same sense Herodotos (6.43.3) says that in 493 Mardonios overthrew the tyrants of the Ionians and set up dēmokratiai in the cities.
In the last two passages considered (4.137.2; 6.43.3) dēmokratia occurs where isonomia could be expected; that is, dēmokratia is employed to point the contrast with the arbitrary rule of a tyrant. But this does not mean that isonomia is any more akin to dēmokratia than to oligarchia On the contrary, isonomos can be predicated of an oligarchia, provided that it is not a dynasteia,24 Isonomia contrasts with arbitrary rule, whatever the formal nature of the contrasting regime. The word isonomia may well have been coined in sixth-century struggles against tyranny. It approximates to the modern notion of “the rule of law,” or the Rechtsstaat.
To return to Otanes. When he said that the rule of the multitude had the beautiful name of isonomia, he was, from a formal point of view, tendentious. Isonomia was no more peculiar to the rule of the multitude than to other regimes, provided that they respected the law. Yet to find that the champion of a political cause expresses himself tendentiously is no great discovery. It is, however, apposite to note the word which Otanes avoids. He does not call the thing advocated dēmokratia. Evidently in the language of Herodotos the word dēmokratia does not have the implications of approval or commendation inherent in the modern word “democracy.” It need cause no surprise to note that dēmokratia is used by someone who dislikes the condition so designated, as when Histiaios the tyrant (4.137.2) uses dēmokratia of the alternative to tyranny.
It must, however, be recognized that in the pages of Herodotos the word dēmokratia is not strongly pejorative. Herodotos as narrator employs it as a relatively neutral term. He uses it (6.43.3) for the regimes set up by Mardonios on overthrowing tyrannies in Ionia. When he wants to refer to Kleisthenes of Athens and remind the audience of the latter’s identity, he calls him “Kleisthenes, the man who established the phylai and the dēmokratia for the Athenians.”25 Even so, when he wishes to commend the condition brought about by Kleisthenes, he prefers a beautiful word. As he maintains (5.78), the military achievements of Kleisthenic Athens show that isēgoriē is good.26
The history of Herodotos is the earliest extant work in which the word dēmokratia occurs. In his usage dēmokratia is a critic’s term, uttered by someone who finds fault with the thing designated as dēmokratia It is also a narrator’s term, employed by Herodotos in a relatively neutral way. But it is not an advocate’s term. When such a man as Otanes advocates a condition which others call dēmokratia, he prefers a beautiful word for it. In the Persian debate the word oligarchia behaves in a similar way. Dareios (3.82.3 and 5), criticizing the proposal of Megabyxos, calls it a proposal for oligarchia, and Herodotos as narrator (3.81.1) calls it a proposal for oligarchia. But Megabyxos avoids the word oligarchia and says (3.81.3): “Let us select a company of the best men and entrust them with control.” By drawing together “the best” (aristoi) and “control” (kratos) Megabyxos almost says aristokratia.
In the pages of Thucydides dēmokratia and oligarchia behave in a similar way. In an important observation (3.82.8) the historian says that in the internal conflicts exacerbated by the Peloponnesian War the watchwords used by the two sides in conflict degenerated into empty slogans, as each side tried ruthlessly to overcome the other. The watchwords which Thucydides names are not dēmokratia and oligarchia but isonomia politikē of the multitude (plēthos) and aristokratia sōphrōn. A passage reporting an early stage in the revolution of 411 confirms the conclusion that people advocating something which the narrator might call oligarchia did not call it that. When Peisandros came from Samos, the plan which he presented to the assembly is summarized in the terms “that they could have the king as their ally and overcome the Peloponnesians, if they recalled Alkibiades and did not conduct their dēmokratia in the same way” (ϰαὶ μὴ τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον δημοϰρατουμένοις, 8.53.1). Continuing the report of the same meeting, Thucydides quotes Peisandros as saying that the Athenians could only win the support of the king “if we conduct our affairs in a more sōphrōn manner and restrict offices more to a few (oligoi), so that the king will trust us, and if at present we do not take more thought for the constitution than about survival (for we can carry out a reversal later, if we find something unsatisfactory), and if we recall Alkibiades, who alone among men now available is capable of accomplishing this” (8.53.3). Introducing the outcome of the debate, Thucydides says that at first the demos was displeased on hearing the proposal for oligarchia (8.54.1). Thus oligarchia is employed as the narrator’s term, but Peisandros avoids it in proposing what the narrator calls oligarchia. He comes moderately close to it in saying that offices should be restricted to a few, but his preferred phrase urges the Athenians not to conduct their dēmokratia in the same way.27
As will be remembered, at 3.82.8 Thucydides named not dēmokratia but “isonomia politikē of the multitude” as the watchword of the other side. The deprecatory force of dēmokratia is illustrate by a remark of Perikles in the funeral speech. He says (2.37.1):
We enjoy a constitution which does not envy the laws of its neighbors. On the contrary we provide them more with a model than we imitate them. Admittedly, since our constitution is administered not for a few but for the majority, it is called dēmokratia Nevertheless as regards the laws everyone gets equal treatment in private disputes, and as regards public esteem, in so far as each has a claim to recognition, he is not honored for the most part because of his class-affiliation but because of his merits, and on the other hand in a case of poverty, if a man can do the state some service, he is not debarred by obscurity.
This translation employs “admittedly,” “nevertheless,” and “as regards” in an attempt to reproduce the force of the repeated particles men and de. Those particles are crucial for understanding the passage. Once their force is recognized, it becomes clear that Perikles cannot disclaim the name dēmokratia for the Athenian constitution, to which it had stuck, but he insists that the constitution has great merits in spite of its name.28
The word dēmokratia, first attested in the writings of Herodotos, was doubtless coined about the middle of the fifth century. Its behavior in the fifth century reveals complexity of meaning. It could serve as an apparently acceptable name for the Athenian constitution; this usage is illustrated most clearly by the pleader who said in 419/18 that previously as councillor he had offered sacrifice “on behalf of the dēmokratia” (page 98 above). Yet the same word also carried powerful overtones, sometimes of acceptance, as when Peisandros employed it as a euphemism for his proposal of oligarchia, but often of deprecation. The complex implications of the word dēmokratia in its early history cannot be recovered in full, but they should not be neglected, as they are by those who assume that dēmokratia was nothing but a neutral term for a defined form of government. It should not be doubted that the value of the word in political discourse derived from its complexity. That complexity had developed in lost chapters of the political history of the fifth century. It also sprang in part from the earlier history of the word dēmos, for that too reveals ambiguity. In Homeric and archaic verse dēmos is often a neutral term for the whole community, but sometimes it has pejorative force.29
The preceding section argued against the view that dēmokratia and oligarchia, as first employed, were empirically descriptive terms for forms of government. It is equally false to suppose that their meanings remained constant as time passed. On the contrary, one can trace changes in the meaning of dēmokratia and to some extent of oligarchia after the age illustrated by the history of Thucydides. The changes are on balance in the direction of greater simplicity and they may reveal a notion which was of major concern to the Athenian political mind.
In 410/9 the Athenians passed a decree in terms which Demophantos had been commissioned to draft. It opened with the provision:
If anyone overthrows the dēmokratia at Athens or holds an office after the dēmokratia has been overthrown, let him be an enemy of the Athenians and let him be killed with impunity and his property confiscated with a tenth assigned to the goddess.30
Much of the text of the decree consists of an oath whereby all Athenians are to pledge themselves to uphold this provision. The decree suffers from a defect not uncommon in Athenian legislation;31 the crucial term, in this case dēmokratia, is not defined but taken for granted. The text does not say which of the current institutions are crucial to the constitution, in other words, what changes would amount to overthrow of the dēmokratia.
When the rule of the Thirty was brought to an end in 403, the word dēmokratia appears again in legislation as the designation for the traditional constitution. In or soon after 403/2, on the proposal of Theozotides, a decree was passed providing public support for the children of men who had been killed in the oligarchia when they came to the aid of the dēmokratia.32 In this context there was no ambiguity; the words served as names for the losing and the winning side in the recent civil war. One of the measures instituted in connection with the revision of the laws provided that judgments in lawsuits and agreements reached by arbitration were to be valid, if they had been issued while the city had dēmokratia.33 The implied contrast with the rule of the Thirty gave dēmokratia here denotative meaning as the word for the traditional constitution. Furthermore, the word was gaining in respectability, since the cruelties of the Thirty disgraced those whose enemies called them protagonists of oligarchia.
In the oratorical literature of the fourth century the words dēmokratia and oligarchia do not occur as frequently as in the writings of Thucydides and his contemporary, Pseudo-Xenophon. Evidently they were not employed so readily in political controversy. But they occur in some speeches composed toward the middle of the century and a pattern of usage can be discerned. Dèmokratia continues to be contrasted with oligarchia and it is the recognized word for the constitutional condition of the Athenians. Moreover, there is no longer any hint of deprecation or apology. The Athenians now boast of their dēmokratia and they try to say what benefits it brings. One answer was that conditions in dēmokratia are “gentle (praos).” In 355/54 a pleader in court said:
If you wish to ascertain on what account one would rather live in dēmokratia than in oligarchia, you would find this difference most obvious, that all things are gentler in dēmokratia.34
Another attempt to specify the benefits of dēmokratia said that it encouraged competition by rewarding merit, whereas oligarchia imposed equality on the privileged.35 But it could also be said that dēmokratia maintained equality, whereas oligarchia encouraged the striving for excess (pleonexia).36
Haranguing the assembly in 351/50, Demosthenes (15.17–21) told the Athenians that they had different reasons for fighting wars against dēmokratiai and oligarchiai They fought the former because of particular disputes, such as quarrels over parcels of land, but they fought oligarchiai “for the sake of our constitution and our freedom.” So Demosthenes pointed out that it would be more to the advantage of the Athenians for all the other Greeks to be dēmokratiai at war with Athens than to be oligarchiai allied to Athens. For one could readily make peace with free men, but even the friendship of oligarchiai was dangerous, since the power-hungry few could not be well disposed to men who chose to live on a basis of equality in speech. Demosthenes added that the Athenian constitution itself was threatened, now that the people of Chios, Mytilene, and Rhodes and almost the whole of mankind had fallen into the slavery of oligarchia Foreign oligarchiai knew that the Athenian demos would try to restore freedom, and so they set out to subvert it. Men who inflicted other injuries were enemies only of their victims, but men who overthrew constitutions and set up oligarchiai were common enemies of all who desired freedom. Demosthenes concluded that the Athenians in virtue of their dēmokratia ought to intervene in favor of restoring the same condition in Rhodes.
This passage is easy to dismiss.37 It is echoed nowadays by the intellectual isolationist, who declaims against fascism forty years after the death of Mussolini. Yet the utterance of a tub-thumping orator is likely to bear some relation, however slight, to the deepest convictions of his audience. Some other passages suggest that dēmokratia could allude to convictions held dear by the Athenians in the middle of the fourth century. One of these passages is an utterance of Isokrates:
In most of the speeches I have delivered it will be found that I oppose oligarchiai and strivings for excess, but I praise equalities and dēmokratiai, not all of them but the ones well constituted, and that not in a haphazard way but with justice and reason. For I know that our ancestors, being in this condition, far excelled other men, and that the Lakedaimonians manage their affairs excellently for precisely this reason, that they have dēmokratia in the highest degree. In their choice of officers, in their everyday life and in their other customs it is evident that equalities and similarities are respected more among them than among other men. These principles are attacked by oligarchiai but are observed by those who have good dēmokratiai.38
The reader of Thucydides will find this passage surprising. Perhaps he will dismiss it as an eccentricity of Isokrates. But he might equally well conclude that the meaning of dēmokratia had changed with the lapse of half a century. Two further passages suggest that the latter course is right.
In 353/52 the speaker of Demosthenes 24.75–76 said:
Furthermore one might recognize that he (Timokrates) committed an outrage in passing a law with retroactive force, if one considered what the difference is between law and oligarchia, and why men willing to be ruled by laws are considered well-behaved and meritorious, but men ruled by oligarchiai are effeminate and servile. One would certainly find the obvious explanation, that among men in oligarchiai each one has authority to reverse what has been done and give orders for the future at his own whim, but laws say what is to be observed for the future, since they are passed when those who are to obey them are persuaded that they are beneficial. But Timokrates as lawgiver in a city which has dēmokratia has transferred the injustice of oligarchia into his own law, and on past events he has claimed to be given greater authority than the judges who reached verdicts of condemnation.
Prosecuting Ktesiphon in 330/29, Aischines (3.6) said:
You know very well, gentlemen of Athens, that among all mankind there are three constitutions, tyranny, oligarchia and dēmokratia The tyrannies and oligarchiai are governed by the whims of those in control, but cities which have dēmokratia are governed by the established laws.
Verbal usage in these two passages is consistent. Oligarchia has come to mean the arbitrary rule of a junta, the condition known in the fifth century as dynasteia (cf. page 95 above). Consequently, dēmokratia, contrasting with oligarchia, has come to mean the rule of law.39 The semantic development is easy to explain. In the fifth century oligarchia, like dēmokratia, had little factual meaning. Such factual connotation as it had derived from its opening element olig- = “few.” An arbitrary junta embodied the rule of the few par excellence So as time passed oligarchia came to have the factual and restricted meaning which had once been borne by dynasteia By contrast and by consequence dēmokratia came to express one of the deepest convictions of the Athenians, their belief in the rule of law.