Classics 250/History 213: Athenian Democracy

Block 4, 2006

 

Prof. Owen Cramer

Armstrong 130                           747 E. Uintah

x6443                                       634-3392                   Schedule for the rest of week 1.

e-mail                                                                        Schedule for the rest of the block.

Office hours: Monday through Friday 2-4

 

This is the sixth iteration of a course dealing both with democracy (ancient and modern, an ideal or an object of critique) and with the Athenians who, according to some accounts, invented it. The course originated in the aftermath of celebrations of the 2500^th anniversary of the Cleisthenic reforms (508/7 BCE-199-1993/4 CE); there are changes in the American situation since.  

 

We'll be guided by general reference stuff from the Oxford Classical Dictionary (in Tutt reference) and Perseus <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu> and the Stoa http://www.stoa.org resources--especially the Demos and Ancient City of Athens projects, as well as the following particular things:

 

• Greek history: Peter Green, Ancient Greece: A Concise History, Thames and Hudson paperback 1979.

 

• (You could replace this with more prosaic writing, Thomas Martin, An Overview of Greek History: From Mycenae to Alexander, online at Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0009

•  Athenian history:

Aristotle’s developmental history of the democracy in (his student’s) Athenaion politeia (Constitution of the Athenians), translated by P. J. Rhodes in the Penguin Classics series. The whole text  is online in English and Greek at Perseus. Commentary by P. J. Rhodes (1981, ²1993).

•  Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE): abridged by Paul Woodruff as On Justice, Power and Human Nature, Hackett 1993. The whole text is online at Perseus.

• Athenian tragedy and comedy--convenient collection edited by Moses Hadas, Bantam Classics ed. We'll read Agamemnon (re: justice, sacrifice, etc.), Philoctetes (re: rhetoric, Cape Sounion, etc.), Oedipus the King or Antigone, Trojan Women, Frogs.

• A Roman-period biographical account of selected Greek leaders: Plutarch's Lives of founders Solon and Lycurgus, Themistocles, Cimon, Pericles and Alcibiades in: Greek Lives (Oxford World's Classics ed.)

 

Athenian theory: democratic—has to be reconstructed: see

Paul Woodruff, First Democracy, Oxford 2004

Eric Havelock, The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics, Yale 1957

 

Athenian theory, anti-democratic: in the Moore volume with Aristotle are the “Old Oligarch” and Xenophon’s Constitution of the Lacedaemonians. Other Socratic teaching is in Plato: the Republic primarily, also Laws.

 

Later theory: the “mixed constitution” in Polybius (book 6, Perseus: Rome as a better example than Lacedaemon); divided government in Montesquieu (online at the Constitution Society’s Liberty Library http://www.constitution.org/liberlib.htm)   

 

Athenian practice is known in many areas:

• Arts: architecture, painting, drama
• agriculture: grain (barley, wheat, oats), olives, wine-grapes, animals
• family life: birth, marriage (gender), death
• professional life: business, trade, mining, finance, law
• warfare
• education
• religion: cult, myth, Olympian gods, mysteries, oracles

 

We’ll compare the current state of democracy in the US and elsewhere. The US was a leader in rights-based republican government from its inception, and in the 20^th century twice intervened in world wars with democratic intentions. Late in the Cold War a new round of promotion began: Pres. Reagan helped start the National Endowment for Democracy http://www.ned.org/ and the NED started the World Movement for Democracy in the late ‘90s http://www.wmd.org/about/information.html. How this works out in practice can be seen at the local (neighborhood, school district, city, county) state, regional and national levels: read a local newspaper (http://gazette.com, http://www.csindy.com) and also follow the national and world news. Attend meetings of some of our governmental units: US Congress (House and Senate) and Colorado legislature are largely out of session this month, but school district, city and county boards will all meet at least once.

 

We’ll use a public folder in the CC Outlook system for short writings, and once a week you’ll write and submit (electronically or on paper) a longer paper: research or discussion-type. We may have a final exam over the facts and basic theories of ancient democracy on Wed. Dec. 20 (take-home exam, available by Tuesday class time Dec. 19). We’ll do some group research projects within which your third paper will be constructed.

 

The schedule is still forming: Week 1 (Nov. 27-Dec. 1) will concentrate on Greek history, with side trips for those who need background reading (Archaic epic, lyric, philosophy texts and Geometric to Classical art and architecture).

 

Day 1 presents at least these basic paradoxes:

 

• Democracy worked for 200 years in Athens but Greek political theory (Plato, Aristotle) is anti-democratic.
• Democracy is “the people taking hold” of their life, in equality (μέσοι ἄνθρωποι, ἰσονομία), but men and women, free and slaves, Athenians and others in the empire weren’t treated equally.
• Membership in the Demos is based on residence, and democratic theory and practice are based on scientific rationality, but religious cults and tribal/clan identities persisted.

 

Overnight, you should

• inventory your own political practice and theory: take the political compass questionnaire at http://www.politicalcompass.org/ (there's an alternative at http://politics.beasts.org/scripts/survey) and look at the Pew Center typology at http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=242 .
• start reading Green’s Ancient Greece.
• post to the course folder based on these two activities