Lateiner, 'The Birth of Athenian Democracy. The Assembly in the Fifth Century B.C.' URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-v2n01-lateiner-the 2.1.17, Chester G. Starr. *The Birth of Athenian Democracy. The Assembly in theFifth Century B.C.* New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Pp.86 (64 of text). $16.95 (hb.). ISBN 0-19-506586-7. Rev. D. Lateiner Recent scholars of Greek and Roman political history have expanded thefield from military and institutional processes and events to include social(class) attitudes and economic structures, ad hoc family alliances andconflicts, and the role of ideology and informal expressions of publicopinion. This has reinvigorated Athenian history, among others, where thestudy of so-called ``constitutional history'' received a transfusion of acentury's (just now) new life by F.G. Kenyon's publication (1891) of theEgyptian papyrus containing the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia. Even so, oreven more so with this ancient epichoric monograph, teachers and textbooksoften have continued to dangle before dubious students a fleshless skeleton,a descriptive anatomy of laws and offices and boards and legal and judicialgroups without the power-brokers, nasty menaces, and the oily baksheesh. Whoamong us has not been frustrated or put to sleep by the dusty later chaptersof Ath.P. 42-68? Ostracism might serve as an example of a natural human social strategy,sometimes benign and sometimes lethal, that the Athenians regularized andcodified into law in a humane and limited way. They even placed potsherdingannually on the sixth prytany's agenda (Ath.P. 22.4, 43.5). Thisunprecedented transfer of the social and political police power fromneighbors, or worse, malevolent thugs of the night and their smilingaristocratic padroni, to the political light of limited exclusions for theuppity and ratified constitutional practice attracts many a historian'sattention to the generally conservative Athenian assembly. Perhaps theattraction increases as she watches newly autarchic and empowered politicalcommunities in Eastern Europe struggle with institutionalizing new freedomsand limiting the constraining powers of institutional and extra-institutional``enforcers.'' Political co-operation reduces potential political conflict ina manner that minimizes damage to the process (Ar. Pol. 1284a 17, 1284b 17,1302b 17, 1308b 19). Thukydides 2.65.9 means to shed light on a systemic weakness of thelocal and imperial government as part of a general evaluation of Perikles andhis successors, but his analysis of the democracy in process remainscontroversial, both as to what he means to say and his correctness: ``in name(theory, pretence, popular belief?) it was turning out to be a democracy, butin fact (practice, truth, after analysis?) rule (administration, power?) ofand by the leading man.'' This brachyologic, somewhat Thracian sentencepolemically exaggerates--for so it seems to me--Perikles' power and predominance in a paragraph unique and peculiar in many aspects. Thearistocratic analyst, often elsewhere sympathetic to the achievements of thedemocracy, emphasizes the success of Perikles' eloquence on the membership ofthe corporate organs of government in order to devalue the effect of rotationand sortition (cf. 2.37.1), to minimize the actual power that theinstitutions wielded, to dismiss the abilities of his competitors, and evento disguise the weight of Perikles' own family-ties, wealth, and patronage(e.g., see Ath.P. 27.4, but cf. Thuk. 2.65.8). No one, certainly, then ornow, has disputed the fact that Perikles needed to go through the democracy'sinstitutional procedures and the evidence suggests that he did so by means ofhis democratic persuasiveness, not by force or by verbal bluster andnon-verbal threats of broken fingers. Therefore, as M.H. Hansen (1989) has eloquently argued, the uniquelyelaborate web of political institutions and formal procedures developed topower, police, and promote the fairly simple society of archaic and classicalAthens demands that the modern student understand that structure fully beforeproceeding to other approaches, because (a) most of our detailed ancientinformation pertains to it, (b) the complexity of institutions in Athensseems to accompany (or, perhaps, must complement) a simplicity inextra-institutional modes of political conduct, and (c) these large governingbodies, the assembly, the council, and the courts clearly ran the city, thecity-state, and the empire, however much was executed through magistrates,most of them appointed ``by the bean.'' The Athenians depended on the walls,doors, shoescrapers, toilets, and windows of this political house to keeptheir profitable business reasonably clean and efficient . You therefore muststudy the plumbing and engineering of the solid edifice before trying to lookthrough the walls and identify short-cuts and back-channels. Once upon a time, the books of Busolt, Beloch, Cloche, Jones (myfavorite), Ehrenberg, and Hignett dominated the study of Athenianconstitutional structure and development. The spate of books in just the lastdecade has deluged the historian, as I hope partial listing (nomensapientibus sat) makes clear: Davies, Bleicken, Ostwald, Sinclair, Ober, andespecially Hansen, not to mention more specialized studies such as those ofMeier, Krentz, J.T. Roberts, Whitehead, Carter, Rhodes, Trail, and Wallace. Professor Starr refers to nearly all of them studying traditional issues,chiefly when did the assembly come to determine state policy and how and whydid the assembly become effective just then (preface). I do not find thatStarr's presentation here answers these questions, or shows much influencefrom the methods and enlarged purview of social and ideological historians. We have a sketch of development and of the ``perfected'' system, but nosearch for the dynamics. On the other hand, Starr's focus on the fifthcentury is fully justified by its substantial differences in structure,spirit, and economic infra-structure from later periods, even though ourfourth-century sources are much fuller. Starr's book delivers five chapters, each partly historical, partlydescriptive of the Athenian ekklesia. ``Appearance'' covers the years632-510, ``Consolidation'' covers 508-404, ``Voters'' considers potential andactual hand-raisers in the assembly, ca. 431. This last chapter shifts theemphasis from historical evolution to institutional constants, and the lasttwo chapters continue with daily operations: ``Functions'' describes dutiesin regard to religion (sporadic); finance; election, direction, andexamination of public officials; foreign policy; and ``justice'' (rare). Thebest chapter, ``Meetings'' describes typical and atypical sessions, thebrutal but brief oligarchical hiccoughs of 411 and 404/3, and it offerssummary but magisterial evaluation (57-64) of the assembly with the help ofThukydides' epideictic encomiastic epitaphios delivered perhaps in somewhatsimilar form by Perikles. The subtitle better describes the contents than the main title. ``Birth'' labors a both tired and inappropriate metaphor, since Starr himselfshows the democracy developed over at least a half-century and did not burstfull-grown on the scene, Athena-like or even human baby-like. Starr littleattends to the assembly's imperialistic foreign policies and theirconsequences on domestic power-structures, to ideology on the individual,group, or corporate level, or to the notably stable terms of political andsocial discourse such as ``equality'' or ``freedom,'' as they are parsed, forinstance, by Bleicken, Raaflaub, Vidal-Naquet, or Winkler on theephebate.<<1>>. Diversions into lively, telescopically compressed narrativesof external history puzzle the reviewer about precisely what level ofaudience is intended. The educated layman, if he turns off``Thirtysomething'' or ``The Simpsons'' on his multi-channel, split-screentelevision, will profit most from this succinct, judicious if limitedsynthesis of recent work. An essay this brief cannot pause to address many vexed controversiesthat plague the student of Athenian law, constitutional process, andchronology, such as the installation of ostracism, Solon's archonship, thegraphe paranomon.<<2>> Some labels need explanation or justification, likePerikles ``leader of the radical wing'' (27). We may expect consistency:``the assembly...displayed too often an unwonted ruthlessness'' seems lessright than the situation after Arginousai pushed the assembly once ``to sucha ruthless conclusion'' (31, 48). Starr develops a nice argument against the denigration of the Atheniandirect democracy and its dominant organ, the assembly, as the possession andpreserve of a small elite, in brief, as a sham.<<3>> He shows that theapproximately 18.5% of the Attic population who could have voted compareswell with the allegedly more democratic example of the United States in 1860when only approximately 20% of the population was eligible (32-34). Furthermore, while the Americans further widened the rolls of voters, thepercentage of eligible voters who do vote continues to dwindle in the nominal(or rather, ideational) ``representative'' democracy.<<4>> All Greek is transliterated and Latinized. The bibliography and notesare up-to-date and helpful. Proofreading has been slipshod at best. We meetthe mis-spelling Mitylene consistently; Thace, tritty as singular, trittys asplural; the deme Phrearrhi, Pistratus, and various other Englishmisprints.<<5>> An editor was required to regularize, if we can, Pisistratusor Peisander, Aristides or Cleisthenes.<<6>> Despite significant Athenian upper-class and later literarycondemnation, the Athenian community's rapid restoration of the assembly'spowers, whenever temporarily suspended (62), testifies both to thecontemporary perception of its behavior as responsible and to confidence inthe legal safeguards always observed (probouleusis, graphe paranomon,recorded individual proposers for each decree). Allegations, ancient andmodern, brought against the ekklesia so often dwell on the exceptionallynch-law trial of the generals who commanded at Arginousai that one beginsto wonder whether other suitable outrages simply could not be found.<<7>> 1. See now Todd 1990 on the composition of juries. 2. Hansen (1987) offers 838 endnotes, one-third of his monograph, andexplains the reduced documentation as a result of his fuller treatmentelsewhere. 3. P. 33 with 72n.3 might regrettably lead those who do not know, or whofail to consult, Jones' masterly essay to think that he endorses thesestrictures, which he, in fact, refutes in ``The Social Structure of Athens inthe Fourth Century B.C.'' (orig. EHR 8 [1955] 141-55; repr. in AthenianDemocracy, pp. 75-96). 4. Starr justly calls attention to Thukydides' remarkably rare references tothe Council's activities (61). Connor's perceptive review article (1974)raises worthwhile questions about the Athenians' premisses about ``peoplepower'' and their perception of how this relatively small body could be sothoroughly trusted and regarded as so powerful a bulwark of the directdemocracy. In addition, he suggests, its explicit and implicit powers mayhave varied significantly at various periods, in a way that has left norecord. 5. Pp. 44, 45, 53, 77n.9; 53; 14, 60; 15, 10, 22, 27, 28, 36. Koch CAF(1880) appeared in 1980 at 71n.57. Athenagoras, not Hermocrates (p. 58 onThuk. 6.39), defends democracy to the Syracusans. 6. Pp. 10, 54, 17. The reviewer here acknowledges his own irregularities inthis oddly difficult transliterational task. 7. See now, on these executions and their reverberations, Mabel Lang (1990)and forthcoming; Roberts (forthcoming). In this series of events thatviolated Athenian law and procedure, as we know them from Xenophon, Plato,and Aristotle, the council was at least equally guilty (cf. Xen. Hell.1.7.1-15). Other frequently cited examples of democratic disregard of law orequity, namely, the ostracism of Thukydides and the execution of Sokrates areless cogent. The first, an entirely legal and temporary banishment seemsreasonable (if not entirely desirable), in Thukydides' own account (a fact tohis credit, we may add); the second, an exceptional execution and virtualmartyrdom, appears to have been encouraged and welcomed by Sokrates himself,to judge by Plato's report of his behavior. WORKS REFERRED TO IN THE REVIEW Bleicken, J. 1985. *Die athenische Demokratie.* Paderborn. Connor, W.R. 1974. ``The Athenian Council: Method and Focus in Some RecentLiterature,'' *CJ* 70: 32-40. Hansen, M.H. 1987. *The Athenian Assembly.* Oxford. Hansen, M.H. 1989. ``On the Importance of Institutions in an analysis of Athenian Democracy,'' *CM* 40: 108-13 == *The Athenian Ecclesia II*. Copenhagen. Pp.263-69. Jones, A.H.M. 19--/1957. ``How did the Athenian democracy work?,'' *AthenianDemocracy*. Oxford. Pp. 99-133. Lang, Mabel. 1990. ``Illegal Execution in ancient Athens,'' *PAPhS* 134.124-29, and *Hermes* forthcoming. Ober, J. 1989. ``The Nature of Athenian Democracy,'' *CP* 84: 322-34. Raaflaub, K. 1985. *Die Entdeckung der Freiheit*. Munich. Roberts, J.T. Forthcoming. *Acknowledged Folly: the Anti-Athenian Tradition in Western Thought.* Todd, S. 1990. ``Lady Chatterly's Lover and the Attic orators: the social composition of the Athenian jury,'' *JHS* 110: 146-73. Winkler, J.J. 1985. ``The Ephebes' Song: Tragoidia and Polis,''*Representations* 11: 26-62. Vidal-Naquet, P. 1986. *The Black Hunter.* Transl. A. Szegedy-Maszak. Baltimore. Pp. 85-128. Donald Lateiner Ohio Wesleyan