Did Athenians Invent Democracy?

1992/1993 saw the celebration of 2500 years since the birth of democracy. This sparked debate amongst the academic community as dating the anniversary to be that of 2500 years meant taking the reforms of Cleisthenes in Athens in 507/8BC as the advent of democracy. This act ruled out all other claims to prior democracies existing, and also called into question the difference between contemporary definitions of democracy and modern definitions of democracy. This essay will seek to outline these differences in definition in order to give an account of the form of democracy which existed in Athens, assess the claims for the existence of democracies in other areas prior to the reforms of Cleisthenes at Athens, and will show to what extent democracy can be claimed as an Athenian invention.

The issue of the definition of democracy has long been skewed by the heavy focus upon Athenian democracy due to the existence of more detailed sources for the functioning of Athenian democracy, such as Aristotle's 'Constitution of the Athenians'. Trouble also arises as ancient Greece was a largely oral society, and as such evidence for the functioning of early democracies may not have survived. Even so, the existence of democracy in other poleis is largely difficult to pin down in contemporary sources as writers such as Aristotle in 'Politics' uses the term democracy to refer to a four different styles of government systems as there was a sliding scale in existence of types of democracy. In Aristotle's view, the term democracy can be applied to governmental systems under which 'the multitude rule and not the law' due to the existence of public pay amongst other things, as well as a state when neither the rich nor the poor fully dominate politics whilst there exists a small property qualification for certain public offices. However, these democracies have some structures in common: the selection of magistrates from and by all of the citizen body, small property qualifications for most offices, the short term nature of office holding as people were to rule in turn, juries holding a large amount of power and being drawn from all of the citizenry, ostracism, and the existence of an assembly. This shows how contemporary sources would have applied the label of democracy to governments which modern historians would not term to be true democracies, as well as being broader in their concept of democracy than we are now. This gives rise to the claim that ancient sources would have perceived democracy to be in existence in other states, prior to the emergence of a democratic system of governance at Athens.

Modern historiography has focused upon the presence of isogoria, eleutheria and isonomia as prerequisite for a government to be termed a democracy. The presence of these three ideals behind the practices of government cloud the issue of discerning democracies as different people hold different views as to the ideology behind certain aspects of parts of state government. Historians such as Robinson and Cartledge have given the definition of a democracy as identifiable through state processes. In their view, a democracy exists where there is evidence of: use of public pay, ostracism and the selection of highest officials by lot, participation in key public bodies must not involve high property qualifications. Ultimately, as many citizens as possible must be involved in the running of the state for it to be viewed as a democracy. In light of this, more governments in the ancient world can be seen as having democratic elements contained within them, if not full democracy itself. This widens the potential claimants to the title of the inventors of democracy. This difference between definitions of what constitutes democracy also calls into question what Athens did to invent it. If we take the three democratic principles as classifiers of democracy, then Athens can hardly be said to have invented freedom from control by others, or equality, and in turn has no claim to have invented democracy as the ideology of democracy was shared throughout the region with earlier examples of communities based upon equality and self-governance by the whole community. For instance, Schemeil studied the civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia, stating that 'Egyptian and Mesopotamian politics relied on public debate and detailed voting procedures', with the democratic nature of regimes being due to efforts to overcome civil rivalry for common good by mobilising the citizenry into the 'same camp'. Added to this, Robinson points out that democratic institutions probably also functioned in republics of ancient India possibly as early as sixth century, and Greek sources exist stating that independent and democratic states thrived there at the time of Alexander the Great's invasion. However, it must be conceded that Athens remains a contender for having been the inventor of democracy as it is the earliest comprehensive example of such a system in action for a long period of time, albeit with periods of interruption. Athens is also the earliest known case where the existence of democracy cannot be contested. In the early cases of examples from Mesopotamia and Egypt, the extent to which popular rules existed can be viewed as open to interpretation due to the scarce nature of sources. (...) Arguments have been made for Athens as the inventors of democracy as the conditions existed to foster democracy in Athens which were not to be found anywhere else. For example, Raaflaub believes that Athens developed the only 'fully realized' democracy, as it was the only democracy which developed to the point of perpetuating the rise of democracy in other poleis, largely due to the Athenian Empire. The Athenian Empire served to underpin the Athenian democracy and to allow it to function by providing financial support and to eventually develop to the point where it outlived the Empire itself. However, the rise of democratic governmental systems and ideology across Greece has been attributed to the development of the hoplite form of warfare as it caused the formation of tight knit units who had to work together to succeed. As Rodewald puts it: 'The new mode of combat was less individualistic and called less for prowess than for collective solidarity and weight of numbers. So more men were drawn in, men not of noble birth, but who could afford the requisite armour and weapons, but not a horse: mostly peasants it seems.'. This new level of co-operation across the classes occurred across Greece and therefore at a base level the necessary groundwork for the creation of democracy existed outside not solely in Athens. This also gives credence to the idea that the seeds for democracy could have come from regions outside of Athens, although in Athens the conditions existed for furthering democracy due to the support and freedom from patronage created by systems of public pay funded by empire. The Athenian claim to being the inventors of democracy rests upon the definition of several different things; If we define 'inventors' as meaning 'the thinker who developed the concept of democracy' then the work of Rodewald, amongst others, has shown that Athens cannot claim ideological ownership of the concept of democracy as there was such movement of ideas across borders and between poleis that true ownership of ideas is impossible to trace. If 'inventors' is taken to mean 'those who formed ideas into a solid shape which could function' then the Athenians do have a strong claim for being the inventors of democracy. But it remains the case that at heart the Athenians were the inventors of Athenian democracy, a form of democracy which existed at a time when many other forms of democracy existed. Our view of Athens as the originators of democracy has been influenced by the availability of sources and the prevalence of the belief that Athens was the heartland of democracy is so deep rooted as is it is at the heart of our own belief and legitimation of our political system, which in turn is very different form of democracy to that which existed in ancient Greece. There is enough evidence for the widespread existence outside of Athens of the concepts of eleutheria, isegoria and isonomia to mean that the ideology that existed in Athens was prevalent elsewhere. Furthermore, all three of these ideological foundations of democracy are relative concepts and were applied within the confines of distinct communities which we cannot therefore pass judgement upon. There is also evidence for other poleis which developed their own forms of democracy around the same time as the Athenians, as well as predecessors to Greek democracy which can be found in Egypt and Mesopotamia. It therefore remains impossible to view Athens as the inventors of democracy. The Athenians may, however, lay claim to being the most well developed of the early democracies as the democratic systems of Athens were developed to perpetuate the functioning of democracy through the rights of the citizenry to act as jurors and therefore shape the legal system, rather than merely granting all power to the people. Added to this, the continued return to the democratic system undertaken by Athens and the existence of the Athenian Empire as a means by which to foster the burgeoning democracy single out Athens as an example of ancient Greek democracy which functioned exceedingly well.

Bibliography: Aristotle, 'The Athenian constitution', ' Politics' Jack Goody, 'The theft of history' Josiah Ober, 'The Athenian revolution' Eric W. Robinson, 'The first democracies', 'Democracy beyond Athens' W.G.Forrest, 'The emergence of Greek democracy' Susanne Carlson, 'Hellenistic democracies' Paul Woodruff, 'First democracy' Raaflaud, Ober, Wallace, 'Origins of democracy in ancient Greece' T.B.L Webster, 'Political interpretations in Greek literature' Cosmo Rodewald, 'Democracy: ideas and realities' Amartya Sen, 'Democracy and its global roots' James O'Neil, 'The origins and development of Ancient Greek democracy' Kostas Vlassopoulos, 'Unthinking the Greek polis; Ancient Greek history beyond Eurocentrism'