Democracy and Oligarchy in Sparta and Athens

285 DEMOCRACY AND OLIGARCHY IN SPARTA AND ATHENS* The most important contribution the Greeks made to civilised political life was the invention of the idea of the llcitizen" as a member of a society who by definition had the same rights, the same duties as other members of the society, rights and duties establ ished and guaranteed not by the goodwill of anyone man or group of men but by a set of impersonal rules, the laws of the State or, as we should put it, the Constitution. This idea was not confined to what the Greeks called democracies - it is vital to remember that. Indeed it was first put across in a serious way in Sparta, that model of oligarchic propriety. Where democracy differed from oligarchy was either in the definition of those it admitted to membership of the community (was there a property qualification?), or in the range of rights and duties it accorded its members, or in both. But in each case the principle was the same - no king, no tyrant, no group of aristocrats could override the Constitution even in a state like Sparta which retained both kings and an aristocracy. That, at least, was the theory - I do not claim that it always worked in practice. In Athens the application of the principle went hand-in-hand throughout with the development of her democracy. First introduced by Solon in 594, fully built into the working of the community by Kleisthenes in 508, later to be explicitly recognised and applied right across the board in the reforms of 462, to the Athenian of about 430 B. C. it was as fresh and precious - and as precarious - as, say, the * The Editors are grateful to Professor Forrest for permission to print the text of this talk which he delivered to undergraduate audiences during a tour of Universities in Alberta and British Columbia in the Fall of 1981. 286 W. G. FORREST National Health Service is in Britain. 1 Kleisthenes was "just before the First World War", Ephialtes " when I was a boy" or at most liMy old man told me .•. ". It is easy to smile in a superior kind of way at an American's neurotic response to the catch-phrase Ilaw-and-order", easy to be puzzled by a Russian's obsession with "security", with " sav ing the revolution". But Americans were still establishing law-and-order "before the First World War"; Russians had their revolution and saw it threatened " when I was a boy II or "papouschka told me .•. ". Such things are fragile. No wonder that an Athenian of around 430 was very touchy about his constitution, about his democracy, about his freedom. No wonder that an Athenian democrat, particularly after 462, was a "conservative" in the sense that what he wanted above all else was stability. Consider the astonishing remark made by a leading Athenian politician in 427: "A state which has bad laws that are stable is better off than a state which has good laws which are always being changed" (Thuc.3.37.3). Now Athens was peculiarly suited to provide a stable background for the safe rooting and growth of an idea of this kind, for Athenian society was extraordinarily homogeneous. There were a few very rich Athenians, but they were very few and not fantastically rich - 200 acres of land would put you among the " millionaires". There were some very poor Athenians, but by our standards very few, and there was no such thing as our industrial working-class, car-workers or miners or firemen. Firemen and miners were slaves; the Ford Motor Company did not exist. The vast mass of Athenians were small property-owners, small farmers, shopkeepers, potters or the Iike, men who owned the source of their wealth and, according to their level, used none or one or two slaves to exploit it. According to Athenian rules, this mass was divided into property-classes which provided different kinds of military service to the state as caval rymen, infantrymen or oarsmen for the 1These words were written in 1981, when some thought the issue was dead. The British election campaign of 1983 should make them think again. DEMOCRACY...