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R O B I N O S B O R N E C H A N G I N G T H E D I S C O U R S E Fifth-century Athens, as the essays in this volume have clearly shown, had an ongoing obsession with tyranny. Ostracism was probably introduced, and certainly repeatedly used, in the first quarter of the century to remove from Athens those believed to be inclined to subvert the democratic constitution for their own personal political advantage. Popular leaders in the last quarter of a century continued to throw the tyrant term around at rivals whose personal following could be made to look like the basis for a bid for extra-constitutional power for themselves. In fourth-century Athens, as Kathryn Morgan and Josiah Ober both reveal , tyranny had almost no place in real politics. For all that Eucrates’ law in  covers establishing tyranny as well as other forms of subverting democracy , the tyrant had become a figure sufficiently abstracted from everyday Athenian political reality to be good to think with in analyses of the strengths and weaknesses of a wide range of political constitutions. What happened to effect such a change in the discourse of tyranny at Athens? How can we account for the paradox that the successful installation of what was recognized as a tyrannical régime at Athens (n.  below), the régime of the Thirty Tyrants, led not to enhanced fear of actual tyranny but to the emasculation of the term? It is commonly asserted that the horrors of the régime of the Thirty were such that no one in Athens subsequently could adopt a political position that could be identified with that of the Thirty. On this view, everyone after  had to claim to be some sort of democrat.1 In this paper I will argue that the crisis in political language so clearly displayed in the ‘‘lax terminology’’ used by Isocrates was not so much a product of the events of / themselves but of the way in which the coups of  and of  revealed the emptiness of the earlier political discourse and political analysis. 251 C O N S T I T U T I O N A L A N A L Y S I S I N F I F T H - C E N T U R Y A T H E N S When Herodotus has the Persians debate their future constitution, he characterizes Otanes and Megabyzus as urging, respectively, that power be placed ‘‘in the midst of the Persian people’’ (es meson) and that it be handed over ‘‘to an oligarchy.’’ But the construction of the argument is such that oligarchy is never discussed.2 Otanes devotes himself mostly to the shortcomings of a monarchy, explicitly described as the rule of a tyrant, and has a brief description of the advantages of democracy. Megabyzus agrees with the arguments against monarchy but adds arguments against democracy and then briefly concludes that oligarchy would be best since they themselves would rule. Darius devotes himself to arguing that the best monarchy has advantages over any other constitution, and he adds that monarchy had given the Persians freedom in the first place and is their ancestral constitution. The absence of serious discussion of oligarchy in Herodotus’ Constitutional Debate is exactly paralleled by the lack of discussion of oligarchy in the rest of his history. As Carolyn Dewald (this volume) shows, Herodotus conducts a subtle analysis of tyranny and monarchy, both propounding and qualifying an extremely negative ‘‘despotic template.’’ He also, if very much less extensively, explores the working of democracy. He famously comments both on the positive effects of ‘‘liberation’’ (.) and on the way in which the many Athenians were more easy to mislead than the single ruler of Sparta (..). He shows debate at work in Athens (as over the interpretation of the ‘‘wooden walls’’ oracle [.–]), and he brings out the ability of the Athenians to stand up to the blandishments of Persia (.–). Herodotus does show the leaders of the various Greek cities attempting to arrive at decisions jointly, with rather limited success, but he shows us almost nothing of the workings of an oligarchy. His picture of Sparta is of a city with at least three separate loci of power that are in actual or potential conflict (the two kings and the people, with a particular role for ephors). Elsewhere he shows only either monarchical figures or...

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