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4 “I Besieged That Man”: Democracy's Revolutionary Start
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Chapter 4 “I Besieged That Man” Democracy’s Revolutionary Start Josiah Ober 83 In searching for the “origins of Athenian democracy” I have avoided the individualist, institutionalist, and foundationalist premises undergirding much historical work on Athenian political history.1 My approach to the history of Athenian democracy cares relatively little for the motivations of Cleisthenes or (e.g.) Solon, Ephialtes, Pericles, or Demosthenes, since I do not think that democracy was “discovered” or “invented” by an individual. Rather I suppose that these (and other) highly talented individuals responded creatively to what they correctly perceived as substantial changes in the Athenian political environment, and that these changes were the direct result of collective action. The responses of creative individuals had much to do with the shape of Athenian political culture but should not be simply equated with it. Next, while I acknowledge that institutions are very important in that they allow for the stabilization of a new order of doing things and thus provide a basis for subsequent evolution (see below), I suppose that democratic institutional practices arose in response to a historical rupture, to an “epistemic” sociological/ideological shift—that is, a substantial and relatively sudden change in the ways that Athenians thought, spoke, and behaved toward one another.2 And Wnally I suggest that we should replace the notion that Athenian-style democracy was the product of a constitutional “foundation” with a view of demokratia as pragmatic, experimental , and revisable: originally a product of action on the part of a socially diverse body of citizens and subsequently sustained and revised by the decisions and practices of the citizenry. What I am seeking, then, is an epistemic shift, and an event that crystallized that shift and thereby motivated individuals to design institutions capable of framing and giving substance to a dramatically new understanding of society. I will argue here that the key shift occurred in the last decade 84 Josiah Ober of the sixth century, and that the decisive event was an uprising by the Athenian demos. That uprising took place in response to an attempt by a foreign invader and his quisling Athenian supporters to dissolve the existing Athenian government in 508/7 b.c.e. Democracy comes into existence with the capacity of a demos to act as a collective historical agent. In Athens, that came about when “I, the people” did something that really mattered, by besieging a Spartan king for three days on the Athenian acropolis. Two Ancient Accounts of the Athenian Revolution The most complete and earliest account of these events is by Herodotus, who did the research for his Histories in the mid-Wfth century b.c.e., just within living memory of the uprising itself. [After the last of the tyrants had been deposed by the Spartans] two men were especially powerful (edunasteuon): Cleisthenes, an Alcmaeonid, who was reputed to have bribed the Pythian priestess, and Isagoras, son of Tisander, a man of a notable family. . . . These men were engaged in a civil conflict over power (estasiasan peri dunamios). Cleisthenes was getting the worst of it in this dispute and brought the demos into his group of comrades (ton demon prosetairizetai ). After that he divided the Athenians into ten tribes instead of four as formerly. . . . When he had associated (prosethekato) the Athenian demos, formerly utterly despised (aposmenon), with his side (moiran), he gave the tribes new names and increased their number, making ten phylarchs in place of four, and assigning ten demes to each tribe. . . . Having brought over (prosthemenos ) the people, he was stronger by far than his rivals in the civil conflict (ton antistasisioteon). Isagoras, who was on the losing side, devised a counterplot, and invited the aid of Cleomenes, who had been his guest-friend since the besieging of the Peisistratids. It was even said of Cleomenes that he regularly went to see Isagoras’s wife. Then Cleomenes Wrst sent a herald to Athens demanding the banishment of Cleisthenes and many other Athenians with him, the Accursed, as he called them. This he said in his message by Isagoras’ instruction, for the Alcmaeonids and their faction were held to be guilty of that bloody deed while Isagoras and his friends had no part in it. When Cleomenes had sent for and demanded the banishment of Cleisthenes and the Accursed, Cleisthenes himself secretly departed. Afterwards, however, Cleomenes appeared in Athens with a smallish force. Upon his arrival, he, in order to take away the curse, banished seven hundred Athenian families named for...