Democracy Beyond Athens: Popular Government in the Greek Classical Age by Eric W. Robinson (review)

This book, elegantly produced by Cambridge University Press, brings the inquiry Robinson started with The First Democracies. Early Popular Government Outside Athens (Stuttgart 1997) down to the end of the classical age. In the previous book Robinson tried to isolate examples of popular, democratic governments outside Athens in the archaic age, and argued that the evolution towards democracy did not happen either exclusively or primarily in Athens. This book extends his rebuttal of Athenocentrism to the classical period, and argues that Athens was neither the only “true” democracy nor necessarily the most influential. Robinson succeeds in making a case for a less uniform view of ancient democracy, one which takes into account variations and local traditions, and which is based on a wide investigation of forms of popular government around the Greek world.

The first three chapters, the bulk of the volume (6–181), contain the core analysis of fifty-four poleis (or federal states, like Achaia and Thessaly) that can be shown, with various degrees of certainty, to have enjoyed democratic government at some point during the classical age. Chapter 1 deals with democracies in mainland Greece and the Peloponnese; chapter 2 with those in Sicily, and Italy, and moreover with Cyrene, Corcyra, and Epidamnus; and chapter 3 with those in the eastern Mediterranean and in Asia Minor. Robinson is understandably cautious and does not include cases for which the evidence is too scanty. And even among the fifty-four states he includes, sometimes the case for democracy rests on minimal and dubious information (for example, for Gela, Himera, Ca-marina, Selinous, Heracleia, and Sicyon). The discussion duly recognizes this and judiciously distinguishes between states for which the case for democracy is solid, and others for which it is weaker.

The obvious comparison for this selection of democratic states is M. H. Hansen and T. H. Nielsen, Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis (Oxford 2004), which lists forty-four more democracies (but fails to list nine that Robinson accepts as popularly governed). Adding more dubious examples would have contributed little, because of the paucity of the evidence, to what is most distinctive (and impressive) of these three chapters: they do not simply provide a list of states that are likely to have been democratically governed; they also provide extensive and thorough analyses of their institutions. This is the greatest strength of the volume: the treatments of cities such as Argos, Mantinea, Syracuse, Kamarina, and Kyrene (and many others) are accurate, up-to-date, and grounded on a wide survey of available literary, epigraphical, and archaeological evidence. Robinson’s analysis is always cautious and characterized by excellent judgment. The book therefore is an invaluable source of information about the actual workings of several democratic regimes outside Athens.

The last two chapters use the evidence collected to reshape discussion of ancient democracy and break the Athenocentric consensus. Chapter 4 (182–216) first argues that Athens was not the primary cause of the spread of democratic constitutions by convincingly showing that the city never had a consistent policy in this sense, and moreover that other democratic cities like Argos and Syracuse played this role in particular areas. The argument is successful, but one wonders whether direct promotion of democracy is the only way in which Athens could have contributed to the spread of democracy. Robinson then highlights the importance of peer-polity interaction, and surely the existence of a democratic superpower like Athens must have contributed to making democratic government look like a viable option in many cities. Chapter 5 (217–47) convincingly shows that Athens was not the only or the primary institutional model of democracy, discusses differences and commonalities, and forcefully debunks myths such as that democracies do not make war on each other, and that a naval empire is fundamental to the development of democracy.

One problematic aspect of this volume is its definition of democracy...