Arts of Living: Reinventing the Humanities for the Twenty-first Century

2 Democracy Sets in the

27 2 Democracy Sets in the West From Able Citizens to Ignorant Masses A way of life ended in America with the close of the 1960s. And like most really lasting changes, this one did not arrive as a cataclysm of the kind that gets boldfaced in the history books—the Fall of Rome, the Norman Conquest, the Industrial Revolution. It came quietly in the guise of confusion and unease. Children denounced their parents, and parents walked out on their children. Harvard professors on television celebrated psychedelic drugs while Life magazine ran feature stories on half-naked couples who had gone to live in caves. Blacks in berets were organizing private armies while bombs went off on colleges campuses. No one knew exactly what was happening, and everywhere people tried to make sense of things. One of those people was M. I. Finley, a well-known historian of the ancient world. In April 1972 at Rutgers University in New Jersey, Finley delivered a series of talks later published, somewhat misleadingly, as Democracy Ancient and Modern.1 I say misleadingly because the talks themselves expressed a sense of crisis that his bland title failed to convey. America was falling apart, Finley implied, because it was no longer a democracy, at least not in any sense that the citizens of ancient Athens would have recognized. Democracy, as Athenians understood it, meant direct , sustained participation—“almost,” Finley added, “beyond anything we can imagine”: It was literally true that at birth every Athenian boy had better than a gambler’s chance to be president of the Assembly, a rotating post held for a single day and, as always, filled by the drawing of lots. He might be a market commissioner for a year, a member of the Council for one year or two (though not in succession), a juryman repeatedly, a voting member of the Assembly as frequently as he liked. Behind this direct experience, to which should be added the administration of the hundred-odd parishes or “demes” into which Athens was subdivided, there was also the general familiarity with public affairs that even the apathetic could not escape in such a small, face-to-face society.2 Every Athenian boy had a gambler’s chance of becoming the equivalent of our President, and every one was guaranteed a seat in “congress” at the time of his 28 Democracy Sets in the West coming of age. As radical as Finley’s accusation might have seemed, most of his hearers knew from their own experience what he was getting at. Some of them had voted more or less regularly, and some of them, though by no means all, could explain in general terms how bills were drafted, passed, and implemented. But none of them, or almost none of them—and they saw themselves, at least tacitly, as members of the intellectual elite—had ever played any meaningful part in the political life of the nation, the state, the county, or even the towns to which they returned at the end of their working day. Distinguished professors, academic administrators, graduate students—they had no direct control over matters as important as the taxes they paid, the laws they observed, the schools their children attended, the lessons children studied in those schools, or the maintenance of their neighborhoods. Finley was correct then, and perhaps even overly circumspect, when he told his hearers that the power exercised by the least powerful Athenian citizen—unqualified and unmediated power—surpassed their own by many measures. Government in Athens, Finley explained, was a government by the assembled people, who decided on all matters related to law, war and peace, diplomacy, the budget, and public works. From the Assembly no free male over the age of eighteen could be excluded, and everyone had both a vote and the right of isegoria or free speech. The bureaucratic administrators of the Athenian state—the holders of city offices and members of the Council of 500—were all selected by lot and served terms of one or two years. Even leading political figures like Pericles owed their power to no civil position, since there was no position for them to hold, but solely to their insight and eloquence as citizens exercising commonly held rights.3 While Pericles at the height of his influence could generally count on public acceptance of his policies, his proposals “were submitted,” Finley notes, “week in and week out . . . and the Assembly always could, and on occasion...