Athens and The Spectrum of Liberty

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY Matt Edge1
Abstract: In this article, I attempt to answer the famous analyses of Benjamin Constant and Isaiah Berlin that the Classical Athenian Democracy had no conception of negative, individual, freedom. I do this by excavating an Athenian democratic concept of individual liberty from Classical Athenian texts. I go on to show that, whilst this has notable links to the later neo-Classical idea of freedom (excavated by the work of Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit), there are also a number of important differences. This means that we should perhaps stop arguing over whether there are one, or two, or three, concepts of freedom, but investigate instead (and, then, apply, in contemporary political philosophy) different historical uses of the word liberty (as here), though these, interestingly, might well contain a similar basic meaning (of non-interference).
I Introduction In this article, I attempt to do a number of things. The prime focus is on piecing together (from surviving literary, dramatic, historical, forensic and philosophical accounts) a concept of individual liberty from the Classical Athenian democracy of the fifth and fourth centuries BC. I try, further, to suggest that this democratic conception has interesting links to a similar excavation of a forgotten analysis of individual freedom, uncovered by the work of Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit, that of the neo-Classical tradition.2 This neo-Classical conception sees liberty as a complete absence of dependence (typically, but
49 Eastleigh Road, Leicester, LE3 0DB. Email: matt.edge1@btinternet.com See, for example, Q. Skinner, The Idea of Negative Liberty: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives, in Philosophy in History, ed. R. Rorty, J.B. Schneewind and Q. Skinner (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 193221; Q. Skinner, The Paradoxes of Political Liberty, in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values VII, ed. S.M. McMurrin (Salt Lake City, 1986), pp. 22550; Q. Skinner, On Justice, the Common Good and the Priority of Liberty, in Dimensions of Radical Democracy, ed. C. Mouffe (London, 1992), pp. 21124; Q. Skinner, The Italian City-Republics, in Democracy: The Unfinished Journey, 508 BCAD 1993, ed. J. Dunn (Oxford, 1992), pp. 5769; Q. Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism (Cambridge, 1998); Q. Skinner, A Third Concept of Liberty, Proceedings of the British Academy, 119 (2001 lectures), pp. 23768; Q. Skinner, Machiavelli on Virt and the Maintenance of Liberty, in Q. Skinner, Visions of Politics, Volume 2 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 16085; Q. Skinner, Classical Liberty and the Coming of the English Civil War, in Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, ed. Q. Skinner and M. Van Gelderen (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 928; Q. Skinner, States and the Freedom of Citizens, in States and Citizens: History, Theory, Prospects, ed. Q. Skinner and B. Strth (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 1127; P. Pettit, Negative Liberty, Liberal and Republican, European Journal of Philosophy, 1 (1993), pp. 1538; P. Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford, 1997).
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not exclusively, on the will of an over-mighty monarch or tyrant),3 and I attempt to show that the Athenian conception with which I am concerned makes a similar claim, though with a number of interesting and important differences which might allow it to sit as a different concept of its own on (what I term) the spectrum of liberty. In short, the difference regarding the Athenian democratic claim (from the neo-Classical account, as well as from the contemporary use (not to say meaning) of the word freedom employed in everyday language) is that individual, negative, freedom can only be enjoyed by those who are living as the citizens, and therefore protected by the political equality, of a participatory democracy. This, in turn, is related to an attempt to (partly) respond to two vastly influential analyses of the concept of liberty, those of Benjamin Constant and Isaiah Berlin.4 Constants essay still remains largely unchallenged and continues to exert a significant amount of influence over both classical historiography and political thought.5 As was claimed by one of antiquitys most revered historians, Arnaldo Momigliano, few historical papers deserve such profound
3 Cf. below pp. 812. Note Skinners useful n. 65, pp. 212 in Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, which helpfully details the differences between monarchomach theory (which did not necessarily view the position of a monarch as inherently hostile to individual liberty, provided that he or she was ruling well and in line with the common good) and the more radical claims of straight republican theory (which stated, essentially, that individual liberty could be preserved only in a self-governing republic). 4 B. Constant, The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns, in Constant: Political Writings, ed. B. Fontana (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 30928; I. Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, in Berlin, Liberty (Oxford, 2002), pp. 166217. 5 As Ellen Wood wrote in 1996, the prevailing view among scholars was to accept Constants thesis and stress the differences between the ancients and the moderns. E. Wood, Demos Versus We, the People: Freedom and Democracy Ancient and Modern, in Dmokratia: A Conversation on Democracies, Ancient and Modern, ed. J. Ober and C. Hedrick (Princeton, 1996), p. 121. This remains largely unchanged. For classics, a recent example is P. Cartledge, Greek Political Thought: The Historical Context, in The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought, ed. C. Rowe and M. Schofield (Cambridge, 2000), p. 16. For political thought, recently, F. Zakaria, The Future of Freedom (New York, 2003), p. 32. Richard Mulgan is another who offers a Constantean view. See R. Mulgan, Liberty in Ancient Greece, in Conceptions of Liberty in Political Philosophy, ed. Z. Pelcynski and J. Gray (London, 1984), pp. 726. As do P. Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern (Chapel Hill, 1992), pp. 39, 45, and O. Murray, Liberty and the Ancient Greeks, in The Good Idea: Democracy in Ancient Greece, ed. J.A. Koumoulides (New Rochelle, 1995), pp. 3355. Jrgen Habermas and John Rawls, two of the foremost political philosophers of our time, accept Constants dichotomy. J. Habermas, On the Internal Relation between the Rule of Law and Democracy, in J. Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, ed. C. Cronin and P. De Greif (Cambridge, 1999), p. 258; J. Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Harvard, 2001), 43. 3, p. 143. Although, see J. Dunn, Liberty as a Substantive Political Value, in J. Dunn, Interpreting Political Responsibility: Essays 19811989 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 6184.
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admiration as that which Benjamin Constant gave in 1819.6 Even those who have suggested that the difference between the ancient and the modern worlds is not as great as is commonly thought7 have made no attempt to answer Constant himself and have, if anything, clouded the issue further.8
6 A. Momigliano , Liberty and Peace in the Ancient World, in A. Momigliano, Nono Contributo alla Storia degli Studi Classici e del Mondo Antico (Rome, 1992), p. 484. Momigliano often followed another famous Constantean analysis, that of Lord Acton. See Lord J.E.E. Dalberg Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity, in Selected Works of Lord Acton, Volume 1: Essays in the History of Liberty, ed. J. Rufus Fears (Indianapolis, 1985), pp. 528. 7 The work of Mogens Hansen and Robert Wallace has been of particular importance in challenging the idea that Athenians possessed little or no individual liberty. See M. Hansen, Was Athens a Democracy? Popular Rule, Liberty and Equality in Ancient and Modern Political Thought (Copenhagen, 1989); M. Hansen, The Ancient Athenian and the Modern Liberal View of Liberty as a Democratic Ideal, in Dmokratia, ed. Ober and Hedrick, pp. 91104; R.W. Wallace, Private Lives and Public Enemies: Freedom of Thought in Classical Athens, in Athenian Identity and Civic Ideology, ed. A.L. Boegehold and A.C. Scafuro (Baltimore, 1994), pp. 12755; R.W. Wallace, Law, Freedom, and the Concept of Citizens Rights in Democratic Athens, in Dmokratia, ed. Ober and Hedrick, pp. 10519; R.W. Wallace, Book Burning in Ancient Athens, in Transitions to Empire, ed. R.W. Wallace and E.M. Harris (Norman, 1996), pp. 22640; R.W. Wallace, On not Legislating Sexual Conduct in Fourth-Century Athens, in Symposion 1995, ed. G. Thr and J. Vlissaropoulos-Karakostas (Kln, 1997), pp. 15166. See also, J. Ober, Quasi Rights: Participatory Citizenship and Negative Liberties, in J. Ober, Athenian Legacies: Essays in the Politics of Going on Together (Princeton, 2005), pp. 92127. 8 Both Hansen and Wallace seem to think that Constant exempted Athens from his polemic. Hansen even says, like Benjamin Constant he [George Grote] emphasised the basic similarity between the Athenian and modern concepts of freedom, Hansen, Was Athens a Democracy?, p. 27 (cf. Hansen Ancient Athenian, p. 96; Wallace Law, Freedom, p. 118 n. 13). I think that this is mistaken. In an earlier essay (Constant, The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation and their Relation to European Civilisation (1814), in Constant: Political Writings, ed. B. Fontana (Cambridge, 1988), p. 103 with n. 3), Constant had exempted Athens, but in his (far more influential) essay of 1819 (the only one cited by Hansen and Wallace in their bibliographies and notes) he explicitly says, Athens . . . whose example might be opposed to some of my assertions, but which will in fact confirm all of them (Constant Liberty of the Ancients, p. 315). Nor is this mere quibbling. Alan Boyer, who cites Hansens article (A. Boyer, On the Modern Relevance of Old Republicanism, The Monist, 84 (2001), p. 44 n. 28), says, one hardly ever quotes those passages in Constants lecture where he perspicuously presents the proximity, as seen by him, between Athens and modern societies (ibid., p. 32). The nearest Constant came to this was saying that Athens allowed its citizens more freedom than Sparta or Rome (Constant, Liberty of the Ancients, p. 315), but he still drew a sharp distinction, as the passage just quoted demonstrates. See also Constant, Liberty of the Ancients, p. 316 the individual was much more subservient to the supremacy of the social body in Athens, than he is in any of the free states of Europe today.
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Constants central premise was that the ancients, taken as a whole, had no conception of the idea of individual liberty that he, and (he said) the moderns, so prized.9 The liberty of the ancients, he said,
consisted in exercising collectively, but directly, several parts of the complete sovereignty; in deliberating, in the public square, over war and peace; in forming alliances with foreign governments; in voting laws, in pronouncing judgements; in examining the accounts, the acts, the stewardship of the magistrates; in calling them to appear in front of the assembled people, in accusing, condemning or absolving them. But if this was what the ancients called liberty (que ctait l ce que les anciens nommaient libert) they admitted as compatible with this collective freedom the complete subjection of the individual to the authority of the community.10
Further,
the aim of the ancients was the sharing of social power among the citizens of the same fatherland: this is what they called liberty (ctait l ce quils nommaient libert). The aim of the moderns is the enjoyment of security in
9 I do not have the space here (nor is it my purpose) to discuss the intellectual and political context in which Constant was writing. An (inadequate) attempt to do so was made in M. Edge, The Road to Modern Liberty: Freedom and Democracy, Athenian and Modern (unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2006), ch. 2. There is now a great deal of interesting work on Constant, much of it in French. The Annales Benjamin Constant are an essential source of information on all things Constantean, political, literary, economic, philosophical and biographical, covering the entire range of themes and contexts related to this eclectic thinker. In English, the major biographical works remain B. Fontana, Benjamin Constant and the Post-Revolutionary Mind (New Haven, 1991) (cf. B. Fontana Introduction to Constant: Political Writings, ed. B. Fontana (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 142) and S. Holmes, Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism (New Haven, 1984). Any analysis of the context of Constants famous text of 1819 would have to begin with two things. Firstly, the attack on Rousseau and Mably regarding their attempts to introduce outdated modes of ancient thought into modern France at the time of the revolution, which Constant believed resulted in untold bloodshed. Secondly, and in relation to this, the school of thought Constant was following he was far from being the first to find such a distinction between the liberty of the ancients and the liberty of the moderns, even if he was the first to develop it properly into a fully coherent analysis. Interestingly, the writers whom Constant followed in this, in particular Hobbes, Hume and Adam Smith, confronted a very similar problem, namely they, too, were attacking writers who scoured ancient texts for an analysis of liberty. Hobbes, too, blamed such excavations for the English Civil War and its accompanying horrors. See T. Hobbes, Leviathan (Oxford, 1996), 21, especially 89, pp. 1424. 10 Constant, Liberty of the Ancients, p. 311. Note also that it is already not at all clear how the one (subjection of the individual to the community) follows a priori from the other (collective political freedom, i.e. democracy). Mere involvement in democratic politics would not seem, to me, to constitute a necessary violation of individual liberty. Far from it in fact, as is discussed throughout.

private pleasures; and they call liberty the guarantees accorded by institutions to these pleasures.11
It is this aspect, what the ancients called (nommaient) liberty, I want to focus on here. The reason for doing so is also to answer a number of claims made by Isaiah Berlin, notably his point that I do not say that the ancient Greeks did not in fact enjoy a great measure of what we should today call individual liberty. My thesis is only that the notion had not explicitly emerged.12 As I have said, this remains the prevailing view. Indeed, David Miller could still write, in his introduction to a revised Liberty Reader in 2006, that
although (as he [Constant] himself concedes) the ancient city-states, and especially Athens, did in practice grant their citizens a measure of civil liberty, this was not the attribute that they primarily thought of and valued when they spoke of liberty. Freedom meant for them a social status, first and foremost the position of someone who was not a slave, but beyond that the status of a citizen in a self-governing state.13
Constants polemic also lent further support to the popular claim that participatory, Athenian-style, democracy is the natural enemy of individual liberty. This has gained even greater currency through Berlins mapping of his own analysis onto Constants, resulting in the equation of democracy (and, concomitantly, the liberty of the ancients) with the Berlinean concept of positive freedom. This has just served to complicate the issue still further. Participatory democracy, and participatory accounts of liberty, now tend to be seen as the exemplification of positive liberty. To quote Pettit, Constants modern liberty is Berlins negative liberty, and his ancient liberty the liberty of belonging to a democratically self-governing community is the most prominent variety of Berlins positive conception.14 Berlin does spend some time in Two Concepts of Liberty (and elsewhere) depicting democratic participation as central to positive conceptions of liberty,15 but it is misleading to suggest that it is, in Berlins account, the most prominent aspect of positive accounts of freedom. Far more prominent in Berlins account of positive liberty is the notion of the two selves. This idea (familiar to students of Plato16), Berlin believed, had
Constant, Liberty of the Ancients, p. 317. I. Berlin, Introduction to Berlin, Liberty (Oxford, 2002), p. 34. 13 D. Miller, Introduction to The Liberty Reader (Edinburgh, 2006), p. 7. He cites Mulgan, Liberty in Ancient Greece, for support. 14 Pettit, Republicanism, p. 18 (my italics). See also, for example, S. Holmes, Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of Liberal Democracy (Chicago, 1995), p. 10. 15 See, especially, Berlin, Two Concepts, pp. 20812, with, importantly, pp. 1778. See also Berlin Liberty, pp. 2836. 16 See Edge, Road to Modern Liberty, pp. 10716.
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sinister connotations.17 Positive liberty theorists, in Berlins account, hold to a theory of the human psyche as possessing two selves, a lower and a higher. The lower self is typically identified with the base passions, with raging, uncontrollable, hungers and passions, whereas the higher is typically identified with rationality or reason.18 Freedom, or true freedom, is then identified, in these accounts, with the mastery, or conquest, of the higher self over the lower and the resulting suppression of the (so-called) base passions or desires.19 There are two main problems with this situation. Firstly, Constant will not himself be found speaking about liberty in this way (even if he had a similar point in mind); there is nothing of the divided self in his essay of 1819. His main emphasis was political, not metaphysical. He was worried, as Hobbes had been before him, that various writers and thinkers were looking back anachronistically to a long-forgotten time, with a vastly different web of belief, in order to resurrect a dormant analysis of freedom. Regarding the consequences of this, he is certainly in agreement with Berlins analysis of positive liberty. Both thinkers believed that the two conceptions of liberty they were opposing were responsible for untold evil, but they were, largely, still concerned about two different things. Berlins positive liberty is not Constants ancient liberty simpliciter. Secondly, and more importantly, Athenian democrats will not be found speaking about liberty in the manner of the divided self, as will soon become clear. This is not to say that the doctrine did not exist in ancient Greece. It did, and, interestingly, it existed in the thought of democracys opponents. Indeed, the democratic conception of liberty I will go on to discuss was partly a refuge from such attempts (by oligarchic sympathizers) to locate correct action (or rationality or reason) in the mastery of the higher self and the political consequences of this. This point has not received the attention it deserves and I regret not being able to discuss it in
17 I have discussed the problem of positive liberty at length elsewhere and have tried to provide a solution to it. See M. Edge, On Freedom (forthcoming). 18 See Berlin, Two Concepts, pp. 178 ff.; Berlin, Introduction, pp. 3054. 19 The sinister twist Berlin identified is this: If I have managed to master the raging passions of my lower self, and have attained true, or correct, rationality (the better, or even true, state of being) and freedom, I am justified in coercing you, on freedoms behalf, to follow suit. You are a human being, you desire freedom, the argument runs, therefore, whether you know it or not (because you are still under the constraints of your poor lower self), I am perfectly justified in coercing you to follow the true path even if I have to drag you down it kicking and screaming. I know better than you what your own best interest is and am, therefore, perfectly justified in doing all I can to enlighten you. I can, to paraphrase Rousseau, force you to be free. Cf. I. Berlin, Freedom and Its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty (Oxford, 2002); J.J. Rousseau, The Social Contract, in Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, ed. G.D.H. Cole (Oxford, 1973), I. 7, p. 195. Kant says much the same thing. Cf. I. Kant, Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent, in I. Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, trans. T. Humphrey (Indianapolis, 1983), p. 33.
detail here.20 However, for now the point to bear in mind is that Athenian democrats did not speak about liberty in the positive manner described by Berlin. I will discuss some further consequences of all this in the conclusion. One final note by way of introduction. The terrain of scholarly literature regarding the question of liberty in ancient Greece and in ancient Athens has become a great deal more fertile during the past couple of decades. As well as the important work (discussed above, nn.7 f.) by Mogens Hansen and Robert Wallace, notable books and articles have been published on the subject since the end of the Second World War. Stimulating books have been published by Max Pohlenz, Jacqueline de Romilly and Orlando Patterson,21 and a number of articles has appeared, the work of Moses Finley and Ellen Wood being of a special quality and importance.22 However, the one name which stands out above all others is that of Kurt Raaflaub who, in 2004, published the first English edition of his magisterial 1985 German book Die Entdeckung der Freiheit,23 a vast, scholarly, work demonstrating a profound grasp of philology, history,
It is fully discussed in Edge, Road to Modern Liberty, ch. 4; and M. Edge, Two Concepts of Democracy (forthcoming). See also pp. 445 below. 21 M. Pohlenz, Freedom in Greek Life and Thought (Dordrecht, 1966); J. De Romilly, Grce Antique la Dcouverte de la Libert (Paris, 1989). O. Patterson, Freedom, Volume 1: Freedom in the Making of Western Culture (London, 1991), is also, like Moses Finley, concerned with the development, hand in hand, of freedom and slavery. 22 Finley was particularly concerned with the relationship between freedom and slavery and produced a number of immensely influential articles on the subject. See, especially, M. Finley, The Freedom of the Citizen in the Greek World, in M. Finley, Economy and Society in Ancient Greece (London, 1981), pp. 7794. Woods work has perhaps not been as influential as it deserves. The debt which I owe to her two articles will be apparent throughout. These are E. Wood, Demos vs. We, the People , and E. Wood, Democracy: An Idea of Ambiguous Ancestry, in Athenian Political Thought and the Reconstruction of American Democracy, ed. J. Peter Euben, J.R. Wallach and J. Ober (Ithaca, 1994), pp. 5980. See also E. Wood, Peasant-Citizen and Slave: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy (London, 1988), pp. 12637. Other works (aside from those already mentioned above) include, K.J. Dover, The Freedom of the Intellectual in Greek Society, Talanta, 7 (1976), pp. 2454; F. Hartog, The Concept of Liberty in Antiquity and Modern Times: The French Revolution and Antiquity, in Greeks and Romans in the Modern World, ed. R.-P. Droit (New York, 1998), pp. 97112; M. Ostwald, Freedom and the Greeks, in The Origins of Modern Freedom in the West, ed. R.W. Davis (Stanford, 1995), pp. 3563. See also J. Dunn, Setting the People Free: The Story of Democracy (London, 2005). 23 K. Raaflaub, The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece (Chicago, 2004). The vast bibliography is also testimony to the large amount of work done on this subject and those subjects closely related to it. All of Raaflaubs related publications can be found cited there, but see especially K. Raaflaub, Democracy, Oligarchy and the Concept of the Free Citizen in Late Fifth-Century Athens, Political Theory, 11 (1983), pp. 51744; K. Raaflaub, Contemporary Perceptions of Democracy in Fifth-Century Athens, Classica et Mediaevalia, 40 (1989), pp. 3370.
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philosophy and politics. The next year or so promises publication of two further books on interesting aspects of the topic by Wallace and Peter Liddel.24 Raaflaub begins his book by saying that he will not attempt to repeat efforts, undertaken recently by others, to compare ancient and modern concepts of freedom. The purpose of this book is to lay solid foundations for such broader investigations;25 and indeed it does, though there will be occasions on which I take issue with it. Equally, Raaflaub does not go beyond the fifth century and a vital part of the evidence for the present study comes from fourth-century oratory, so although there will be considerable overlap regarding the use of fifth-century texts between Raaflaubs work and mine, the same should not be the case regarding the fourth century.26 Despite this volume of literature, there is, I think, room for further study on the question of liberty in Greece in general and Athens in particular.27 Crucially, Constant still remains unanswered and the relationships between ancient and modern liberty and liberty and democracy in general remain confused. A great deal still remains to be written on the subject, and here I attempt to employ what is, I hope, a helpful approach to understanding the question raised by Constants famous essay.28 II An Athenian Democratic Concept of Liberty29 As I noted, in recent years, an older way of looking at the concept of liberty has been resurrected by the work of (in particular) Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit.30 Part of the motivation for doing so has been to answer one of Berlins contentions in his analysis of liberty.31
Wallace, as his articles suggest, is particularly concerned with the practice of individual liberty in Athens, including by non-citizen groups (women, metics and slaves). Liddel concentrates on the relationship between individual liberty and civic obligation in Classical Athens and its reception in Bulwer Lytton and Grote. I would like to thank both Professor Wallace and Dr Liddel for discussing their ideas with me. Liddels work is now available as Civic Obligation and Individual Liberty in Ancient Athens (Oxford, 2007). 25 Raaflaub, Discovery, 1.1, p. 2. 26 A further difference is that he seeks to deal with Greece as a whole, whereas I am concerned here solely with Classical Athens. 27 Nor do I claim that the present study could ever hope to fill the gap. 28 Although Constant was not the first to consider the relationship between ancient and modern liberty (see Edge, Road to Modern Liberty, pp. 418, 1257 and n. 9 above), his analysis remains the most influential. 29 I have deliberately used the indefinite a concept rather than the concept since I by no means wish to imply that all Athenians, even all Athenians who supported democracy, necessarily construed freedom in the same way. 30 See the literature cited in n. 2 above. 31 See, especially, Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, pp. 113 ff.
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Liberty in this [negative] sense is not incompatible with some kinds of autocracy, or at any rate with the absence of self-government. Liberty in this sense is principally concerned with the area of control, not with its source. Just as a democracy may, in fact, deprive the individual citizen of a great many liberties which he might have in some other form of society, so it is perfectly conceivable that a liberal-minded despot would allow his subjects a large measure of personal freedom.32
On this point, Berlin was following a line of thought that runs back at least to Hobbes. Hobbes famously said,
There is written on the turrets of the city of Lucca in great characters at this day, the word LIBERTAS; Yet no man can thence infer, that a particular man has more liberty, or immunity from the service of the commonwealth there, than in Constantinople. Whether a commonwealth be monarchical, or popular, the freedom is still the same.33
A once-prominent school of thought offered a different analysis of the point, and this has become known as the republican, neo-Roman or neo-Classical concept of individual liberty.34 The work of Skinner and Pettit has brought this rival conception of liberty back to the surface of historical and political enquiry during recent years, tracing its origins to the Roman republic, or, possibly, Aristotle.35 The idea that it, in fact, goes back to ancient Greece, as I wish to argue here, has not, to my knowledge, been systematically explored before.36
Berlin, Two Concepts, p. 176. Hobbes, Leviathan, 21.8, p. 143. 34 I employ the latter term throughout. 35 Some useful passages for the neo-Classical concept of liberty in Republican Rome are (for example): Cicero, De Rep. 1.28.434, Flacc. 11.25, Phil. 8.4.12; Livy, 1.17.34, 1.60.34, 2.12. For Aristotle, cf. Skinner, Classical Liberty, pp. 1112, 223 (cf. Boyer, Modern Relevance, p. 31). However, note also Eric Nelsons analysis in The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought (Cambridge, 2004), p. 10, with which I am inclined to agree. I do not see the idea of liberty as non-dependence being central to Aristotles own thought in the same way it was to later neo-Classical theorists. 36 Although a number of classicists and political theorists have noted that the Athenians did endorse a view of liberty as non-dependence, these remarks are generally isolated and there are a number of issues that have not really been systematically explored. See, for example, J. Dunn, The Transcultural Significance of Athenian Democracy, in Colloque International Dmocratie Athnienne et Culture, ed. M. Sakellariou (Athens, 1996), pp. 1056; C. Farrar, The Origins of Democratic Thinking (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 78, 11, 20; J. Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens (Princeton, 1998), pp. 6, 3689; K. Raaflaub, Zeus Eleutherios, Dionysus the Liberator, and the Athenian Tyrannicides: Anachronistic Uses of Fifth-Century Political Concepts, in Polis and Politics: Studies in Ancient Greek History Presented to Mogens Hansen on his Sixtieth Birthday, ed. P. Flensted-Jensen, T. Heine Nielsen and L. Rubinstein (Copenhagen, 2000), pp. 253, 265; Wood, Peasant Citizen, p. 133; Wood, Demos vs. We, The People , p. 135. Note, however, Raaflaub, Discovery, pp. 535, 89102, 20349. One
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As Skinner explains, what the neo-Roman writers repudiate avant la lettre is the key assumption of classical liberalism to the effect that force or the coercive threat of it constitute the only forms of constraint that interfere with individual liberty.37 James Harrington, in his direct reply to the passage from Hobbes I have just quoted, provides a neat illustration of this.
To say that a Lucchese hath no more liberty or immunity from the laws of Lucca than a Turk hath from those of Constantinople, and to say that a Lucchese hath no more liberty or immunity by the laws of Lucca than a Turk hath by those of Constantinople, are pretty different speeches. The first may be said of all governments alike, the second scarce of any two; much less of these, seeing it is known that whereas the greatest bashaw is a tenant, as well of his head as of his estate, at the will of his lord, the meanest Lucchese that hath land is a freeholder of both, and not to be controlled but by the law.38
The central contention of the neo-Classical writers is that, the moment you surrender self-government to a monarch (or an outside power, or, indeed, both), where law and the monarchs will are one and the same, you place yourself in a condition of dependence upon that will and, therefore, immediately and absolutely render yourself a slave. This restricts your liberty (what you feel free to do and to say, and where you feel free to go) simply because the very opportunity for the use of coercive force is enough to create the fear that your action could displease the monarch (because, among other things, the will of the monarch and the law are one and the same).39 Similarly, as the passages I will shortly quote illustrate, the fear that the monarch could suddenly, and at will, revoke all privileges and rights and completely change character had a like effect on what you felt inclined and free to do. It might, for example, in a familiar analogy used by neo-Classical writers, make you less industrious. This was a conception of liberty that was employed by various writers, for various purposes, a number of times throughout history, from the time of the Italian city-republics, through to the English Civil War and, later, the American and
article (Boyer, Modern Relevance) which does discuss the link in slightly greater detail seems rather to be concerned with the practice, as opposed to the theory, of individual liberty in Athens. See Boyer, Modern Relevance, pp. 31 ff. A link between Athens and the work of Skinner and Pettit is scarcely visible in the secondary literature. 37 Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, p. 84. 38 J. Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana and A System of Politics, ed. J.G.A. Pocock (Cambridge, 1992), p. 20. 39 Or, in some cases, narrow junta, such as the Medici government in Florence. Cf., for example, A. Rinuccini, Liberty, in Humanism and Liberty: Writings on Freedom from Fifteenth-Century Florence, ed. R. Neu Watkins (Columbia, 1977), pp. 193223, which provides just such an analysis of how the arbitrary nature of the Medici government restricted what one felt free to do and to say.
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French Revolutions and I regret not being able to do justice here to the range of arguments and contexts in which it was utilized.40 One of its most famous (and, indeed, influential41) appearances occurs in Machiavellis Discourses, where Machiavelli says he will concentrate on those cities that are governed in accordance with their wishes.42 In an important passage at the beginning of Book 2, Machiavelli goes on to illustrate, echoing Sallust,43 an important theme of the neo-Classical analysis of liberty, namely, that freedom from dependence upon the will of an over-mighty monarch has
40 I discuss it in slightly greater detail in Edge, Road to Modern Liberty, pp. 4859, but this analysis is heavily indebted to Skinners work. Skinner has discussed the appearance of this theory in all of these contexts (with, I think, the exception of the French Revolution). See the works cited in n. 2 above. For some examples of the neo-Classical idea of liberty (aside from those texts I cite above), see, for instance: F. Guicciardini, Dialogue on the Government of Florence, ed. A. Brown (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 7, 1617, 18, 35, 846; Guicciardini, How the Popular Government should be Reformed, in Cambridge Translations of Renaissance Philosophical Texts, Volume 2: Political Philosophy, ed. J. Kraye (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 201, 205, 206, 214; J. Milton, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, in Milton, Political Writings, ed. M. Dzelzainis (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 328; Milton, The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, in The Struggle for Sovereignty: Seventeenth-Century English Political Tracts, Volume 1, ed. J.L. Malcolm (Indianapolis, 1999), pp. 50525; M. Nedham, The Excellencie of a Free State (London, 1767); R. Price, Two Tracts on Civil Liberty, the War with America, and the Debts and Finances of the Kingdom, in R. Price, Political Writings, ed. D.O. Thomas (Cambridge, 1991), e.g. pp. 1516, 22, 24, 26, 29, 70, 77, 845 (cf. below); J. Priestley, The Present State of Liberty in Great Britain and Her Colonies, in J. Priestley, Political Writings, ed. P.N. Miller (Cambridge, 1993); Rinuccini, Liberty; M. Robespierre, Rapport sur les Principes de Morale Politique qui Doivent Guider la Convention, in Discours et Rapports de Robespierre, ed. C. Vellay (Paris, 1908), pp. 327, 333, 334, 335; L.L. De Saint-Just, Speech of 13th November 1792, in Regicide and Revolution: Speeches at the Trial of Louis XVI, ed. M. Walzer (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 1207; L.L. De St. Just, Esprit de la Rvolution et de la Constitution de France, in Saint-Just, 2uvres Compltes, ed. M. Duval (Paris, 1984), pp. 290, 296, 3389. 41 Cf. Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism , pp. 10, 467. The classic analysis of the entire Machiavellian context remains, of course, J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975). 42 N. Machiavelli, Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy, trans. L.J. Walker (London, 1970), 1.2, pp. 1045. 43 Sallust, Bel. Cat. 7.14: At that time [the expulsion of the kings], every man began to lift his head higher and to have his talents more in readiness. For kings hold the good in greater suspicion than the wicked, and to them the merit of others is always fraught with danger; still the free state, once liberty (libertas) was won, became incredibly strong and great in a remarkably short time, such was the thirst for glory that had filled mens minds.
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an immediate and direct effect on the citizens pursuit of individual liberty.44 Machiavelli says,
it is easy to see how this affection of peoples for self-government comes about, for experience shows that cities have never increased in dominion or wealth, unless they have been independent. It is truly remarkable to observe the greatness which Athens attained in the space of a hundred years after it had been liberated from the tyranny of Peisistratus. But most marvellous of all is it to observe the greatness which Rome attained after freeing itself from its kings.45
Skinner discusses the debt this passage owes to the beginning of Sallusts Bellum Catilinae46 but does not mention the fact that Sallusts remarks themselves appear to resemble Herodotos description of Athens liberation from the tyrants in Book 5 of his Histories. I in no way wish to deny that the later neo-Classical tradition owed a far heavier debt to Roman, as opposed to Greek, sources,47 but this does provide a good example of the common ground between Greek writers and the later analyses.48 Herodotos begins his story of Harmodius and Aristogeiton and the end of the Peisistratidae by saying that he will show how Athens had become free (eleuthera) from the tyrants (tyrannoi).49 He had already, in Book 1, relayed the story of Peisistratos second return, where the would-be dictator was joined at Marathon, while camped there, by those who were in his faction and also by those from the country who were more welcoming to tyranny than freedom (eleutheria).50 At the end of his narration of the liberation, Herodotos affirms,
44 Other examples of this theme can be found in, for example: Demophilus [George Bryan], The Genuine Principles of the Ancient Saxon, or English Constitution, in American Political Writing During the Founding Era, 17601805, Volume 1, ed. C.S. Hyneman and D.S. Lutz (Indianapolis, 1983), p. 355; Guicciardini, Dialogue, pp. 856; Price, Two Tracts, pp. 845; Rinuccini, Liberty, p. 205. 45 Machiavelli, Discourses, 2.2, p. 275. 46 See Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, pp. 613. 47 For a different story of the republican tradition and its utilization of Greek sources, see Nelson, Greek Tradition. 48 Nor were later writers wholly averse to citing Greek writers in their analysis of liberty. John Milton, for example, cites Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophokles. See Milton, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, p. 12; J. Milton, A Defence of the People of England, in Milton, Political Writings, ed. Dzelzainis, pp. 1635. 49 Hdt. 5.55. Cf. 5.78. The full story of the liberation is at Hdt. 5.5565. Herodotos again says (after a typical digression) in 5.62 that he is showing how the Athenians were freed (eleutherthesan) from the tyrants. 50 Hdt. 1.62. It is worth bearing in mind that Herodotos still contrasts freedom and tyranny here even though he had said that in his first tyranny Peisistratos had ruled the city serviceably and well (kalos te kai eu, Hdt. 1.59.

the Athenians were released from the tyrants; and all the noteworthy things that they did or endured, after they were freed (eleutherthentes) and before Ionia revolted from Darius and Aristagoras of Miletos came to Athens to ask help of its people these first I will now declare. Athens, which had before been great, grew greater still when released from the tyrants.51
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He then goes on to explain, in the passage which foreshadows Sallust, why Athens had become great.
Thus grew the power of Athens, and it is clear not from one but from many things that equality of freedom of speech ( isegoria) is an excellent thing; seeing that whilst they were under the tyrants the Athenians were no better in war than any of their neighbours yet once they were released from the tyrants they were far and away the first of all. This, then, shows that while they were bridled ( katekh) they were deliberately slack, since they were working for a master (despotes), but when they were freed (eleutherthentn) each one was zealous to achieve for himself.52
He adds that this caused great consternation among the Spartans. The Lakedaimonians, when they regained the oracles and saw the Athenians increasingly in power and in no way ready to obey them and realising that were the Attic race free (eleutheros) it would be a match for their own, but were it bridled (katekh) under tyranny it would be weak and obedient.53 Herodotos here presents a nice illustration of the claim, often used by the later neo-Classical tradition, that living in a state of dependence upon the will of a tyrant not only renders you straightforwardly unfree, but has a notable, and immediate, negative effect on your individual liberty.54 A similar idea was expressed, but, intriguingly, in different terminology,55 by the author of the Hippokratic treatise, the Airs, Water, Places.
Hdt. 5.656. Hdt. 5.78. Herodotos, although he is offering a genuine, and important, piece of Athenian democratic ideology here, as we shall soon see, may be being a little anachronistic. It is doubtful whether every Athenian citizen had the right to speak in the political arena at this time (510508 BC). See J. Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (Princeton, 1989), pp. 723. But see M.H. Hansen, The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes (Norman, 1999), pp. 33, 83. 53 Hdt. 5.91. 54 See also, for example, Herodotos story of Maiandrios, who attempted to relinquish the tyranny of Samos. Herodotos reports Maiandrios as proclaiming isonomia, equality under the law, and as finishing off his speech with the words I bestow freedom (eleutheri) upon you, Hdt. 3.142. However, the Samians, Herodotos tells us, did not wish to be free (eleutheroi) and remained under tyranny, Hdt. 3.143. Compare Hdt. 1.62. See also Raaflaub, Discovery, p. 101. 55 This appears never to have taken off. The Athenian writers, who I discuss below, do not use autonomia but eleutheria to express freedom from dependence upon masters (despotai). This is significant in itself. This, it seems to me, is because eleutheria, freedom, expresses a much wider condition than autonomia, which (literally) means giving
52 51
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Now where men are not their own masters nor self-governing (autonomoi), but are ruled by masters (despotai), they are not keen on military efficiency but on not appearing warlike. For the risks they run are not similar. Subjects are likely to be forced to undergo military service, fatigue and death, in order to benefit their masters, and to be parted from their wives, their children and their friends. All their worthy, brave deeds merely serve to aggrandise and raise up their masters, while the harvest they themselves reap is danger and death.56
He went on:
all the inhabitants of Asia, whether Greek or non-Greek, who are not ruled by masters (despotai), but are self-governing (autonomoi), toiling for their own advantage, are the most warlike of all men. For it is for their own sakes that they run their risks, and in their own persons do they receive the prizes of their valour as likewise the penalty of their cowardice.57
The notion of freedom from dependence upon the will of an arbitrary ruler is visible in a number of other Greek writers, for instance in Plutarchs description of the liberation of Syracuse from Dionysius II in his Life of Dion,58 and in Diodorus Siculus narration of the same event in Book 16 of his
laws to oneself. Eleutheria as freedom from masters, as I hope to show, is a much wider and deeper principle than merely living under ones own laws. As Ostwald says, we may conclude that a state is autonomos when it is left free to exercise on its own the most rudimentary powers necessary for its survival. In practice it means that it can exercise its own decisions, free from violent interference by a stronger state, about what is, and what is not in the interests of its survival, and that it can dispose of the military means necessary to implement measures necessary to ensure its survival. M. Ostwald, Autonomia: Its Genesis and Early History (American Philological Association, American Classical Studies, 11 (1982)), p. 29. For more on autonomia see Ostwald, Autonomia, passim; Farrar, Origins, pp. 8, 30, 1035; Raaflaub, Discovery, pp. 14760. It remains interesting that the author of Airs, Water, Places uses autonomoi here. I, at least, would expect eleutheroi. 56 Hipp. Aer. 16.1728. 57 Hipp. Aer. 16.339. Consider also the following important passage. In such a climate [see Hipp. Aer. 23.112] arise wildness, unsociability and spirit. For the frequent shocks to the mind impart wildness, destroying tameness and gentleness. For this reason, I think, Europeans are also more courageous than Asiatics. For uniformity (paraplsia) engenders slackness, while variation fosters endurance in both body and soul; rest and slackness are food for cowardice, endurance and exertion for bravery. Wherefore Europeans are more warlike and also because of their laws (nomoi), not being under kings (basileis) as are Asiatics, Hipp. Aer. 23.1933. Aside from the typically prejudiced tone of this passage towards Asia and the Persians (for which see E. Hall, Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy (Oxford, 1989)) it is nonetheless important for a question raised, but regrettably not answered, by the great Arnaldo Momigliano regarding what the Greeks thought, if at all, about individuality. See Murray, Liberty, p. 51. This is, indeed, an important question on which more work might usefully be done. Cf. Edge, Road to Modern Liberty, pp. 17982. 58 See esp. Plut. Dion. 4.2, 6.34, 22.1, 27.3, 28.3, 29.1, 2, 30.1, 31.3, 50.2.
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history,59 both much later than the passages under consideration here. I wish, therefore, to turn to a particular appearance of this idea of liberty in Classical Athens. The Athenian democratic writers whom I will discuss went an important step further than the thinkers of the later neo-Classical tradition.60 Like the theorists of the later neo-Classical tradition, the Athenian theory claims that to be free as an individual you need to live in a self-governing community free from dependence upon the arbitrary rule of a tyrant, or, indeed, in the Athenian democratic theory, oligarchs. Unlike the later neo-Classical theorists, however, the Athenian democratic writers claimed that the only way you could be free as an individual was to live as the citizen of a democracy, the only constitution that adhered to a vital aspect in their eyes of the concept of what it meant to be free political equality. This has already been seen in the passage from Herodotos quoted above. The central claim of the Athenian democratic theory, in other words, is that the moment you surrender your political equality and allow yourself to be governed by others, whether tyrants or oligarchs, you are no longer under your own will and, therefore, straightforwardly enslaved, since you are naturally and immediately under the control of others, who are, therefore, free to decide on your behalf and are then, as a result, able to impose and exercise stricter control upon you. As in the later neo-Classical tradition, freedom meant independence from the will of another. Being subject to anothers will rendered you straightforwardly unfree. This applied to individuals and cities alike. As the Thucydidean Perikles explains in his first ekklesia speech, it means enslavement (doulsin) just the same when either the greatest or the least claim is imposed by peers (homoin) upon their neighbours, not by an appeal to justice but by dictation.61 The same idea is expressed in a number of our extant tragedies. In Euripides Herakleidae, it is noted a number of times throughout the play that Athens is free (eleuthera), that is to say not subject to the will of another polis but able to follow her own will and, therefore, able to refuse to give up the suppliants to Eurystheus.62 As Alkmene taunts Eurystheus towards the end of the play, you found men and a polis who were free (eleutheros), who did not fear you.63 Demophon, the king of Athens, had earlier said that Athens will not be free (eleuthera) if he betrays the suppliants through fear of the
59 Dio. Sic. 16.9.3, 5, 16.10.3, 16.11.1, 2, 16.12.3, 5, 16.16.2, 16.17.3. He had already narrated, in Book 1, the liberation of Syracuse and other Sicilian poleis from the tyrant Thrasybulus. On the complexities of Syracusan history and democracy see, most recently, N. Rutter, Syracusan Democracy: Most Like the Athenian?, in Alternatives to Athens, ed. R. Brock and S. Hodkinson (Oxford, 2000), pp. 13751. 60 I discuss this step further below. 61 Thuc. 1.141.1. See also Thuc. 2.61.1; 2.63.1. 62 See Eur. Herakl. 612, 113, 1978, 2436, 2867. 63 Ibid., 9578.
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Argives.64 Our polis, Demophon thunders, is not a subject (hupkoon) of Argos, but free (eleuthera).65 Similarly in the Supplices, the Theban Herald rebukes Theseus: do not, from anger at my words, make some boastful answer on slender grounds, claiming that you live in a free city (eleuthera polis).66 The same idea is behind the chorus exhortation in Sophokles Oedipus at Kolonos that, if Kreon is successful in dragging away Oidipus, Antigone and Ismene, I no longer consider this a polis.67 As Lysias later succinctly put it, they [our ancestors] believed it to be a mark of freedom (eleutheria) to do nothing against ones will.68 Just as the Roman republican writers linked their freedom (libertas) to the expulsion of the kings,69 Athenians often linked their liberty to the expulsion of the tyrants in 510 BC. The same is also true regarding the later expulsion of the oligarchic junta, the tyranny of the Thirty, in 404, but I shall return to this in due course. Thucydides, for example, speaks of how, under the first oligarchy (of the Four Hundred in 411 BC), the Athenians were deprived of the freedom (eleutheria) which had been won at the time when the tyrants were overthrown.70 A number of other passages suggest the same.71 As in the later neo-Classical tradition, subjection to the will of a monarch was described as slavery (douleia). This idea goes at least as far back as Aeschylus. In the Persai of 472 BC, Queen Atossa asks the chorus who the master (despots) of the Athenians was.72 They are called neither slaves (douloi) nor servants of any man, the chorus of Persian elders replies.73 Later on, the messenger reports the Greek war cry at the battle of Salamis as free (eleutheroute) your fatherland, free (eleutheroute) your children, your wives . . ..74 The Persians had, as we are told at the start of the play, set out to enslave Greece.75 Athenian writers often noted that they would have been enslaved, had they been conquered by
Ibid., 2436. Ibid., 2867. 66 Eur. Supp. 4767. 67 Soph. OK. 879. 68 Lys. 2.14. 69 E.g. Livy 2.12; Sallust Bel. Cat. 7.14. Cf. 812 above. 70 Thuc. 8.68.4. Cf. 8.71.1. 71 See, for example, Dem. 17.34; Hdt. 5.55, 5.62, 5.656, 5.78, 5.91; Lyk. 1.61; Lys. 31.26, 31, 32. 72 Ais. Pers. 241. 73 Ibid., 242. 74 Ibid., 4034. What it might mean to free your wives and children is discussed below. 75 Ibid., 49.
65
64
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the Persians, and linked freedom to their victory, just as they did to the expulsion of the tyrants.76 I shall return to the Persai shortly. Similar ideas are repeated throughout the fifth and fourth centuries. As Euripides anachronistically democratic King Theseus says in the Supplices, the city is not ruled by one man, but is free (eleuthera).77 To be under the rule of one man, on the other hand, meant an end to liberty and enslavement.78 As Helen says, in her Euripidean eponymous play, in typically derogatory tones about non-Greeks, with barbarians (barbaroi) all are slaves except one.79 Just as with the Persian invasion, Athenian democrats also spoke of the threat of enslavement and, its opposite, freedom, were the threat to be averted at the hands of the Spartans during the Peloponnesian War80 and, in the fourth century, in the face of Macedonian imperialism.81 In a later development, oligarchy, too, was subsumed under the umbrella of this theory. In the fifth century it was tyranny that was particularly contrasted with democracy as the constitution which violated individual liberty through its lack of political equality, but oligarchy came increasingly to the fore in playing this role in the fourth century.82 However, the idea of enslavement at the hands of an oligarchy was certainly current at the end of the fifth century
76 See, for example, Dem. 14.312, 15.15; Lys. 2.21, 26, 33, 35, 412, 44, 46, 47, 55, 57, 5960. Defeat by the Persians would have meant external servitude (to an outside, conquering, power) as well as internal servitude to a monarch and, therefore, the effects of internal dependence as well (see below). The same is the case with Philip II in the fourth century (see n. 81 below). For the importance of the Persian wars in the development of freedom consciousness in Classical Greece, see Raaflaub, Discovery, pp. 5889. Cf. A. Momigliano, Persian Empire and Greek Freedom, in The Idea of Liberty, ed. A. Ryan (Oxford, 1979), pp. 13951. 77 Eur. Supp. 4045. Theseus, like Pelasgos in Aeschylus Supplices (of the 460s), is a king in name only, who needs to secure the support of the people, the demos, before he is able to act. See Ais. Supp. 3669, 397401; Eur. Supp. 3523, 4068. 78 There are a large number of passages where this is noted. See for example (a number of these are quoted in full in my text): Eur. Bakkh. 803; Eur. Her. 251 (cf. 270); Eur. Phoi. 520, 5245 (cf. 628); Hyp. 2. Phil. Fr. 21.10; Lyk. 1.125. Cf. Dem. 50.4; Hyp. 2. Phil. Fr. 1; Soph. OT. 410 (cf. 630). The philosopher Demokritos said something similar in a famous fragment: Poverty in a democracy is as preferable to what is called prosperity under autocracy as freedom is to slavery, Demokritos Fr. 16 Waterfield (= DK 68b 251). 79 Eur. Hel. 276. Note also the much-quoted utterance of Iphigenia: It is fair that Greeks rule over barbarians (barbaroi), but not barbarians over Greeks, mother. For whilst the former are slaves ( douloi), the latter are free ( eleutheroi). Eur. IA. 14001. 80 See especially Thuc. 2.61.1 with Hornblowers commentary in S. Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides (2 vols., Oxford, 19916), 1, p, 331. 81 Again there is a large number of passages where this is attested. See, for example, Dem. 1.5, 23, 2.8, 3.20, 8.46, 49, 60, 62, 9.22, 36, 59, 66, 701, 10.25, 18.66, 68, 72, 295, 296, 305; Din. 1.19; Hyp. 6. Epit. 1011, 19, 24, 34 (cf. 37, 3940). 82 I largely agree with Raaflaub that, in the fifth century, the contrast to oligarchy was less pronounced, sometimes blurred, and thus probably less suitable for this purpose.
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(see below), and this is, again, hardly surprising given the turmoil experienced in various Greek cities at the time of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides classic account of stasis in Korkyra, and elsewhere, in Book 3 is a good illustration of this.83 Athens did not experience such oligarchic brutality until the end of the century, which is surely the reason for the somewhat later appearance of this contrast. However, this is not to say that the theory I am attempting to excavate would have suggested that it was possible to be free under an oligarchy even before the oligarchic revolutions. Far from it. The central claim I am examining is that it is only through conditions that obtain by the natural political equality inherent in a democracy that you can hope to be free.84 This does not change between the fifth and fourth centuries. Equally, this apparent trend could, at least in part, be put down to the survival of evidence. Tragedy, certainly, sought to emphasize the negative effects of monarchy and tyranny, rather than oligarchy, through the re-enactment of myth. But the source material for this was the actions and deeds of kings and princes, not oligarchs (at least generally speaking). Similarly, before 411, the history of freedom and brutality in Athens was predominantly one of tyranny and democracy, not oligarchy, but this changes. Lysias 20, written soon after the oligarchy of the Four Hundred, demonstrates this nicely. Already here is contained the idea that one of the motives for desiring an oligarchy is the opportunity it provides to do evil to ones fellow citizens. It is certainly unsurprising that, given its recent occurrence and accompanying brutality, fourth-century Athenians, who reflected this conception of liberty in their surviving writing, saw oligarchy as the greatest threat to individual freedom and sought to emphasize the contrast (with democracy) more. Not that, as we shall soon see, they forgot about tyranny either. As Lykourgos said, in ancient times our polis was enslaved (katedoulth) by the tyrants, and later by the Thirty, we were both freed (leutherthmen) from these things alike, and were thought worthy to be the guardians of the
After all, oligarchy like democracy came in many forms, and moderate oligarchies, based on considerable citizen participation, were close to moderate democracies, Raaflaub, Discovery, p. 204. See also Isok. 3.15. Whilst the last years of Hippias tyranny had taught the Athenians that the concentration of power in the hands of an individual had a severely negative effect on the lives and liberties of citizens (see, for example, Ath. Pol. 19.1; Hdt. 5.63), they were not to learn this lesson regarding oligarchy until the final decade of the fifth century, which saw two oligarchic coups. For the development of freedom consciousness in relation to tyranny and oligarchy see Raaflaub, Discovery, pp. 89102 and especially pp. 20349. For the brutality of the first oligarchic regime in 411 see Lys. 20.8; Thuc. 8.656, 8.70.2. For the brutality of the tyranny of the Thirty, which remained infamous throughout the fourth century, see, for example, Aiskhin. 3.235; And. 1.94, 3.10; Ath. Pol. 35.4, 37.1; Lys. 7.27, 12.52, 82, 83. 83 Thuc. 3.6985. 84 Cf. Raaflaub, Discovery, p. 248.
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well-being of the Greeks.85 Interestingly, the same idea had already been expressed, in relation to oligarchy, according to Thucydides, by the Syracusan democrat Athenagoras in the fifth century. Athenagoras admonishes the Syracusan oligarchs and says that the polis will not choose them as its rulers, since that would entail the citys falling into a self-appointed slavery (douleia) and losing its freedom (eleutheria).86 This is exactly what happened, at least in theory, to the Athenians at the end of the fifth century. They voted their own democracy out of existence and, indeed, fell into a self-appointed slavery.87 Lysias (who was active at the end of the fifth and the beginning of the fourth centuries) makes much of this. In Lysias 12, it is explicitly said that the vote in the ekklesia on the day of decision regarding whether or not to endorse the Thirty (in 404) was one of either freedom (eleutheria) or slavery (douleia),88 and Theramenes, one of the oligarchic leaders, is accused of twice enslaving Athens, first with the Four Hundred and, then, with the Thirty.89 Referring to the return of democracy, the speaker of Lysias 14 said your people (plthos), having returned, chased out the enemy and freed (leuthersen) even those of the citizens wishing to be slaves (boulomenous douleuein).90 The same idea appears in the Lysianic epitaphios. On the one hand they [the returning democrats] shared their freedom (eleutheria) even with those willing to be slaves (boulomenois douleuein), whilst themselves refusing to share the slavery (douleia) of the others.91 As I have already noted, just as the Athenians linked their freedom to the liberation from the tyrants, so they spoke similarly of their enslavement to the Thirty and of the subsequent liberation.92
Lyk. 1.61. Thuc. 6.40.2. 87 The story is told by Thuc. 8.69.1. What is especially interesting here is the atmosphere of fear created by the oligarchic conspirators before the formal vote (which no one opposed) to abolish the democratic constitution was held. See especially Thuc. 8.656 where he tells us that no one dared to speak out openly against the now powerful oligarchs and that anyone who did so was quietly disposed of. Cf. below on the claims that oligarchy had a notably negative effect on freedom of action and freedom of speech on the part of those citizens living under it. 88 Lys. 12.73. 89 Ibid. Cf. Lys. 13.17: Theramenes and the others, determining against you, understood that there were some people who would prevent the democracy being destroyed and would oppose this in the interests of freedom ( eleutheria). 90 Lys. 14.34. 91 Lys. 2.64. 92 Again this is noted by a large number of passages. See, for example, And. 2.27; Lys. 12.39, 67, 73, 78, 923, 94, 97, 13.17, 14.34, 18.6, 24, 27, 26.1920.
86
85
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As I have said, in the theory I am examining, you were considered to be enslaved when living as a citizen either of an oligarchy or a tyranny.93 You could hope to be free, it was claimed, only when you were living as the free and equal citizen of a democracy. The opinion of Phrynikhos, as reported by Thucydides, expresses nicely why this was so. With these [upper] classes in control, people could be put to death by violence and without a trial, whereas the democracy offered security to the ordinary man and kept the upper classes in their place.94 Living under tyrants or oligarchs placed you in a condition of dependence upon the will of your ruler(s). As Demosthenes said, every king (basileus) and tyrant (tyrannos) is the enemy of and opposed to freedom (eleutheria) and law (nomos).95 Hypereides, attacking Alexander in his epitaphios, pointed to the fact that a king could do anything he wanted. Must we suppose, Hypereides asked, that the whole world would be under one master (despotes), and Greece compelled to tolerate his whim (tropos) as law?96 Hypereides noted elsewhere that, living in a democratic state where justice is established by the laws is different from passing into the power of one tyrant where the caprice of an individual is supreme. We have either to put our trust in laws and so remember freedom or else to be surrendered to the power of one man and brood daily over slavery.97 This was an argument that went back to Herodotos fictional98 constitutional debate. The Persian democratic protagonist Otanes begins by asking, what right order is there to be found in monarchy (mounarkhi) when the ruler can do what he will nor be held to account for it?99 The monarch, Otanes goes on, removes the laws of the fatherland (patria), he commits violence towards women and he kills the undistinguished.100 The rule of the masses (plthos), however, grants equality before the law (isonomi).101
93 For oligarchy see also, for example (as before a number of these passages will be quoted in full in my text): Dem. 10.4, 15.19, 20, 20.108; Lys. 26.2, 34.23. Note also Plat. Rep. 569a, where Plato says that the people (dmos) support tyrants so that they might be liberated (eleutherthei) from the rule of the rich (plousioi) and the so-called better classes (kaln kagathn). 94 Thuc. 8.48.6. 95 Dem. 6.25. Note also that Demosthenes says that his aim in opposing Philip II was simply eleutheria. Dem. 6.25. 96 Hyp. 6. Epit. 20. 97 Hyp. Fr. D. 15 Burtt. 98 Although he insisted that it really happened. See Hdt. 3.80.1 with 6.43. 99 Hdt. 3.80. See also below. 100 Ibid. Interestingly, however, Otanes very unlike Euripides Theseus does not discuss eleutheria. Rather, it is Darius, who advocates monarchy, who claims that since it was the rule of one man who gave us freedom (eleutheri) monarchy (mounarkhi) should be preserved. This nicely reflects how different analyses of liberty did exist in ancient Greece. 101 Hdt. 3.80. Note how Herodotos does not use the word democracy (demokratia) here.
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Euripides employed the same line of thought in the Supplices. Theseus had already claimed that Athens was free because she was not ruled by one man but through political equality102 and he added that under a tyrant there were no common laws (nomoi koinoi). The laws were held in one mans hand and this is no longer equal (ison).103 The effects of this were the same as those Otanes spelled out, namely violence towards the citizens and their families. Written laws, on the other hand, provided equal justice (dik is) for rich and poor alike.104 In his (now lost) Antigone, Euripides also wrote, to rule without law, to be a tyrant (tyrannos), is neither reasonable or right. Even the wish is foolishness when a man wants to have sole power over his peers (homoioi).105 In his Euripidean eponymous play, Bellerophon also commented, I say myself that tyranny (tyrannida) kills very many men and deprives them of their possessions, and that tyrants break their oaths to ransack cities.106 Similar arguments were employed in the fourth century. Demosthenes, for example, said, the victims of tyranny may be seen executed without trial, as well as outraged in the persons of their wives and children.107 The speaker of Demosthenes 23 told the story of a certain Philiskos who occupied Greek poleis and acted like a tyrant (tyrannos), behaving unjustly towards free-born boys and committing hybris108 on women. He was, we are told, put to death by Thersagoras and Exekestos who had formed similar views to the Athenians about tyranny and wanted to free (eleutheroun) their fatherland.109 The speaker of
See above pp. 1617. See ff. on the importance of political equality. Eur. Supp. 42932. 104 Ibid., 4334. 105 Eur. Fr. 172 Nauck. Cf. Eur. Peliades fr. 608 Nauck. 106 Eur. Bellerophon Fr. 286 Collard, Cropp, Gilbert. 107 Dem. 17.34. A regrettably mutilated fragment of Hypereides epitaphios appears to be saying something very similar, especially given the context of the passage quoted above, p. 20. See Hyp. 6. Epit. 20. 108 For the meaning and uses of this term see, especially, N. Fisher, Hybris (Warminster, 1992). See also, for example, D. Cohen, Law, Violence and Community in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 143 ff. Hybris was a very wide-ranging term which covered many aspects of physical abuse, including rape, assault and other kinds of degrading and humiliating treatment. Intriguingly, the Athenians, in their law against hybris, included slaves under its protective scope. See Aiskhin. 1.1617; Dem. 21.47; Hyp. Fr. B. 37.1 Burtt (= fr. 120 Kenyon). 109 Dem. 23.1412. See also the claim, in the same speech, that Athens, a polis which was supposed to protect the freedom (eleutheria) of the people (see, importantly, 23.124), is sending out the wrong message by supporting a mercenary leader in the service of the Thracian king, 23.1389. See also Dem. 18.205: The son of his country is willing to die rather than to see her enslaved, and will look upon those outrages and indignities, which his enslaved (douleuousei) polis is compelled to endure, as more dreadful than death itself.
103
102
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Andokides 4110 cleverly employed a similar argument. He attempted to portray the younger Alkibiades, his (probably hypothetical) opponent, as the typical tyrant. He does not, the speaker claims, treat his own fellow Athenians on a basis of equality (ex isou), but robs them, strikes them, throws them into prisons, and extorts money from them, yes shows the democracy to be nothing better than a sham, by talking like a demagogue and acting like a tyrant (tyrannos).111 He had earlier narrated the story of Alkibiades treatment of a certain Agatharkhos whom he claims Alkibiades had imprisoned in his house. Both democracy, the speaker affirms, and freedom (eleutheria) were no use.112 Oligarchy was considered in a similar light. Whilst everyone in oligarchies, Demosthenes said,
both undoes the things which have been transacted and is sovereign (kyrios) and able to give orders concerning things of the future according to his whim, our laws, on the other hand, declare what must needs be concerning the future, having been settled by persuading people that they will be beneficial to those who live under them.113
Aiskhines (twice) stressed a similar idea.

There are agreed to be three kinds of government (politeia) among men, tyranny, oligarchy and democracy. Whilst tyrannies and oligarchies are governed by the fashions of their rulers, democratic cities are governed by fixed laws (nomoi). You know well, men of Athens, that whilst laws protect the bodies of democrats (dmokratoumenoi) and the polis, mistrust and the guard protects the bodies of tyrants and oligarchs with weapons.114
110 This speech is highly likely to be spurious. However, to quote Todd, in his discussion on Lysias, authenticity is a complex problem, and it is important to distinguish at least two questions: first, whether and to what extent a speech was written for and delivered at the occasion at which it purports to have been delivered, and secondly, whether and to what extent it was written by Lysias. Scholars have traditionally focused on the second of these two questions, but for most historical purposes the first is more important, because a genuine document (whatever its authorship) can be used as evidence for attitudes and perceptions at the time of writing. S. Todd, Lysias (Austin, 2002), pp. 89. This speech, according to Maidment, is likely to be early fourth century and the ideas contained within it are certainly familiar, whether it was actually written by Andokides, which seems doubtful. But see Hansen, The Athenian Democracy, p. 18. 111 And. 4.27. 112 And. 4.17. Note also how Aristophanes employs a similar device in Wasps. Bdelycleon, the chorus of democratic Athenian jurymen claims, has acted like a tyrant (tyrannos) by shutting them out from the established laws of the polis without using any form of argument (logos) but only power, Ar. Wasps 46370. The chorus also berates Bdelycleon as being a lover of monarchy (monarkhia) which also makes him a hater of the people (misodmos), 474. 113 Dem. 24.76. 114 Aiskhin. 1.45. Significantly (especially considering only three of Aiskhines speeches survive) this is repeated verbatim in 3.6.
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Lysias had already said, in an early speech from the very end of the fifth century, that one of the motives for desiring an oligarchy was the natural opportunity such a constitution provided for its rulers to commit hybris on free-born citizens.115 As in the later neo-Classical tradition, it was repeatedly emphasized that living under such constitutions had a clear and divisive effect upon your individual liberty.116 In the Supplices, Euripides king Theseus was already pointing out the negative effects of a monarchy upon its citizens freedom. A tyrant, Theseus points out, can kill the young to secure his position, he can take money and rape girls at his whim. Why, Theseus asks, should a man acquire wealth and property for his children if all his effort goes only to increase the resources of a tyrant (tyrannos)? Why should he raise daughters chastely at home, as propriety requires, to serve as dainty dishes for a monarchs lust whenever he desires?117 The effect of tyrannical government upon its citizens was noted as far back as Aeschylus. In the Prometheus Bound, Zeus is described as the tyrant (tyrannos) of the gods,118 and the chorus affirms, for new rulers rule Olympus, and Zeus rules lawlessly with new laws.119 Okeanos later adds that a harsh monarch (monarkhos) rules without having to give account (hupeuthunos)120 and enacts laws at his whim.121 The actions of Hephaistos are clearly affected by Zeuss power since he is forced to bind Prometheus against his will. For it is, Hephaistos says, grievous to neglect the words of Zeus.122 Aeschylus is, however, much more explicit elsewhere. The Persai provides the first clear example of how the very presence of a monarch restricts individual liberty. Like Zeus in the Prometheus, Xerxes is a king who does not have to give account (hupeuthunos), and Atossa makes the point that, win or lose in Greece, he will still be ruler.123 However, the chorus
115 Lys. 20.3. This is also interesting since the speech is dated to before the tyranny of the Thirty (but after the oligarchy of the Four Hundred). See Todd, Lysias, pp. 21819. 116 Consider, for example, these passages from Aeschylus, Sophokles and Euripides with Q. Skinner, A Third Concept of Liberty, Proceedings of the British Academy, 119 (2001 lectures), p. 253. 117 Eur. Supp. 44455. 118 Ais. Prom. 224, 312. 119 Ibid., 14750. 120 Ibid., 3256. All Athenian magistrates had to undergo an accounting (euthyna) after leaving office to ensure that they had conducted themselves in the proper way. See Hansen, The Athenian Democracy, pp. 2224. Aeschylus is implying here (and in Pers. 21314) that, through the lack of accountability to his subjects, the tyrant is able to rule as despotically as he pleases since he is answerable to no one. 121 Ais. Prom. 4036. 122 Ibid., 17. Cf. 401. Note also Kratos vivid exclamation at ll. 4950 that everything is burdensome except to rule the gods, for no one is free ( eleutheros) but Zeus. 123 Ais. Pers. 21314.
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of Persian Elders notes with some glee that the Persian defeat at Salamis has destroyed the yoke of royal power, has freed the speech of the people and has ended the compulsion of Xerxes subjects to pay tribute and offer proskynsis to their master (despots).124 That a monarch naturally interfered with the freedom of his subjects to speak, and to act, as they wished was a claim to be repeated in tragedy throughout the fifth century. It is also visible in Sophokles masterpiece, Antigone. Here, Kreon, the tyrannos of Thebes, brims with tyrannical obstinacy. Does not the polis belong by convention to the ruler? he asks rhetorically.125 He had already rebuked Antigone: are you not ashamed if you are thinking separately from them [the people of Thebes]?126 However, as Haimon later reminds his father Kreon, the people of Thebes are actually on Antigones side, but they are too afraid to speak their minds. The Thebans do not agree with Kreon but are afraid even of the cast of his countenance and do not speak out against his policy.127 Kreon is forced to retort hypocritically, the people of Thebes! Since when do I take my orders from the people of Thebes, and then, I am king, and responsible only to myself.128 Sophokles returned to this theme, and with an interesting twist, in his Elektra. The situation in Elektras household appears to mirror the general situation in Mycenae. In both cases, the rule of tyrants restricts the liberty of their subjects. At the end of the play, at the deaths of Aegisthus and Klytaimnestra, it is interestingly explicitly freedom (eleutheria) that is won.129 This appears to be freedom on two fronts, the freedom of both Elektra, and that of the Mycenaeans generally, from the tyranny of Aegisthus and Klytaimnestra. Elektra, who refers to her mother as a despotis130 and speaks of her slavery to
124 Ibid., 58494. Note also how the chorus of Elders does not dare even to look at the Ghost of the once all-powerful dead king Darius, let alone speak to him, ll. 6946, 7002. 125 Soph. Ant. 738. 126 Ibid., 510. 127 Ibid., 6902 ff., 733. I cannot agree with Farrars interpretation of this play. Firstly, discussing the meaning of autonomia here, she mis-refers to line 877 and must surely mean lines 8735; but autonomia is not, in fact, mentioned even here. The chorus actually says that Antigone is being destroyed by being autogntos (literally, giving thought to oneself, freedom of mind) since the power of Kreon is not to be destroyed. I do not agree that Antigone is defying the citizens and the order they secure as Farrar says (Origins, p. 105). Cf. Ostwald, Autonomia, pp. 1011. The people of Thebes do not agree with Kreon and the chorus is certainly not defending him in ll. 8725 (if anything, they are defending Antigone). It seems to me that the chorus thinks that Antigone is foolish to ignore the fact of Kreons power, not that she is wrong to do so. In a similar way I think that ll. 81722 (where autonomia is, in fact, used) are suggesting that, though Antigones autonomia may have destroyed her, her death is worthy of approval and renown. 128 Soph. Ant. 7346. 129 Soph. Elek. 1509. 130 Ibid., 597.
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her fathers murderers.131 Klytaimnestra also complains that her daughter has been spreading it about how she rules beyond justice (dik).132 The situation beyond the household seems much the same. Towards the end of the play, Aegisthus (ignorant of Klytaimnestras fate and thinking the corpse he is about to reveal to be that of Orestes) says, I tell you to open the doors and to reveal the sight [of what is, supposedly, Orestes corpse] to all the Mycenaeans and the Argives, so that if anyone was previously buoyed up by vain hopes centred on this man, he may now see him as a corpse and accept my bridle (stomion, lit. a bit) and not need violent chastisement from me to teach him sense.133 Just as in the Antigone, the chorus had earlier expressed its fear of speaking openly to Elektra were Aegisthus nearby.134 Elektra herself says that her lips have been made free (eleutheros) by the appearance of Orestes, who is himself worried that her over-zealous chatter might cause her to lose that freedom by attracting the attention of their enemies.135 It is, perhaps, no wonder that it is explicitly eleutheria that is won at the end of the play and eleutheria, indeed, for all concerned.proskynsis Similar ideas are present in Euripides, the other great tragedian. I have already discussed Theseus argument in the Supplices where it is rhetorically asked what the point is in working hard and raising children, if both the money you earn and the family you nurture are at the mercy of a tyrants whim.136 Euripides returned to this idea in the final years of his life in the Bakkhai. Pentheus, the king of Thebes, refers to his subjects as his slaves,137 and, indeed, his very presence affects the actions of his subjects. A messenger who comes to report the activities of the Bacchantes to Pentheus asks him, I want you to tell me whether I should speak with freedom (parrhsia) about what has happened there or be circumspect in my speech. For I fear the quickness of your mind, my Lord, its irascibility and your over-mighty kingliness.138 The chorus also admits that they are frightened to speak freely (lit. to speak free
Ibid., 814, 1192. Note also how Elektras sister, Khrysothemis, tells her that she should yield to those holding power (tois kratousi), l. 396. It is hard not to read this as political imagery. 132 Soph. Elek. 5212. 133 Ibid., 145863. 134 Ibid., 31015. There is also the attractive possibility (but possibility only) that the chorus are some of those Aegisthus is addressing in ll. 145863, since they seem quite anxious to know the latest news of Orestes. Are they hoping for his return and a liberation from Aegisthus tyranny and is this, too, the eleutheria won at the end of the play? 135 Soph. Elek. 12579. 136 See above p. 21 ff. 137 Eur. Bakkh. 803. 138 Ibid., 66871. (If my overly literal translation of the last clause can be excused, it is designed to express the full force of the messengers apprehension.)
131
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words) to the tyrant (tyrannos).139 Kadmos, importantly, later confirms that Pentheus inspired fear (tarbos) in the polis.140 Oligarchy was said to have a like effect on the freedoms of its citizens. Demosthenes claimed that in oligarchies (oligarkhiai), even if there are certain men living more shamefully than Androtion, one is not able to speak badly of ones rulers.141 Employing a clever oratorical device, Demosthenes goes on to portray Androtion as even more oligarchical than the Thirty, since he turned everyones household into a prison by conducting the Eleven (the quasi-police authority of the Athenians) into private homes.142 He says the Athenians should not let such an ethos seep into the politeia and accuses Androtion of being the cause of slavish behaviour amongst citizens because they were forced to hide under the bed and scuttle over rooftops to evade capture.143 Demosthenes, again, in his speech against Leptines, contrasted oligarchy and tyranny with democracy, saying, whilst with those [constitutions] the fear (phobos) of what is to come is greater than the present grace, with you a man could keep what he won without fear of loss.144 Democracy, on the other hand, was praised because it gave its citizens freedom from fear (adeia). In ours alone of all poleis, Demosthenes said, has freedom from fear (adeia) been given to speak on behalf of enemies.145 The reason those who held to this theory rejected tyranny and oligarchy was the same as that for which the later neo-Classical theorists repudiated monarchy. Living under such constitutions, the democrats claimed, placed you in a condition of dependence upon the good will of your rulers and by doing so naturally restricted your freedom to speak and to act. Hypereides summed it up very clearly when he said in his epitaphios, if men are to be happy, the voice of law, not the threat, must be sovereign (kyrios), if men are to be free (eleutheroi) they must be fearful not of [groundless] blame, but of [fair] trial, nor must the safety of our citizens depend on those who slander them and truckle to their masters (dunastai) but on the force of the laws
Eur. Bakkh. 7756. Ibid., 1310. 141 Dem. 22.32. 142 Ibid., 22.53. 143 Ibid., 22.53 and cf. 22.545. 144 Ibid., 20.1617. 145 Dem. 8.64. Similarly, in Dem. 21.2212, Demosthenes praised the adeia one finds in Athens, since people know that when they walk the streets they will not be treated with hybris, beaten or seized. These were just the crimes that tyrannies, in particular, were thought to perpetrate and no such freedom from fear could exist under them since you were placed in a condition of dependence upon the monarchs will. Cf. the quotation from And. 4.17, p. 22 above.
140
139
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(nomoi) alone.146 However, as may well be clear by now, the Athenian democratic theorists go an important step further than the later neo-Classical tradition. Their further claim is that you cannot hope to be free unless you are living under conditions of political equality or, in other words, living as a citizen of a participatory democracy. Without the political equality inherent in a democracy you were considered to be straightforwardly unfree, enslaved.147 The reason for this was very simple. Without political equality, you were simply governed, not governing, and, therefore, were living under the control of others who became, as a result, your masters. Demosthenes expressed this neatly whilst discussing the Spartan constitution. Whenever, Demosthenes said, a certain man is elected to the senate, or Gerousia, as they call it, he is a master (despots) of the rest. For there the prize of excellence (aret) is to become sovereign over the constitution (politeia) with ones peers (homoioi), whilst with us the people is sovereign.148 Plato, reproducing (and parodying) a genuine piece of democratic thinking in his mock funeral oration, the Menexenos, said that, in tyrannies and oligarchies, some call each other slaves (douloi) and masters (despotai), but we and our people, on the other hand, since we are all born brothers of one mother, we do not think to be either slaves (douloi) or masters (despotai) of each other.149 He repeated that this was an important democratic idea in the Politeia.150
146 Hyp. 6. Epit. 25. Note also that Hypereides goes on to say that the aim of Leosthenes the general singled out for praise in the speech and his men was to dispel the Macedonian threat so that men might live well ( kals zen), Hyp. 6. Epit. 26. 147 This was, of course, a principle that would have come naturally to a slave-based society. 148 Dem. 20.107. 149 Plat. Menex. 238d. The Menexenos is a mock funeral oration which, Sokrates says, was written by Aspasia for Perikles. Though Plato was firmly anti-democratic, the Menexenos does reproduce as, at least in part, was Platos purpose genuine democratic ideology. The Menexenos certainly mirrors the Periklean epitaphios in Thucydides by saying that no one is debarred from office by the Athenian constitution through poverty or obscurity of birth, Plat. Menex. 238d and Thuc. 2.37. Plato mocks the Athenian democracy (and the institution of the epitaphios which always praised democracy) by calling it an aristocracy (aristokratia). See Plat. Menex. 238cd. For the institution and ideology of the funeral oration see especially N. Loraux, The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City (Cambridge, MA, 1986), especially pp. 172220. 150 See Plat. Pol. 562d, where Plato says that the democrats label those who obey the arkhai (magistrates) as slaves, and Pol. 563e, where he says that democratic cities do not want any master (despotes). See also Plat. Pol. 463a: Sokrates is asked what the people (dmos) in other poleis call their magistrates (arkhonts). In many poleis, Sokrates responds, masters (despotai), whilst in democracies, just this magistrates (arkhonts).
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The Athenian democrats found a very natural solution to this problem. If you did not wish to be enslaved to any masters, then the natural way out was simply to live on terms of equality with one another.151 Since all were equal (the theory goes) there could be no masters. This not only provided you with political freedom (the freedom to vote and to address your fellow citizens in public) but also negated the effects of being governed by masters. You were not coerced, or interfered with, by others, but could choose to live (as the democrats put it) as you will, in freedom.152 In the fourth Philippic, Demosthenes warned the Athenians about the situation in Greece, where people in the cities were dividing into two opposing camps.
Those in the poleis have divided into two factions. One desires neither to rule by force nor to enslave (douleuein) others but instead to govern with freedom (eleutheria) and laws according to equality (ex isou), whilst the other lusts after power to rule their fellow citizens, but to be subjected by another [i.e. Philip], whom they believe to be able to accomplish these ends. These are the preferred choice of Philip, those who lust after tyrannies and juntas (dynasteiai),153 they have power everywhere.154
Demosthenes provided another clear illustration in his speech For the Eleutheria of the Rhodians. Wars are fought against democracies, Demosthenes suggests, for a variety of reasons,155 whereas they are fought against oligarchies on behalf of none of these things but on behalf of the politeia and freedom (eleutheria).156 Demosthenes claimed that only individuals who lived under democracies were free men and explained why this was so.
I should not hesitate to say that I think it a greater advantage that all the Greeks should be your enemies under democracy than your friends under oligarchy. For with free men (eleutheroi) I do not think that you would have any difficulty in making peace whenever you wished, but with oligarchs (oligarkhoumenoi) I do not believe that even friendly relations could be permanent, for the few (oligoi) can never be well disposed to the many
151 Note also Aiskhin. 1.5: In a democracy it is the laws that guard the person of the citizen and the constitution of the state, whereas the tyrant and the oligarch find their protection in suspicion and armed guards. Men, therefore, who administer an oligarchy or any government based upon inequality (anison), must be on their guard against those who attempt revolution by the law of force; but you, who have a government based upon equality (ison) and law (nomos), must guard against those whose words violate the laws or whose lives have defied them. 152 I return to this latter aspect shortly. 153 A dynasteia was considered to be an illegitimate kind of government and generally took the form of a narrow oligarchy, such as the Thirty at Athens. 154 Dem. 10.4. 155 Such as private quarrels, border disputes, rivalries, claims to the hegemony and so on. See Dem. 15.17. 156 Dem. 15.18.

(polloi), nor those who covet power (arkh) to those who have chosen a life of equality of free speech (isgoria).157
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Isgoria entailed the equal freedom to stand up and address your fellow citizens in the public arena.158 Such freedom could exist only in a democracy which offered the requisite political equality.159 Demosthenes went on to say that to live under oligarchy meant slavery (douleia)160 and added, I recommend you to consider those who destroy free constitutions (politeiai) and change them into oligarchies (oligarkhiai) as the common enemies of all those who set their hearts upon freedom (eleutheria).161 There could be no freedom without democratic equality.162 Again, this idea also went back to the fifth century. In the Supplices, Euripides Theseus says he made the people free (eleuthersas) by establishing equality of votes (isophphos), thereby negating the situation where the monarchs will is law.163 The polis, he says, is not ruled by one man but is free. Sovereignty belongs to the people, who take turns to govern in annual succession. Wealth receives no special recognition from us; the poor man has an
Ibid. See, for example, Hansen, The Athenian Democracy, pp. 83, 306; Ober, Mass and Elite, p. 296. Cf. G.T. Griffith, Isegoria in the Assembly at Athens, in Ancient Society and Institutions: Studies Presented to Victor Ehrenberg on his 75th Birthday, ed. E. Badian (Oxford, 1966), pp. 11538. Ober cites Aiskhin. 1.27 as a good illustration of this. See also the famous passage in Platos Protagoras where Sokrates says that on matters concerning the polis the Athenian assembly can be addressed by anyone regardless of social background, Plat. Prt. 319bd. Cf. Thuc. 2.37.1. 159 Note also Dem. 19.1846: To filch your opportunities is not an offence equivalent to filching those of an oligarchy or a monarchy, but far greater. For in those polities (politeiai), I take it, everything is done promptly at the word of command; but with you first the council must be informed, and must adopt a provisional resolution and even that not at any time, but only after written notice given to marshals and embassies; then the council must convene an assembly, but only on a statutory date. Then the most honest debaters have to make good their advantage and argue down an ignorant or dishonest opposition; and even then, after all these proceedings, when a decision has been formed, and its propriety demonstrated, further time must be granted to the poverty (adumonia) of the masses for the provision of whatever is needed, to enable them to execute the decision. Surely the man who, under a constitution like ours, destroys the opportunities for this procedure has not destroyed opportunities merely but has completely taken away affairs. 160 Dem. 15.19. 161 Dem. 15.20. 162 Richard Mulgan has suggested that equality, not freedom, was the organizing concept of Greek democratic thought and that equality rather than freedom carried more weight as a political principle, Mulgan, Liberty, pp. 1213. This, for me, somewhat misses the point. What the Athenian democrats claim is that freedom is impossible without political equality and to suggest that one was considered to be more important than the other is misleading. 163 Eur. Supp. 3523.
158 157
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equal voice (ison echn).164 He adds that freedom is that (touleutheron d ekeino) those who wish to set a proposal before the polis can do so, those who do not want to stay quiet and, he says, where could a city enjoy greater equality than this?.165 Aiskhines, in the fourth century, provides another illustration. Whilst in oligarchies, Aiskhines said, it is not the one who wishes (ho boulomenos) who speaks but the one who holds power (ho dunasteun), in democracies it is the one who wishes and whenever appeals to him.166 A little later in this speech, Aiskhines summed up this principle perfectly when he said, in a democracy the private individual (idits) is a king (basileus) because of the law and the vote, but when he hands these over to another man he has by his own act dissolved himself into a junta (dynasteia).167 The Lysianic epitaphios, written at the end of the fifth century, also notes the link between freedom and equality. Speaking of Athens history, Lysias says that the Athenians were the first to drive out juntas (dynasteiai) and to establish democracies believing the freedom of all (tn pantn eleutherian) to be the greatest concord.168 He later discusses Athens ideological support for the establishment of democracies during the time of the Delian league and eulogizes about the Athenians of the time that, they delivered their allies from stasis, determining not to enslave (douleuein) the many to the few, but compelling equality (to ison) for everyone.169 In another speech, written shortly after the fall of the oligarchy in 403, Lysias praises the faction of the Piraeus for freeing (leuthersate) the faction of the astu from the Thirty.170 He had previously discussed the stasis at Athens which had occurred at the time of the liberation. If the oligarchic faction (the faction of the astu) had won, Lysias says, they would have enslaved themselves to the Thirty, but, because the democratic faction (the faction of the Piraeus) won, all are equal (to ison) with the victors.171 Enslavement is over, and freedom is won, because political equality as opposed to the domination of one group (or
Ibid., 4048. Ibid., 43841 (my italics). 166 Aiskhin. 3.220. 167 Ibid., 3.233. (I have, again, translated the last clause literally to give what I construe to be the full force of the sense. Aiskhines is claiming here that the moment you hand over the laws and the right to vote into other hands you immediately become the subject of an illegitimate form of government, a dynasteia.) 168 Lys. 2.18. 169 Ibid., 2.556. 170 Ibid., 12.97. 171 Ibid., 12.923. Note, again, the very clever use of allegorical argument in this speech. Lysias says to the jurors that, if they convict his opponent Eratosthenes (and his circle of friends), they will teach a lesson which shows that such men cannot get away with their acts and be tyrants (tyrannoi) over the city but are instead in a relationship with equality (ison) with the rest of the citizens. Lys. 12.35.
165 165
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one man) over others has been re-established. The establishment of equality means the establishment of freedom.172 In a democracy, it was claimed, equality was also provided by the laws which guaranteed the freedom of all citizens. Since you were not ruled, but ruling, in a democracy there existed no arbitrary power to interfere with your liberty.173 As Demosthenes forcefully reminded the Athenians, I suppose that no man living would attribute the prosperity of the polis, the popular government and our freedom (eleutheria) to anything rather than to the laws.174 This freedom did not solely mean, however, the liberty from dependence upon the arbitrary will of tyrants and oligarchs which was provided by political equality. The fact that you were not under the will of others and, therefore, free from the control of others, meant that you could live your life in your own way. This was the aspect stressed by the Thucydidean Nikias when he reminded the Athenians at Syracuse that Athens was the most free (eleutherotat) and of the lack of control in it [Athens] for all.175 Demosthenes repeated this boast in the fourth century, claiming that Athens was the most free of poleis (ts eleuthertats poles).176 As he said elsewhere, if you care to enquire why a man would sooner live under a democracy than an oligarchy, you would discover that the most common reason is that everything is more gentle (praots) in a democracy.177 The clearest, and most famous, illustration of this claim, however, was provided by the Thucydidean Perikles in his funeral oration. Perikles here noted the link between political and private freedom.178
No one, so long as he has it in him to be of service to the state, is kept in political obscurity because of poverty. We live freely (eleutheros) concerning
172 The interchanging of equality and liberty seen in these texts is also preserved in Aristotle and this is discussed below, pp. 35 ff. 173 A number of passages already quoted express the same idea. See especially Aiskhin. 1.45, 3.6; Dem. 17.34, 24.76; Eur. Supp. 42932; Hyp. 6. Epit. 25. Cf. Thuc. 8.48.67. 174 Dem. 24.5. This aspect of equality under the law and the related matter of what we moderns do, but the Athenians did not, call individual rights (the guarantees given to our lives, liberties and property) is dealt with fully in P. Cartledge and M. Edge, Rights, Individuals and Communities, in A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought, ed. R. Balot (forthcoming, 2009). 175 Thuc. 7.69.2. 176 Dem. 19.69. 177 Ibid., 22.51. Note also how the Ath. Pol. says that following the death of Ephialtes and the growth of democracy, the constitution (politeia) became much more relaxed on account of the zeal of the demagogues, Ath. Pol. 26.1. See also P.J. Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (Oxford, 1981), pp. 3223. 178 See also, for this connection, Lys. 26.2: When the polis was ruled by the Spartans, they did not think themselves worthy to have a share in the same slavery (douleia) as you but expelled you out of the polis. Whilst you, after making the polis free (eleuthera) not only shared with them your own freedom (eleutheria) but also that of judging and of debating about common affairs.
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both the public realm (koinon) and concerning the [lack of] suspicion towards others of their daily pursuits. We do not get into a state with our next-door neighbour if he enjoys himself in his own way, nor do we give him the kind of black looks which, though they do no real harm, still do hurt peoples feelings. We are free and tolerant in our private lives; but in public affairs we keep to the law.179
It was this aspect of democratic liberty, which they referred to as living as you will, that so aroused the consternation of democracys opponents.180 Oligarchic opponents criticized the excessive freedom which, they said, was to be found in democracies and was said even to extend to women and slaves181 and, by the ever waspish Plato, to household animals as well.182 Discussing the democratic man Plato has Sokrates say, are they not free (eleutheros) and is not the polis full of freedom (eleutheria) and freedom of speech (parrhesia) and has not every man authority to do as he likes?.183 So it is said, Glaukon responds.184 Aristotle too reports that democratic freedom is defined by the equality of living as one wishes and criticizes this, saying that it should not be regarded as slavery (douleia) to live according to the constitution.185 He adds that Euripides (in a now lost passage) called it living for the fancy of the moment.186 What enslavement to oligarchs might mean is helpfully demonstrated by an anonymous oligarchic tract of the fifth century. This evidence is particularly valuable (in this case) because of its unapologetic and overtly partisan stance. The author, who is known to the English-speaking world as the Old
Thuc. 2.37.13. Berlin ignored a large part of this oration when he rejected the claim that it serves as an indication that the Greeks comprehended the notion of individual liberty. See Berlin, Introduction, p. 33. What Perikles is advocating here is precisely the idea that you can withdraw to a room of you own and behave in a way that pleases you and you alone. 180 And which they influentially bequeathed to posterity as licence. On this point, see below. 181 See Arist. Pol. 1313b3239; Ps-Xen. Ath. Pol. 1.1012. Even democratic writers sometimes noted this. See Dem. 9.3. 182 Plat. Pol. 563bc. 183 Ibid., 557b. 184 Ibid. 185 Arist. Pol. 1310a3134. See also Arist. Pol. 1317b1016. Athenian democrats appear to have agreed with him. Orators criticized (in what was fundamentally a democratic context, in front of juries of Athenian citizens) certain powerful individuals for acting as though they could do anything they wanted in defiance of the laws. Living as one will certainly did not mean as some anti-democratic theorists would have us believe anarchy. See Aiskhin. 1.34; Lys. 10.3, 14.11, 22.5 (cf. 22.1920), 30.345. Rather the claim I am examining here is very much a Berlinean one freedom is what is left to you by the fact that rigid, austere, laws are not able to be enforced by oligarchs (in a democracy). 186 Arist. Pol. 1310a3334.
179
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Oligarch, or pseudo-Xenophon, explicitly discusses how the Athenian people might fall into slavery. In every land, the author explains, the better sort (beltistoi) are hostile to democracy.187 The reason for this, he says, is that, amongst the best men (beltistoi) there is less intemperance and injustice, but a great deal of strictness regarding serviceable matters, whilst amongst the people (dmos) there is much ignorance and disorder and badness.188 Poverty, the author says, drives the people to many disgraceful things and leaves them ignorant and uneducated.189 He speaks, with some glee, about wanting to see the people fall into slavery (douleia) through what he refers to as eunomia, good governance, a euphemism for oligarchy.190 He goes on:
If you seek good government (eunomia), you will first see the laws being put into place by the most clever themselves. Next the better sort (khrstoi) will punish the worst sort (ponroi) and the better sort will determine the policy for the polis and not allow mad men to sit on the council nor to speak nor to form assemblies. So then from these excellent things the people would quickly sink into slavery (douleia).191
In other words, the author seeks an end to the democracy and its inherent faults, thanks to which everyone is able to speak according to equality (ex ises) and able to sit on the council.192 Through good government (eunomia) the majority of the people would lose their most basic freedoms. They would be deprived of their democratic rights to meet together in public and to speak in front of their fellow citizens. However, through this loss they are also losing something else, namely the ability to prevent others from controlling their lives and remaining free in the simple negative sense. What the author desires is to replace the unstable and relaxed democratic government with firm, strict, laws giving proper discipline so that the people would sink quickly into slavery. However, he explains, the people (dmos) do not want to be slaves themselves through good governance (eunomia) but to be free (eleutheros) and to rule.193 As the Athenian democratic writers themselves emphasized, the very institution of democracy allowed them to be free from the control of others.194
Ps-Xen. Ath. Pol. 1.5. Ibid. 189 Ibid. 190 See ibid., 1.69. 191 Ibid., 1.9. 192 Ibid., 1.6. 193 Ibid., 1.8. 194 There are a number of other important indications (together with the theorizing I am discussing) that oligarchs sought to exercise a far stricter surveillance over private life than democrats. Tellingly, Dinarkhos reports an argument that his opponent Demosthenes will use, that the Areopagos which investigated Demosthenes and other
188 187
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This demonstrates the fundamentally negative character of this democratic concept of liberty.195 The passage from Demosthenes 10, I quoted above, also expresses this nicely.196 Democracy was desired, in other words, not so that everyone could be forced into following a particular, structured, way of life,197 but, rather, precisely because it provided freedom from such controls, the liberty to live as one saw fit, without interference from others. Constant, it seems to me, was certainly correct to say that the Athenians called freedom democracy,198 but they did not do so because it gave them the opportunity to pry into, and direct, one anothers lives; they did so because they believed democracy provided freedom from such control in the first place. Political equality brought about an end to enslavement because it established freedom for all to live their lives as they saw fit, free from the over-mighty wills of
politicians in this famous case commonly called the Harpalos affair is oligarchic (oligarkhikn), Din. 1.62. Lysias, interestingly, reports that the Thirty, when they came to power, declared that the citizens must be converted (trapesthai) to excellence (aret) and justice (dikaiosun , Lys. 12.5. This is an ideal which approximates to the positive doctrine of liberation by reason (see above pp. 56), an attempt to mould individuals according to some higher doctrine of virtue, or excellence, or justice, although not all oligarchs, as Pseudo-Xenophon so clearly shows, would have called such conversion freedom. It is interesting that it is precisely this kind of conditioning (if that is not too strong a word) from which the Athenian democrats sought refuge to live as one will. Plato, perhaps, provides another illustration in the Protagoras, where he contrasts the elegant, conversational symposia of the upper classes (the kaloi kai agathoi) and those of the common mob (phauloi kai agoraioi), who enjoy the pleasures of flute-girls, dancinggirls and harp-girls (Plat. Prt. 347ce). Perhaps it was just this kind of thing the natural way of life of ordinary Athenians which the oligarchs wanted to put a stop to, in order to maintain excellence and justice amongst the citizens. Further evidence for oligarchic control is provided by Arist. Pol. 1290a2829, where Aristotle says that oligarchy is classified as being more despotic and serious. See also Arist. Pol. 1304a2024; Isok. 7.20, 12.1301. Plato also says that, if the magistrates in a democracy are not very mild (panu praoi) and do not supply much freedom (eleutheria), they are accused of being oligarchs. Plat. Pol. 562d. See also Dem. 24.193. 195 In other words the democratic concept of liberty agrees with the later neo-Classical idea that unless a commonwealth is maintained in a state of liberty (in the ordinary sense of being free from constraint to act according to its own will) then the individual members of such a body politic will find themselves stripped of their personal liberty. Skinner, The Idea of Negative Liberty, p. 213. Yet there does remain a difference between the two conceptions (the Athenian democratic and the neo-Classical) and this is discussed below. 196 Dem. 10.4, see p. 28 above. Cf. Lys. 26.2. This negative characteristic is also nicely brought out by Lyk. 1, which consistently suggests the idea that those who died fighting the Macedonians did so on behalf of freedom (eleutheria) and the safety of the people (tou demou sterias) (Lyk. 1.45, for example). See also, interestingly, Raaflaub, Discovery, p. 108, on the close links between the cults of Zeus Eleutherios and Zeus Soter. 197 See pp. 56 above on the positive concept of liberty. 198 See above p. 5.
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tyrants and oligarchs, free from the stricter control and laws openly desired by the latter and, therefore, from control by others. The democratic concept of individual liberty I have been examining is also importantly preserved in two (on the face of it, at least) unlikely sources, namely Aristotle and Cicero. Democracy, Aristotle, to begin with him, says, arose from the idea that those who are equal (isos) in any respect are equal absolutely for all are equally free (eleutheros), so that they think they are equal absolutely.199 Similarly to Plato,200 he adds that, they are accustomed to say that only this constitution [Demokratia] enjoys freedom (eleutheria), for they say (phasin) democracy aims for it.201 He had previously stated that the democrats (hoi dmotikoi) aim for equality (to ison) and, here, freedom does not get a mention.202 Aristotle, however, far from being confused, is simply relaying the fundamental principle I have been examining. The aim of the democrats is to secure both freedom and equality. There can be no liberty without political equality and, therefore, both have to be established. Aristotle goes on to illustrate this point further. Again he reports, they say (phasin) that to live as one will (zn hs bouletai) is an indication of democracy, for not to live as one likes is the condition of the slave (doulos). From here, Aristotle explains, has come the idea not to be ruled, and not being ruled is a principle for freedom (eleutheria) according to equality (to ison).203 Democratic liberty, Aristotle says, is defined by the equality of doing as one will, therefore, in democracies everyone lives as they wish.204 It is a shame we cannot know who the mystery they are,205 but they have provided Aristotle with just the theory I have been discussing. To be free you need to be living as the citizen of a democracy and not under the will of others. To be under the rule of others meant slavery, not being able to live as you wish. As Aristotle put it, a basic principle of the democratic constitution is liberty. People constantly make this statement, implying that only in this constitution do men share in liberty.206
Arist. Pol. 1301a2931. Compare also Plat. Pol. 562b (discussed above) and Arist. Pol. 1294a1011, where Aristotle says that the definition of democracy is freedom (eleutheria). See also Arist. Pol. 1310a2830 and 1316b40, where Aristotle repeats that freedom (eleutheria) is a fundamental principle (hypothesis) of democracy. 201 Arist. Pol. 1317b12. 202 Ibid., 1308a1013. Cf. 1301a25b5. 203 Ibid., 1317b1017. 204 Ibid., 1310a3134. 205 I think we can take it from Pol. 1308a1013 that they are probably democrats (hoi demotikoi), and they could of course be none other than the writers (and other orators and democratic politicians) who I have been examining. 206 Arist. Pol. 1317a40b1. Cf. 1291b3038.
200 199
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Cicero was the last to preserve this democratic theory of liberty. Cicero has Scipio relate a theory of democracy and liberty which is, again, remarkably similar to the one that I have been discussing. If the people, Scipio is made to say in the course of discussing popular government,
would maintain their rights, they deny (negant) that any form of government would be superior, either in freedom or happiness, for they themselves would be masters of the laws and the courts, of war and peace, of international agreements, and of every citizens life and property; this government alone, they hold (putant), can rightly be called a republic (res publica), that is the property of the people (res populi). And it is for that reason, they say, that the property of the people is often liberated (in libertatem rem populi vindicari) from the domination (dominatio) of kings or senators, while free peoples (liberis populis) do not seek kings nor the power and wealth of aristocracies.207
Scipio continues,208
liberty (libertas) has no dwelling place in any state except in that in which the peoples power is the greatest, and surely nothing can be sweeter than liberty; but if it is not equal (si aequa non est), it does not deserve the name of liberty (libertas). And how can it be equal (qui autem aequa potest esse), I will not say in a kingdom, where there is no obscurity or doubt about the slavery (servitus) of the subject, but even in states where everyone is ostensibly free? I mean states in which the people vote, elect commanders and officials, are canvassed for their votes and have bills proposed to them, but really only grant what they would have to grant even if they were unwilling to do so, and are asked to give to others what they do not possess themselves. For they have no share in the governing power, in the deliberative function, or in the courts, over which select judges preside, for these privileges are granted on the basis of birth and wealth. But in a free nation (libero populo), such as the Rhodians or Athenians, there is not one of the citizens who . . .209
Here, regrettably, our manuscript breaks off and with it this theory of liberty. Once again, it is a shame that we do not know who this anonymous they are,210 since they clearly hold to the same opinion of democracy and freedom which was advanced in Classical Athens and was also preserved by Aristotle. However, this is not quite the end of the story. Cicero, like his fellow Roman republican writers and, significantly, (largely) unlike his aristocratic predecessors in Greece,211 was very concerned with the concept of freedom
Cic. De Rep. 1.32.48. Evidently still repeating the opinions of this (once again) anonymous they. 209 Cic. De Rep. 1.33.47. 210 Cf. n. 205 above. 211 See Nelson, Greek Tradition, p. 10. Cf. ibid., p. 10 n. 38. Although Plato did say that his guardians must be very accurate craftsmen of the freedom (eleutheria) of the
208 207
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itself. He dismissed the democratic idea of liberty as a misconception.212 If the people, Cicero says, hold the supreme power and everything is administered according to their desires, that is called liberty (dicitur illa libertas) but is really license (licentia).213 He says the same elsewhere.214 Liberty, Cicero said, was best preserved in a self-governing republic, not a democracy, where it might even be annihilated.215 His fellow republicans tended to agree, and it was this idea as opposed to the democratic one which was passed on to the later neo-Classical tradition. III Athens and the Spectrum of Liberty Quentin Skinner has suggested, in relation to the neo-Classical theory of freedom, that it could represent a separate, third, concept of liberty to sit alongside Berlins two.216 The argument in favour of its being a separate, third, concept, rests on the neo-Classical observation that coercive interference, or the threat of it, is not the only way individual liberty can be hindered. For, under the neo-Classical analysis, the very possibility for the coercive use of force is enough to restrict and hinder individual liberty. Does the Athenian democratic idea of individual liberty, then, itself offer a separate, fourth, concept of liberty?
polis (Plat. Pol. 395c. Cf. Plat. Pol. 547bc) and was keen to ensure that they did not turn from well-disposed allies into savage masters (despotais agriois) (Plat. Pol. 416b). Regarding history, however, was Herodotos any less concerned with liberty as nondependence than Sallust or Livy, even if he is not as explicit as they are at the outset? Cf. pp. 1213 above. 212 As Isokrates had done before him. See Isok. 7.20, 12.1301, for example. 213 Cic. De Rep. 3.13.23. 214 In the Pro Flacco, for example, he says, and so, not to discuss this later Greece, which has long been troubled and vexed by its own devices, that older Greece which once was notable for its resources, its power, its glory, fell because of this defect alone, the immoderate freedom and licence of its assemblies (libertate immoderata ac licentia contionum). Cic. Flacc. 7.16. Men took their place in the assemblies, Cicero says, who were raw and ignorant (rudes ignarique), Flacc. 7.16. See also De Rep. 1.28.44, 3.33.456 for further attacks on democracy. 215 See Cic. De Rep. 3.33.45, where Laelius says, there is no government to which I should more quickly deny the title of republic (res publica) than one in which everything is subject to the power of the multitude. He goes on, such a gathering as you have just described is just as surely a tyrant (tyrannus) as if it were a single person, and an even more cruel tyrant, because there can be nothing more horrible than that monster which falsely assumes the name and appearance of the people. 216 See, especially, Skinner, A Third Concept. Cf. Pettit, Republicanism, p. 20, for example.
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This is not an easy question to answer.217 Firstly, as we have seen, in a number of regards, the later neo-Classical concept and the Athenian democratic idea I have been discussing are similar. For one thing, they agree that the very possibility for the coercive use of force is enough to work as a hindrance to individual freedom. In other words, a condition of non-dependence must exist for individual liberty to exist and, indeed, flourish. Yet, as the passage from Cicero already suggests, the conceptions diverge over the form of government that one has to live under for that freedom to exist and this, I would like to suggest, represents a significant difference between the two conceptions even though, so to speak, they sprout from the same root (of nondependence). As Skinner himself has said,
among the writers I am considering . . . few exhibit any enthusiasm for giving what Nedham calls the confused promiscuous body of the people any direct share in government . . . The right solution, they generally agree, is for the mass of the people to be represented by a national assembly of the more virtuous and considering, an assembly chosen by the people to legislate on their behalf.218
Pettit too has sought to distance the neo-Classical (or, in his case, it might be more appropriate to say, republican) concept of liberty from any participatory, democratic, account.219 I think that the historical record certainly supports these claims. A large number of neo-Classical writers, from Machiavelli, to Harrington and beyond, followed Cicero on the claim that the participatory account (so far as it, in fact, existed)220 was incoherent. As John Milton, echoing the thoughts of both Isokrates and Cicero, neatly put it when discussing the peo-
Again, regrettably, I do not have the time to go into this in great detail here. The differences between the Athenian democratic concept and that of the later neo-Classical tradition are further discussed in Edge, Road to Modern Liberty, pp. 94102 with pp. 1225. 218 Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, pp. 312. See also Skinner, On Justice, p. 59 for a similar view among the propagandists of the Italian city-republics. 219 E.g. Pettit, Republicanism, pp. 8, 289. 220 Of course, unlike with Cicero and his anonymous they, no participatory democratic accounts were readily available at these times. The democratic idea of liberty, as I have said, appears to have simply dropped off the historical radar like the lost manuscript of Ciceros De Republica 1.33.47. In general, theoretical defences of participatory democracy will not easily be found by students of the history of political thought (I can assure you that I have spent a long time looking, although it has never been my absolute primary research interest). One (fascinating) example is John Oswald, The Government of the People, in Political Writings of the 1790s, Volume 4: Radicalism and Reform 17931800, ed. G. Claeys (London, 1995), pp. 95103.
217
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ple, licence they mean when they cry liberty.221 Liberty, in the neoClassical account, was threatened by giving too much power and/or leeway to the people (just like a monarch, in fact). Machiavelli certainly endorsed such a view. Athens lost her liberty in such a short space of time, he argues, because Solon had not blended aristocracy or princely power with democracy and had made no provision for the licentiousness of the general public.222 Harrington followed suit.223 Further, as Pettit himself explains, for this [republican] position direct democracy may often be a bad thing, since it may ensure the ultimate form of arbitrariness: the tyranny of the majority.224 Cicero would certainly have agreed.225 These views reflect somewhat the claims of democracys avowed opponents in Classical Athens, most notably Isokrates, and they neatly point to the difference between the two conceptions of liberty. Isokrates, reflecting on previous generations of Athenians, said that their constitution (unlike the present one, of course) was not one which trained citizens in such a way that they looked upon insolence as democracy, lawlessness (paranomia) as liberty, freedom of speech (parrhesia) as equality and licence to do what they pleased as happiness.226 In other words, similar to democracys ancient opponents, a number of writers from the later neo-classical tradition (if not necessarily all of them227) claimed that the liberty sought by the people, the masses, was not, in fact, liberty at all, but something different, i.e. licence, anarchy or lawlessness. There is, then, I would suggest, a clear dispute between the two camps over the correct use of the word liberty. Similar to democracys ancient opponents, later neo-Classical writers thought that participatory democratic freedom was not freedom at all, but went too far and degenerated in anarchy and licentiousness.
221 Quoted by C. Hill, The Poor and the People, in Hill, The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill, volume 3: People and Ideas in Seventeenth Century England (Brighton, 1986), p. 263. 222 Machiavelli, Discourses, 1.2, p. 110. 223 See Harrington, Oceana, pp. 289, 367, 138, 147, 164, 280. 224 Pettit, Republicanism, p. 8. 225 See p. 36 above. 226 Isokrates 7.20. Cf., for example, 12.131. 227 One writer who stands out as notably different on this point is Richard Price. Price, in fact, admitted that it is obvious that civil liberty, in its most perfect degree, can be enjoyed only in small states where every agent is capable of giving his suffrage in person, and of being chosen into public offices, Price, Two Tracts, p. 24. When a state becomes so large that this cannot occur, he goes on, a diminution of liberty occurs (ibid., p. 24). It is important to emphasize (see also n. 230 below) that I, in no way, wish to simplify the differences (which can, in fact, be quite major) that occur between thinkers and writers who are too quickly and easily grouped under one umbrella. If writers are grouped too readily into a tradition or school of thought then the interesting individual differences between them might be overlooked.
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Neo-Classical writers tended to see the solution, as the quotations from Skinner and Pettit neatly point out, as provided by the mixed constitution or (when the term became current228) representative government or (as, famously, with the American republic) both.229 Under such a system, it was argued, laws were made on behalf of all, in the interests of all, and the laws were, thereby, free from the arbitrary character they would have if put into place by a monarch, or, on the monarchomach account, tyrannical monarch.230 As Richard Price put it, liberty, therefore, is too imperfectly defined when it is said to be a government by laws, and not by men. If the laws are made by just one man, or a junto of men in a state, and not by common consent, a government by them does not differ from slavery.231 The Athenian democratic concept I have been discussing seems to be saying something quite different from this. There is no sense that liberty is protected by surrendering government into the hands of the wisest and allknowing who can best discern the policies that will best protect liberty. To the contrary. It is not solely the accumulation of arbitrary power that is to be feared (though that is certainly to be feared); rather, it is the accumulation of any form of power or authority over and above we, the people, as equals. Democratic freedom is provided through political equality, which itself creates conditions that prevent others from imposing control or authority on us as equals. It was this, too, that later neo-classical writers objected to.232 On
228 On this point see, especially, H. Pitkin, Representation, in Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, ed. T. Ball, J. Farr and R.L. Hanson (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 13254. Cf. Q. Skinner Hobbes on Representation, European Journal of Philosophy, 13 (2005), pp. 15584. 229 Cf. Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, p. 36. 230 Cf. n. 3 above. Once again as the quotation from Richard Price that follows, talking about a junto of men, neatly shows the situation is much more complicated than this. There may have been a fair degree of agreement between the writers in the neo-Classical tradition who offered this account of individual freedom, but this does not mean that they all agreed in all particulars. Some called for short parliaments, some for longer, some for a unicameral, others for a bicameral, legislature, some spoke openly of a mixed constitution, others of government by representatives, some thought the presence of a monarch was not necessarily harmful to individual liberty, others that it unquestionably was, and so on. Whilst I do not have the space to give these differences the space they deserve (they would need a large space), it is nonetheless important to acknowledge that they exist. 231 Price, Two Tracts, p. 24. 232 Even, I would argue, someone like Francesco Guicciardini, who also suggests (with many others) that liberty is not possible without equality. E.g. Guicciardini, Dialogue, pp. 36, 96. Still, it is abundantly clear throughout Guicciardinis Dialogue that he has a very different understanding of equality to the Athenian democratic theory I have been discussing. He is, in other words, certainly not talking about participatory democratic equality. Another example of a similar phenomenon would be Rinuccini, Liberty.
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this I would argue crucial point, then, the Athenian democratic idea of liberty and its later neo-Classical variant diverge and come to represent two different, and equally interesting, points of the spectrum of meanings233 (uses) of the word liberty. Now, Mogens Hansen has suggested, as a set of political ideals, democracy is connected first of all with liberty, next with equality. It is remarkable how, in this respect, modern democracy resembles ancient Athenian dmokratia.234 Speaking elsewhere of the link between liberty and equality in ancient democratic thought he says, the constant interplay of the two concepts is characteristic of Athenian democratic ideology and shows, once again, the close affinity between modern democracy and Athenian dmokratia looked at as a political ideology rather than as a set of political institutions.235 Ellen Wood argued against Hansen that he was mistaken in seeing this close affinity between ancient and modern, and that we should preserve the historical specificity of the ancient case.236 I could not agree more. Here is why. It seems to me that, although there are obvious similarities between the Athenian concept of individual freedom and the way we use the word today in modern liberal democracies,237 there are also important differences, including what lies behind these two conceptions, that is to say regarding the actual, everyday, practice of individual freedom.238 Most importantly, modern liberal (representative) democracies are naturally immune to the
The use of meaning here is controversial. I argue elsewhere that, actually, the meaning of the word liberty in both cases (as in the liberal analysis) is the same or, at least, very similar. This will depend on what we mean by meaning. See Edge, On Freedom. 234 Hansen, The Ancient Athenian, p. 91. 235 Hansen, The Athenian Democracy , p. 85. 236 Wood, Demos, p. 121. See also J. Coleman, The Voice of the Greeks in the Conversation of Mankind, in The History of Political Thought in National Context, ed. I. Hampsher-Monk and D. Castiglione (Cambridge, 2001), p. 21. 237 In other words, contra Constant, the Athenians like the moderns thought of liberty in terms of the freedom of the individual from governmental interference. Cf. (on a slightly different point) n. 233 above. 238 See also Cartledge and Edge, Rights , which briefly discusses this point in the conclusion. It is important to bear in mind that (just as today), the liberty enjoyed by each individual citizen of Athens will vary from individual to individual (according to economic, as well as social, circumstance and the like). Naturally, too, the liberty of noncitizen groups (who must be included in any such practical analysis) to do and say what they want and to go where they want will be significantly less than that of Athenian citizens and, especially, wealthy Athenian citizens. Robert Wallaces forthcoming book, on the practice of individual liberty in Classical Athens (who which groups were free to do what, when, why and so on), is much needed and should help to clarify these issues, in relation to Athens at least. When looked at comparatively, male Athenians enjoyed greater freedom in some regards than some of us do (the freedom to go to the assembly, to speak, to propose and to vote; the lack of a centralized bureaucracy or (to introduce a highly contentious term) state; lack of a stigma towards homosexual relationships; to
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claim, central to the Athenian concept, that the only way we can hope to be free as individuals is to live as the citizens of a participatory democracy, under its inherent political equality. Modern liberal democracies tend to take the Berlinean line. Equally, as I have said, much modern political theory follows the Berlinean analysis linking positive liberty and participatory democracy. In other words, participatory democracy tends to be viewed as inimical to individual liberty rather than, as in this Athenian concept, essential for its preservation. It is for this reason that I believe it is well worth our reflecting on this Athenian insight.239 The point in doing so is not because the Athenians are right (any more than that they are wrong), but, rather, that by doing so we will free ourselves from the belief that there can only be one legitimate way of speaking about and employing (through linguistic use) the concept of freedom, as Skinner has also emphasized.240 Rather than viewing liberty as one concept, or two, or three, we might usefully view it as a spectrum,241 and a spectrum that can be added to by historical, political and anthropological enquiry and that can be used, by each of us, you and me, as a tool of political enquiry.242 I mean
give a few examples) but less in others (not least, in fact, because of how technological developments in the intervening centuries have provided far greater choices for, among other things, career, leisure and games; social interaction also gives us far greater access to food, clothes and other cultural artefacts from all over the world close to our front doors, to give a couple of examples). For women and slaves, of course, the comparative analysis might hardly be worth doing, though it is important to note that (in the bicentenary of Britains abolition of the slave trade) there are reliably thought to be some twenty-million human beings across the globe still held today in physical servitude no differently to the slaves of Greece or Rome or the Antebellum American South. A comparative approach to the freedom of Athenian metics and contemporary foreigners, however, might yield interesting results, especially considering the current wave of xenophobia and hostility sweeping contemporary Britain and typically directed at Asylum Seekers, Refugees and economic migrants. Interestingly, this doesnt seem to have been a problem in Athens, even though a fairly large metic population lived and worked there. 239 Of course, this means that we must first have access to it in the most immediate material sense, and this is the reason for the excavation I have undertaken here. The same goes for Skinners attempts to lift the neo-Classical concept of liberty back into public view. This point and the corollaries of it is fully discussed and developed in Edge, On Freedom. 240 See, for example, Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, pp. 11617; Q. Skinner, Hobbes and Republican Liberty (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 21116. 241 See Edge, On Freedom, for a fuller discussion of this spectrum. 242 One thing it can help us to do is to see, in the full light of day (as it were), the context in which the various conceptions were developed and employed. In other words, that liberty has been used by human beings speaking directly to other human beings and attempting to persuade them of the correctness of their views. By viewing this historical process clearly, we not only gain access to alternative modes of thought but also, it is
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by this that the spectrum can be used as a tool for measuring the present (in this case the frequent claims about contemporary freedom in modern representative democracies) through, importantly, a number of different lenses. In other words, it helps to see how other races, nations, cultures, civilizations view(ed) the concept of liberty and to consider what it is or was that they think, or thought, enables them to be free.243 This, though it will not serve to complete the job,244 will help us to question how we might wish our political, economic and social worlds to look. By gaining greater access to different ways of thinking (whether these are historical as here or cosmopolitan245 in character) we thereby gain more freedom (through greater choice) to question our present, as well as our collective futures. This is not so that we can foist outdated and anachronistic modes of thought and institutions on an unsuspecting present (the worry shared by Hobbes, Hume and Constant, among others), far from it; rather, it is to prevent us from thinking that the present is the answer, that those choices through which the present has become what it is in other words through which it has become victorious (complicated as they undoubtedly are) were the correct ones for us. We do not live under the institutions that we do, and these are not described and defended by the languages that describe and defend them, by the natural, neutral, forces of historical destiny. These were real, calculated, choices made by other human beings on our behalf. If we are to take the claims of liberty seriously, we would do well to examine those choices and see and understand them for what they are and question whether we should want and expect more.246 Wittgenstein wrote that philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.247 I have argued, elsewhere, that political philosophy has an essential part to play in this, and here, too, we can see that history has its own important role within political philosophy, since it can, as (hopefully) here, help us to add different conceptions and understandings to libertys spectrum through the excavations historians undertake. John Dunn saw Athens transcultural significance in the fact that the Athenians were the first to endorse a concept of individual liberty as nonhoped, make ourselves more wary of those who are attempting to do the same things to us (with words). 243 Of course, this holds for other concepts too, not solely liberty. Equally, other races and cultures may use different languages to describe how they support human well-being and enable it to flourish and these must not be dismissed simply because they did not know the word freedom and/or other normative values that tend to sit alongside it in contemporary language, such as rights. Cf. Cartledge and Edge, Rights . 244 See Edge, On Freedom. 245 Cf. Cartledge and Edge, Rights . 246 These last points are taken up in much greater detail in Edge, On Freedom. 247 L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford, 3rd edn., 2001), 109, p. 40.
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M. EDGE
dependence.248 I disagree. To be sure, the Athenian democratic concept of liberty I have been discussing endorses the idea of freedom from nondependence, however, the significance of this, it seems to me, lies in the fact that the Athenians made much more exacting and radical demands on liberty than those neo-Classical writers who employed the idea of liberty as nondependence so effectively in later centuries. There also seems to be something of arguably greater significance, which I have been hinting at throughout. I do not think it would be mere exaggerated hyperbole to say that this Athenian democratic theory of liberty represents at least part of a fully alternative tradition of political thought or, more correctly, way of thinking about politics and government.249 So much of the history of political thought, Western or otherwise, is non-democratic (in the Athenian sense of course).250 It is hard very hard to find texts that are democratic in this participatory sense.251 Not only, in this Athenian democratic concept of liberty, do we have an (implied perhaps) defence of Athenian-style democracy itself; we have the further claim that freedom is not even possible, thinkable, without the political equality found inherently in a participatory democracy. This claim stands at the opposite pole from much political theory which, as we have seen, tends to equate such participatory democracy with the annihilation of individual freedom.252 Again, this has only been amplified as a result of Berlins equation of positive freedom and participatory democracy. Yet, there is another part of this story waiting to be told and it is a deeply ironic one. In fact, the first appearances of what we might call a positive theory of freedom can be found in democracys opponents, most notably Plato. The opponents of Athenian democracy not only created accounts of the divided self, of an internal realm of the human split between reason and passion (very loosely); they also made very strong claims about which human beings tended to be the ones ruled, or debased, by their lower, desire-ridden, selves. Their answer? The masses, the people, the common mob. Their conclusion? It was much safer for the government of the city to be placed in the hands of the
See Dunn, Transcultural Significance. Of course, it is well known that there is no surviving systematic democratic political theory from Classical Athens. Cf. Farrar, Origins. This is to be deeply regretted. However, I hope to discuss the further implications of this so-called alternative tradition (such as it is, or more correctly, is not) in a future paper. 250 For a very detailed picture (of the Western situation) see J.T. Roberts, Athens on Trial: The Antidemocratic Tradition in Western Thought (Princeton, 1994). 251 I have spent over five years looking. One concrete example (well worth reading) is Oswald, Government of the People. Another, more recent (and much needed), example is B. Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley, 1984). Even in the leftist tradition, where I would expect to find such participatory theorizing, there is very little to be found simpliciter. I think that has a significance of its own as well, though here is not the place to go into it. 252 The quote from Pettit, p. 39 above, is typical.
249 248
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wisest, who were ruled by reason, and to disenfranchise the masses.253 Far from being an exemplary illustration of the doctrine of positive freedom, the Athenian democratic concept of liberty I have been discussing actually stood in opposition to those who, in part at least, created that doctrine. It is a deep irony that this essential point has been missed because of the equation of positive liberty with participatory democracy, following Berlins account. The Athenian account of freedom, far from being a theory designed to defend the vast and uncontrolled accumulation of power, was actually a negative, protective notion that provided a refuge from doctrines and arguments that very much resemble the Berlinean notion of positive freedom and that were unleashed by democracys opponents in order to win power and control over the masses and, precisely, prevent them from exercising the individual liberty they cherished. So, could these radical demands perhaps even resonate with us today? Is there something worth reflecting on in the idea that I am, simply and absolutely, unfree, a slave, unless I live under the political equality inherent in the natural makeup of a participatory democracy? If so, then perhaps the true transcultural significance of Athens is yet to be found. Matt Edge254
All this is dealt with in full in Edge, Road to Modern Liberty, ch. 4, pp. 10716. I regret not being able to go into it further here. For a full account of anti-democratic thought, see Ober, Political Dissent. 254 There are a number of people I wish to thank for their help with this paper. I have hugely benefited from numerous discussions with a number of friends on these issues, but I must mention especially Aleka Lianeri, Eftychia Bathrellou, Kostas Vlassopoulos and Harry Platanakis, all of whom have also been invaluable sources of encouragement and support. A number of people have read and commented on this essay and its various drafts. Malcolm Schofield and Janet Coleman (twice) read it and have helped me improve it immeasurably, as has Ryan Balot, who provided extensive and thoughtful comments on an earlier draft and has been very supportive. My greatest debt, as ever, is to Paul Cartledge, who has been an unfailing supporter, particularly at the times when I most needed it. He has read, and commented on, more drafts of this piece than he will care to remember, helping me to improve every one with his encyclopaedic knowledge and incredible eye for detail. I would also like to thank the AHRC (or the AHRB as it was when I first started out) for financial support during my PhD. Without that, simply, this work would never have been done. Finally, I would also like to thank two anonymous readers for History of Political Thought for insightful and helpful comments which have also greatly helped me to improve this essay. Any mistakes, of course, remain my own.
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ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY Matt Edge1

HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT. Vol. XXX. No. 1. Spring 2009

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

Aiskhines (twice) stressed a similar idea.

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

ATHENS AND THE SPECTRUM OF LIBERTY

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