The Athenian democracy in the age of Demosthenes : structure, principles, and ideology
The system of government in classical Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries BC has provided the world with the most famous and perhaps the most perfect example of direct democracy. When democratic rule was ended by the conquering Macedonians in 322, the Athenians had evolved principles and practice of democratic ideology that became the direct inspiration of those liberal ideals cherished by the Western world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Mogens Hansen's history of Athenian democracy covers the period 403-322 BC, and focuses in particular on the crucial last thirty years which coincided with the political career of Demosthenes and ended with his suicide in 322. The author examines Athenian democracy both as a political system and as an ideology. In describing the former he distinguishes between the three major decision-making organs (the Assembly, the Legislators and the People's Courts) and the magistrates who were responsible both for preparing the agenda for the legislature and for carrying its decisions into effect. In discussing Athenian democratic ideology Dr. Hansen also makes the important distinction between the ideals held by the democrats themselves and those imputed to them by the critics of democracy, principally (and ironically, given that they would barely have survived under any other system) the philosophers. The Athenians conceived liberty both as the ability to participate in the decision-making process, and as the right to live without oppression from the state or other citizens. Equality was conceived not as an equality of nature, but as an equality of opportunity. The Athenian Democracy is based on an inrivalled knowledge of the subject, the result of more than thirthy years' sustained research. Yet it has been written in a style which is both accessible and readable, as much for the general reader interested in ancient history and in the origins of modern democracy as for students and scholars. --jacket
Print Book, English, 1991
B. Blackwell, Oxford, UK, 1991