1Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics 1 2 Military and political participation in archaic-classical Greece (original) (raw)
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The Glue of Democracy: Economics, Warfare and Values in Classical Greece
Essays in Contemporary Economics, 2014
In the present essay we analyse the links between the emergence of new arms and forms of war-emergence, the phalanx and its hoplites, and the trieres at sea, its economic base, and the emergence of democracy in classical Greece. We propose that the unique till then in the world phalanx formation, led to the development of particular values and ethics, which again were the necessary conditions for the emergence of democracy, then again, a unique phenomenon. We then turn to seapower, which according to our analysis was a sufficient condition for the establishment and endurance of democracy, because seapower led to a community of economic interests, on which direct democracies like Ancient Athens, were based.
Ancient Athens developed democracy to a higher level than any other state before modern times. It was the leading cultural innovator of its age. Athens is rightly revered for its political and cultural achievements. Less well known is this state’s extraordinary record of military success. Athens transformed ancient warfare and became one of the ancient world’s superpowers. There is a strong case that democracy was a major reason for this success. The military impact of Athenian democracy was twofold. The competition of elite performers before non-elite adjudicators resulted in a pro-war culture. This encouraged Athenians in increasing numbers to join the armed forces and to vote for war. All this was offset by Athenian democracy’s rigorous debating of war. This debating reduced the risks of Athenian cultural militarism. It also made military reforms easier and developed the initiative of the state’s generals, hoplites and sailors. Political scientists have long viewed Athenian democracy as a source of fresh ideas. Presently they cannot satisfactorily explain the warmaking of modern democracies. Consequently Ancient History can provide Political Science with new lines of enquiry into how democracy impacts on international relations today.
This article considers the state of research on the two-way relationship of causation between politics and war in ancient Athens from the attempted coup of Cylon in 632 BC to the violent overthrow of its democracy by the Macedonians in 322. Also canvassed is how a closer integration of Ancient History and Political Science can enhance the research of each discipline into the important problem of democracy's effect on war-making. Classical Athens is well known for its full development of popular politics and its cultural revolution, which clearly was a dependent variable of the democracy. By contrast, few are aware of its contemporaneous military revolution, which saw the classical Athenians intensify the waging of war and gain an unrivalled record of military success and innovation. Although a prima facie case exists for these military changes being due to popular government, ancient historians have conducted very little research on the impact of democracy on war. In the last decade our discipline has also witnessed the collapse of the longstanding understanding of the affect of military changes on political developments in ancient Greece, which means we can no longer explain why Athenian democracy emerged and was consolidated during the classical period. For the sake of ameliorating this situation the article proposes new directions and a social-science approach for research into the military and non-military causes of Athenian democratisation and the relative effect of Athenian democracy on warfare. At a time when established democracies face complex challenges of foreign policy such research into the case study of ancient Athens is of real contemporary relevancy.
Ancient Athens developed democracy to a higher level than any other state before modern times. It was the leading cultural innovator of the classical age. Classical Athens is rightly revered for these political and cultural achievements. Less well known is this state’s extraordinary record of military success. Athens was directly responsible for transforming Greek wars and for raising their scale tenfold. By the 450s it had become the eastern Mediterranean’s superpower. The first major reason for this success was this state’s demographic advantage. With twenty times more citizens than an average Greek state Athens could field armies and fleets that were much larger than all but a few others. The second major reason was the immense income that Athens got from its empire. This allowed it to employ thousands of non-elite citizens on campaigns and to perfect new corps and combat-modes. There is a strong case that democratic government was the third major reason. The military impact of Athenian democracy was twofold. The competition of elite performers before non-elite adjudicators resulted in a pro-war culture. This culture encouraged Athenians in ever-increasing numbers to join the armed forces and to vote for war. All this was offset by Athenian democracy’s rigorous debates about war. This debating reduced the risks of Athenian cultural militarism. It also made military reforms easier and developed the initiative of the state’s generals, hoplites and sailors. Political scientists have long viewed Athenian democracy as a source of fresh ideas. Presently they cannot satisfactorily explain the war-making of modern democracies. Consequently ancient history can provide political science with new lines of enquiry into how modern democracy impacts on international relations.
War in Archaic Athens: polis, elites and military power
HISTORIA - Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, 2019
The paper argues that Cleisthenes’ military reforms were not improvised. The general view of war in Archaic Athens as a series of skirmishes between small contingents recruited on an almost private basis must be qualified, as there are indications to suggest a greater and more regulated involvement of the polis of Athens in the organisation of collective war. This was not entirely effective since it depended on “private” channels, the aristoi from different districts, who fought each other (stasis). Despite this, they were “institutionalised” as part of the common political and institutional framework. The sources seems to indicate that the existence of “Hoplites” in Peisistratid Athens was more widespread than is usually believed.
David M. Pritchard 2015, ‘Public Finance and War in Ancient Greece’, Greece and Rome 62, 48-59.
Before the Persian Wars the Greeks did not rely on public finance to fight each other. Their hoplites armed and fed themselves. But in the confrontation with Persia this private funding of war proved to be inadequate. The liberation of the Greek states beyond the Balkans required the destruction of Persia’s sea power. In 478 Athens agreed to lead an alliance to do just this. Already it had Greece’s largest fleet. But each campaign of this ongoing war would need tens of thousands of sailors and go for months. No single Greek city-state could pay for such campaigns. The alliance thus agreed to adopt the Persian method for funding war: its members would pay annually a fixed amount of tribute. This enabled Athens to force Persia out of the Dardanelles and Ionia. But the Athenians also realised that their military power depended on tribute and so tightened their control of its payers. In so doing they turned the alliance into an empire. By 450 Athens had become a threat to Greece’s other dominant power. But Sparta struggled to counter it effectively. In the Peloponnesian War Sparta realised that it could only do so if it too became a sea power. But its weak public finances ruled this out. All changed in 412, when Persia’s Great King decided to give it the necessary funds. In exchange for the right to levy tribute again on Ionia’s Greeks he helped the Spartans to acquire a large fleet. In 405 this fleet destroyed the last warships of Athens. Sparta could now dismantle its empire and force it to surrender by a land and sea blockade. In the Corinthian War Persia initially funded the anti-Spartan alliance, as the Spartans had decided to fight it for control of Ionia’s Greek city-states. The Athenians used its gold to rebuild their fleet. With these warships they set out to re-establish the Athenian empire. But this represented a still bigger threat to Persia. Consequently it switched its funding to the Spartans. They quickly assembled a fleet in the Dardanelles where they stopped the grain ships sailing for Athens. The Athenians feared being starved into submission once again and so accepted the King’s Peace. This treaty of 386 scuttled their attempt to re-establish their empire. To keep waging wars they now had to develop different funding-sources. In this Athens was reasonably successful. It was thus able to keep Sparta at bay and quickly became a major regional power. But it was not successful enough to stop the rise of Philip. By 338 this king had defeated Greece’s other regional powers and so made Macedonia its hegemon. This success rested largely on his public-finance reforms. His son became less concerned about public finance as he conquered Persia; for plunder easily paid for his army. But the hellenistic kingdoms which arose after him managed their public finances carefully. With vastly larger tax-bases they fielded armies several times larger than those of classical Athens or Sparta. War for dominance among the Greeks had now moved well beyond their city-states.
fully his decision to abandon the state as a useful concept (pp. 34-6) and not to explore its implications with greater sensitivity. He rushes on too quickly without having established suffi ciently what will remain a challenging, if not insupportable, proposition for many scholars. It is a pity that I. even passes over examining the structural qualities of these associations as organisations (cf. pp. 31-2), and thus despite the abundant data that he adduces concerning them provides little sense of how a typical genos, for example, might have run its affairs in the fourth century. Lacking such analysis, not only does the social character of the groups, and thus their degree or character of solidarity, remain obscure, but the mechanics by which their leading members coordinated with elements of the state like demes can hardly be invoked to test I.'s principal thesis. We are left also to wonder at how these associations operated with regard to the principal legislative bodies of the polis, the Boule and Ecclesia, much less the courts (for which some entities appointed members to serve as advocates, synêgoroi; cf. pp. 113-14, 149), where relations might not always have been so cooperative or cordial. Consequently, on the matter of property and fi nance, I.'s treatment is perhaps least rewarding, and reveals all the more tellingly why it is necessary to distinguish clearly institutions of the state from private parties. Students of Attic law and the ancient economy, for one, will have much to ponder in I.'s claims that members of associations had collective legal responsibility, say, before euthynai conducted by the polis just as with regard to the disposition of property (pp. 152-79). But, again, I.'s mixing of state institutions with private ones bedevils his discussion of the properties in question: he struggles with the concept of that property which the Athenians labelled dêmosion and assumes that the private associations acted as managers of what can only have been land and money owned by the state properly speaking (pp. 179-83). Not only does I. disregard the clear fact that the state appointed numerous magistrates to manage the property and allocate funds or other resources accordingly, usually for particular cults or major festivals, but goes so far as to claim that the dêmosion was nothing more than an ensemble of the property held by various associations (pp. 183-5)-that is, private groups like genê and phratries. What I.'s generally impressive study so well illuminates is how extensively the multitude of private and state entities overlapped and paralleled each other's efforts to fund and perform a welter of religious rituals across Attica. As to how the Athenians utilised such complex and many-layered forms of community for so long, I.'s stimulating contribution will no doubt shape serious inquiry for much time to come.
Constitutional Political Economy, 2006
From a beginning of small isolated settlements around 1000 B.C., the city-state (polis) emerged in Greece in the course of four centuries as a political, geographical and judicial unit, with an assembly, council, magistrates and written laws. Using a rational-actor perspective, it is shown how this process was driven by competition among the members of the elite. A crucial ingredient was the gradual consolidation of boundaries, which contributed to population growth, interstate conflicts, colonisation and competition for power. Variations over time in the conditions for competition explain both the introduction of formal political institutions and their overthrow by tyrants.