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Repoliticizing the Ancient Greek City, Thirty Years Later *
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 April 2017
Abstracts
Thirty years after Nicole Loraux published her 1986 article in L’Homme, this study revisits the question of political experience in the ancient Greek world. Its aim is to demonstrate the importance of the two definitions of the term “politics” as conceived by the Ancient Greeks. On the one hand, the political was conceived as an ensemble of activities with no specific institutional substance or form, a sphere of action that has no direct equivalent in the modern state, but rather relates to very varied experiences and practices undertaken in the context of conflict. On the other hand, politics was understood not only as organized access to different institutions, but also as the way in which a community structured and defined itself. Taking the Athenian crisis of 404-403 BCE as a case study, in particular the speech of Cleocritus preserved in Xenophon’s Hellenica, this paper proposes a new way of thinking about this dual expression of collective life. Far from the reconciliatory reading of Cleocritus’ speech proposed by Loraux, his appeal for harmony bears witness, in the turmoil and tension of events, to the way that politics (in the institutional sense) was sidelined to the exclusive benefit of the political and the collective practices associated with it. In conclusion, this case study opens up a more general consideration of the meaning of the “event” and its epistemological significance. By considering the crisis of 404-403 BCE at the heart of the “regimes of historicity” that characterized the history of Athens between the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, this article aims to provide a clearer articulation of the foundational moments and established functioning of Greek democracy.
- Type
- Constructing the Community
- Information
- Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , Volume 69 , Issue 3 , September 2014 , pp. 471 - 501
- Copyright
- Copyright © Les Éditions de l’EHESS 2014
Footnotes
*
This article has greatly benefitted from the comments of Paulin Ismard, Arnaud Macé, Christel Müller, Pascal Payen, and the Annales’s anonymous reviewers, to whom I extend my warmest thanks. Unless otherwise indicated, the Greek texts cited are from the Loeb Classical Library published by Harvard University Press.
References
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60. Castoriadis, Ce qui fait la Grèce, 1:59.
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64. As we have already attempted to do in Azoulay and Ismard, Clisthène et Lycurgue d’Athènes.
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66. Other than Loraux, Nicole, “La guerre dans la famille,” Clio. Histoire, femmes et sociétés 5 (1997): 21-62 Google Scholar, esp. p. 48, see: Schmitt Pantel, “Collective Activities and the Political,” 243; Azoulay, Vincent, Xénophon et les grâces du pouvoir. Charis et charisme dans l’œuvre de Xénophon (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2004), 284 Google Scholar; Gherchanoc, Florence, L’ oïkos en fête. Célébrations familiales et sociabilité en Grèce ancienne (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2012), 184 Google Scholar; and Damet, Aurélie, La septième porte. Les conflits familiaux dans l’Athènes classique (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2012), 74-75 Google Scholar. For a literary perspective, see Gray, Vivienne J., The Character of Xenophon’s Hellenica (London: Duckworth, 1989), 101-3Google Scholar.
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68. See Cloché, Paul, La restauration démocratique à Athènes en 403 av. J.-C. (Paris: E. Leroux, 1915), 59 Google Scholar.
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70. Xenophon, Hellenica 2.4.25.
71. Pseudo-Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution 40.2.
72. Inscriptiones Graecae (hereafter referred to as IG) II2.10. See also: Osborne, Michael J., Naturalization in Athens: A Corpus of Athenian Decrees Granting Citizenship (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1981), vol. 1, no. D6 Google Scholar; Rhodes, Peter J. and Osborne, Robin, Greek Historical Inscriptions 404-323 B.C. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), no. 4 Google Scholar.
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74. See Gherchanoc, L’ oïkos en fête, 184. This recent work uses Cleocritus’s speech to present the polis “as a koino¯nia composed of a network of koino¯niai” where the philia produced in these communities “maintains the city’s unity, harmony.”
75. In this respect, the first sentence of the preface to The Divided City is explicit: “It all began with Cleocritus’s speech in Xenophon’s Hellenica.” Loraux, The Divided City, 9.
76. On the Thirty as a figure of the radical enemy (hostis ), see Lysias, Against Eratosthenes (12), 51. Eratosthenes, one of the Thirty, is said to have “considered the city his enemy (echthran ).”
77. In the same way, the amnesty of 403 cannot be interpreted as a reflection of the democrats’ anxiety when faced with stasis. Firstly, the decision was not taken willingly. Indeed, the negotiations unfolded while Spartan troops camped in Attica and waged a military campaign against the democrats based in Piraeus (Xenophon, Hellenica 2.4.35-38)—peace was concluded at King Pausanias’s instigation. Next, the amnesty did not apply to everyone, since about fifty Athenians were excluded from it: the Thirty, the Eleven, and the Ten magistrates from Piraeus, as well as the Ten from the town (see Xenophon, Hellenica 2.4.38 and Pseudo-Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution 39.6). Like Cleocritus’s speech, the amnesty did not so much repress stasis as control it by redefining the figure of the enemy.
78. Xenophon, Hellenica 2.4.23-24. Although the most outraged partisans of the Thirty settled in Eleusis and remained there after democracy was restored in 403, they did not escape unharmed: in 401/400, the Athenians resolved to launch a military campaign against this oligarchic stronghold, after having physically eliminated their leaders while they were attending a conference in the town. See Xenophon, Hellenica 2.4.43, and Pseudo-Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution 40.5.
79. “And when all [the Eleusinians] had thus been seized, [the Thirty] ordered Lysima-chus, the cavalry commander, to take them to Athens and turn them over to the Eleven. On the following day they summoned to the Odeum the hoplites who were on the roll and the cavalry also. Then Critias rose and said: ‘We, gentlemen,’ said he, ‘are establishing this government no less for you than for ourselves. Therefore, even as you will share in honours, so also you must share in the dangers. Therefore you must vote condemnation of the Eleusinians who have been seized, that you may have the same hopes and fears as we (hina tauta he¯min kai tharre¯te kai phobe¯sthe ).’” Xenophon, Hellenica 2.4.8-10. See Lysias, Against Eratosthenes (12), 52, which invokes three hundred citizens condemned to death.
80. Cloché, La restauration démocratique, 34-46.
81. Xenophon, Hellenica 2.4.28-29 and 35. See Cloché, La restauration démocratique, 61-85.
82. Xenophon, Hellenica 2.4.42-43.
83. Loraux, “Of Amnesty and Its Opposite” [1987], in The Divided City, 148-53.
84. See Canfora, Luciano, Une profession dangereuse. Les penseurs grecs dans la cité, trans. Abramé-Battesti, Isabelle (Paris: Desjonquères, 2001), 28-29 Google Scholar. According to Canfora, Xenophon was a hipparch after the Battle of Munychia and did not hesitate to lead surprise attacks against the democrats.
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91. Azoulay and Ismard, “Les lieux du politique dans l’Athènes classique,” 307.
92. Deleuze, Gilles, “What is a Dispositif ?,” in Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975-1995, trans. Hodges, Ames and Taormina, Mike (New York: Semiotext(e), 2006), 338-48Google Scholar, here p. 339.
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94. Laclau, Ernesto, On Populist Reason (London: Verso, 2005), 140 Google Scholar sq.
95. Lysias, Against Eratosthenes (12), 4.
96. Metics and citizens readily mixed in the hetairai, a type of aristocratic club that brought together the richest young people, regardless of their status: see Andocides, On the Mysteries (1), 15.
97. Plato, Republic 328D. See Cohen, Edward E., The Athenian Nation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 19-21 Google Scholar.
98. “And Polemarchus came up. With him were Adeimantus, Glaucon’s brother, Niceratus, the son of Nicias, and some others apparently from the procession [for Bendis].” Plato, Republic 327C. A few lines further on, the same Polemarchus asks Socrates and Glaucon to remain with the group so that they can go to watch the torch race taking place in honor of the goddess together the same evening: “After dinner we’ll get up and go out and have a look at the all-night festival (pannuchis ); we shall meet a lot of young men there and talk to them.” Plato, Republic 328A.
99. His brother Polemarchus’s funeral procession was not permitted to depart from one of the “three houses” that they owned (triōn hēmin oikiōn ousōn). Lysias, Against Eratosthenes (12), 18.
100. Pseudo-Plutarch, Lives of the Ten Orators [Lysias] 835F.
101. Pseudo-Plutarch, Lives of the Ten Orators [Lysias] 835F-836A.
102. Archinus was among “the men who brought back the people (dēmos)” according to Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon (3), 187. See also Demosthenes, Against Timocrates (24), 135, which claims that Archinus “occupied Phyle” and, undoubtedly exaggerating, adds that “after the gods, we have chiefly [him] to thank for the restoration of popular government.”
103. Pseudo-Plutarch, Lives of the Ten Orators [Lysias] 836A. Beyond the procedural aspect, it seems that only metics who had been part of the contingent from Phyle (or who had joined Thrasybulus in Piraeus) were granted citizenship: see IG II2.10. Lysias, who was exiled in Megara during the civil war, was thus not among those fortunate enough to be chosen.
104. On this question of mobility within statuses, see Christel Müller’s observations in this issue of the Annales.
105. See, for example, Agamben, Giorgio, sacer, Homo: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Heller-Roazen, Daniel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar. Agamben’s thesis, inspired by Michel Foucault, is well known: the state of exception is characterized by intervention in the lives of individuals that goes as far as the biological (zoé, or “bare life”), power tending to manage citizens simply as “living beings.”
106. For a justification of this equivalency, see Castoriadis, Ce qui fait la Grèce, 1:57.
107. Castoriadis, Cornelius, Ce qui fait la Grèce, vol. 2, La cité et les lois, ed. Escobar, Enrique, Gondicas, Myrto, and Vernay, Pascal (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 2008), 41 Google Scholar.
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109. Castoriadis, Ce qui fait la Grèce, 2:117. “Greek politics... is, therefore, a coming into light, though certainly partial, of the instituting in person; a dramatic, though by no means exclusive, illustration of this is presented by the moments of revolution. The creation of politics takes place when the established institution of society is put into question as such and in its various aspects and dimensions (which rapidly leads to the discovery and the explicit elaboration, but also a new and different articulation, of solidarity), that is to say, when another relation, previously unknown, is created between the instituting and the instituted.” Castoriadis, “Power, Politics, Autonomy,” 160.
110. Descombes, Vincent, Philosophie par gros temps (Paris: Éd. de Minuit, 1989)Google Scholar.
111. Rancière, Jacques, On the Shores of Politics, trans. Heron, Liz (London/New York: Verso, 1995)Google Scholar; Rancière, , Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, trans. Rose, Julie (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999)Google Scholar.
112. Monod, Jean-Claude, Qu’est-ce qu’un chef en démocratie? Politiques du charisme (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 2012), 252 Google Scholar.
113. Hartog, François, Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time, trans. Brown, Saskia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015)Google Scholar.
114. “We shall need no Homer to sing our praise nor any other poet whose verses may perhaps delight for the moment but whose presentation of the facts will be discredited by the truth.” Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.41.4
115. Castoriadis, Ce qui fait la Grèce, 3:132 and 3:172-73 (commenting on Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 1.70). See also Castoriadis, Cornelius, The Imaginary Institution of Society, trans. Blamey, Kathleen (Boston: MIT Press, 1987), 208-9Google Scholar.
116. Pseudo-Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution 41.2. The author approves of this evolution: “And they seem to act rightly in doing this (kai touto dokousi poiein orthōs), for a few are more easily corrupted by gain and by influence than the many.” See Ober, Josiah, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 353 Google Scholar.
117. Pseudo-Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution 41.2.
118. At the time when the author of the Athenian Constitution was writing (ca. 330 BCE), the misthos of the Boule¯ equaled nearly fifteen talents a year and that of the Heliea varied between twenty and thirty talents a year. See also Gauthier, Philippe, “L’inscription de Iasos relative à l’ekklesiastikon (I. Iasos, 20)” [1990], in Études d’histoire et d’institutions grecques: choix d’écrits (Geneva: Droz, 2011), 455-92Google Scholar.
119. Andocides, On the Mysteries (1), 81.
120. See Azoulay, Vincent, Les Tyrannicides d’Athènes. Vie et mort de deux statues (Paris: Le Seuil, 2014), 125-26Google Scholar.
121. “One enters into a decadent phase in which the relationship to democracy is no longer the same: the words remain, but nothing is invented. One cannot take the fourth-century orators Lysias and Hyperides and say: that is what the Athenian people at the summit of democratic creation thought of themselves.” Castoriadis, Ce qui fait la Grèce, 3:229. On Castoriadis’s disdain for fourth-century Athens, see Pierre Vidal-Naquet, “Castoriadis et la Grèce ancienne,” in Castoriadis, Ce qui fait la Grèce, 1:25-26.
122. Castoriadis, Ce qui fait la Grèce, 1:200. Although he cites Pseudo-Aristotle’s judgement that “the people [had] made itself master of everything” in the fourth century, Castoriadis does not deduce any practical consequences from it. See Castoriadis, Ce qui fait la Grèce, 2:206.
123. Loraux, “To Repoliticize the City,” 58.
124. For example, see Azoulay, Vincent, “Isocrate, Xénophon ou le politique transfiguré,” Revue des études anciennes 108, no. 1 (2006): 133-53 Google Scholar.
125. “Demokratia, which emerged as a regime-type with the historical self-assertion of a demos in a moment of revolution, refers to a demos ‘ collective capacity to do things in the public realm, to make things happen. If this is right, demokratia does not refer in the first instance to the demos ‘ monopolistic control of pre-existing constitutional authority. Demokratia is not just ‘the power of the demos ‘ in the sense ‘the superior or monopolistic power of the demos relative to other potential power-holders in the state.’ Rather it means, more capaciously, ‘the empowered demos ‘—it is the regime in which the demos gains a collective capacity to effect change in the public realm. And so it is not just a matter of control of a public realm but the collective strength and ability to act within that realm and, indeed, to reconstitute the public realm through action.” Ober, Josiah, “The Original Meaning of ‘Democracy’: Capacity to Do Things, Not Majority Rule,” Constellations 15, no. 1 (2008): 3-9 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On this subject, see Moatti, Claudia, “Le germe et le kratos. Réflexions sur la création politique à Athènes,” in Castoriadis, Ce qui fait la Grèce, 3:13-26, here p. 23 Google Scholar.