Birth of Democracy: The Ekklesia
agathe.gr
agathe.gr
Moreover, I also have the view that afterwards -- whatever that may mean -- things kind of went to pot! The Romans were obviously great engineers, etc. but my impression of them is more that they were the start of Europe's descent into imperialism and warmongering. Something that the West is still clinging on to thousands of years later.
Is my view of Ancient Greece wrong and it actually was a politically unstable and bloodthirsty place to be, where all the good stuff was fostered out of luck? If not, what went wrong? Could we be a thousand-or-so years more advanced if we'd stayed on the right track?
Marcus? Wrote in Greek. Maybe Plotin. What else?
In terms of philosophers alone, I suppose only Cicero or Seneca would spring to mind, and Seneca in particular followed closely in Epicurus' footsteps (I think, it's been a long long time, please correct if wrong).
These are just people who I am aware are widely read today, I can say nothing for their barbarity or otherwise. I don't know anything about Plotinus, for example, and I don't even know which Marcus you refer to, so I am hardly a very reliable source.
Philosophers are rather beside the point though: for every famous philosopher, ancient Greece had a million farmers, merchants, seafarers and slaves. I'm not persuaded medieval Britain was more enlightened than modern Britain because Shakespeare was a more insightful commentator on the human condition than JK Rowling, and the same applies to not unduly revering the societies of classical antiquity because some of the works of their educated elites have survived to the present day.
Greeks had a developed (and wide available) writing system, Greeks had a not-so-restrictive religion, and (perhaps most importantly) - Greeks had a great economical advantage over a lot of other people around them. Yes, Greeks were good warriors, but they liked very much to just use others (mostly as mercenaries) in order to solve things, and trowed themselves in battles only as a last resort (like when the Greek cities fought among themselves and persuading others to join them was somewhat difficult). Greeks had a very large network of economic centers and all that value of connecting cheap worlds was primarily theirs. The flourishing of the arts and science was just a result of the general wealth flowing all around - life was cheaper and easier compared to other places, so what the average ἀνήρ was supposed to do with their spare energy? (Hint: connecting the dots here and there, just the way Greeks as a people used to do all the time.)
I think what distinguished Athens (and Greece) was "tolerance" towards foreigners. Although they called them 'Barbarians' (meaning Not Greek - with a strong negative flavor), at the same time foreigners were welcome to study and teach in Athens. Most sophists (e.g. Protagoras and Gorgias) were not Athenians. Aristotle was not an Athenian citizen.
Socrates was poor. But he was craved by the young because of his spirit. At the same time you have political Satire openly mocking Socrates and other major political (some extremely powerful) figures of the Athenian life. Euripedi's 'Trojan Women' play, was essentially a commentary on the capture of the Aegean island of Melos and the subsequent slaughter and subjugation of its populace by the Athenians earlier that year! It's incredible the fact that he dared to do so! Of course that's the reason we still watch his plays (2.500 years later...).
IMHO it was tolerance that made Athens great.
Maybe not all the Greeks. The Spartans were a small group ruling over a much larger subjugated population (the Helots), who they would try to keep in check through things like an annual murder spree, at least according to Aristotle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helots#Treatment_by_Spartans
The answer goes both ways actually. Ancient Greece was a blood-thirty society and an extremely advanced society.
I'd suggest a short read - Thucydides' Melian dialogue, there's a copy at http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Melian.html
94. Melians: But must we be your enemies? Will you not receive us as friends if we are neutral and remain at peace with you?
95. Athenians: No, your enmity is not half so mischievous to us as your friendship; for the one is in the eyes of our subjects an argument of our power, the other of our weakness.
96. Melians: But are your subjects really unable to distinguish between states in which you have no concern, and those which are chiefly your own colonies, and in some cases have revolted and been subdued by you?
97. Athenians: Why, they do not doubt that both of them have a good deal to say for themselves on the score of justice, but they think that states like yours are left free because they are able to defend themselves, and that we do not attack them because we dare not. So that your subjection will give us an increase of security, as well as an extension of empire. For we are masters of the sea and you who are islanders, and insignificant islanders too, must not be allowed to escape us.
116 [...] The place was now closely invested, and there was treachery among the citizens themselves. So the Melians were induced to surrender at discretion. The Athenians thereupon put to death all who were of military age, and made slaves of the women and children. They then colonised the island, sending thither 500 settlers of their own.
Incidentally, that island later hosted one of the most famous statues in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_de_Milo
"And so it goes", as another writer more recently put it.
Your view of Greece is limited, I'd say. The Romans were pretty good at making a wilderness and calling it peace, but they were not more warlike than the Greeks, just more successful at war.
Memorably, late in the Peloponnesian War, Sparta (who were winning) offered Athens an opportunity to end the war with no reparations. A pretty good offer, you'd have thought, but some people were making good money off the war and they spoke convincingly in the Assembly to persuade the people to keep fighting.
(Am not a historian.)
The above was what I remembered from my Classical Civilisations lessons back in Secondary School (some 25 years ago). I'm very good at remembering stories but not so good at remembering dates, which meant that my prowess in Modern World History and Classical Civilisations was a bit...mixed.
That doesn't sound like democracy to me. An oligarchy, perhaps?
The true birth of democracy (at national level) was in New Zealand in 1893 when women were given the vote and, for the first time in history, virtually all adults were enfranchised.
This is also the case with Iceland, where the althing is also commonly cited as the "oldest continuously functioning democratic parliament in the world".
This sounds great, and does wonders for national pride. Especially since most Icelanders have an extremely rose-tinted view of their own past (thanks to propaganda during the independence campaign in the last century), and most are not aware that the only people who had voting rights were landowners, and everyone else was basically a slave. That's not really a democracy by any definition.
Well, do Children in the US have voting rights? Illegal immigrants? Prisoners? There are different flavors of "democrazy".
One advantage of limited voters (e.g. "landowners") is, that the system is less likely to run into an out of control socialist redistribution system. If two wolfs and one sheep having a vote on what they have for dinner. Is this democracy too?
That said, I do think that when less than 1% of the country has voting rights, it's hard to call that a democracy by any measure. Is a dictatorship a democracy if the one person in power holds a "vote" for himself? What if there are two people that split the power?
> One advantage of limited voters (e.g. "landowners") is, that the system is less likely to run into an out of control socialist redistribution system.
I'm not sure how to respond to that. I suggest you read up on the history of Icelandic politics, I particularly recommend reading up on "vistarband" and related concepts, if you really think that this system is somehow more fair than allowing universal suffrage. The result was that this small group of landowners passed laws making anyone who did not have land (and therefore voting power) into indentured servants.
What is? I'm not really sure which part of my post you are replying to here. Can you quote a specific bit?
> Democracy is when all the people vote the laws. Which was the case in ancient athens and iceland
No, at least in the case of Iceland, the entire point of my post was that only a very, very tiny group of people got to vote on the laws. Kind of like representative democracy without the democracy part (because the representatives are not elected). Also known as a plutocracy.
Except for slaves and former slaves. Also a large portion of the population were resident foreigners, who didn't get the vote.
Wikipedia puts the number of voters at 10% to 20% of the total population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy
Neither is having political power in the exclusive hands of a hereditary elite. That's oligarchy or aristocracy.
As for Iceland, I really recommend you read up on the history if you are going to start correcting people about it, because you seem to be completely misinformed. And no, it was most certainly not "one vote per family"; I have explained how these things worked at least twice in this discussion. I know this because I am from Iceland, and I have read up on our history from primary sources instead of the ridiculous whitewash that gets taught in elementary school and on tourist buses.
¹ (in the current page) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9818243
"Democracy was not invented in ancient Greece. Granted, the word "democracy" was invented in ancient Greece—but largely by people who didn't like the thing itself very much. Democracy was never really "invented" at all. Neither does it emerge from any particular intellectual tradition. It's not even really a mode of government. In its essence it is just the belief that humans are fundamentally equal and ought to be allowed to manage their collective affairs in an egalitarian fashion, using whatever means appear most conducive. That, and the hard work of bringing arrangements based on those principles into being.
"In this sense democracy is as old as history, as human intelligence itself. No one could possibly own it. I suppose, if one were so inclined, one could argue it emerged the moment hominids ceased merely trying to bully one another and developed the communication skills to work out a common problem collectively. But such speculation is idle; the point is that democratic assemblies can be attested in all times and places, from Balinese seka to Bolivian ayllu, employing an endless variety of formal procedures, and will always crop up wherever a large group of people sat down together to make a collective decision on the principle that all taking part should have equal say."
(He goes onto explain why political scientists ignore such assemblies... a confusion of voting — which has many problems — with democratic decisionmaking.)