The 2500th Anniversary of Cleisthenes' Reforms and the Tradition of Athenian Democracy
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MOGENS HERMAN HANSEN
Robin Osborne and Simon Hornblower, et al: Ritual, Finance, Politics: Athenian Democratic Accounts Presented to David Lewis, Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press ; Oxford University Press, 1994.
P25
Both in our sources for Athenian democracy and in the tradition about Athenian democracy Cleisthenes is a subordinate character, and it is only in this century that he has become the focus of attention in studies of Athenian democracy.
Apart from what we read in Herodotus, the only mention of Cleisthenes in classical prose is in lsocrates' essays and in Aristotle's treatises: the Politics and the Constitution of Athens.
Cleisthenes referred to in Hdt. 5. 66-73; 6. 131. Arist. Pol. 1275b36; 1319b21; Ath. Pol. 20-2. 28-9. 41; fr. 3. Isoc. VII. 16: 15. 232 (306); 16. 26-7.
Next the tradition: between antiquity and the Enlightenment Athenian democracy was a Sleeping Beauty.
P26
In the eighteen century, Cleisthenes was completely eclipsed by Solon.
The historian who 'rediscovered' Cleisthenes was George Grote.
The next important step forward in the rehabilitation of Cleisthenes was the discovery and publication ln 1891 of Aristotle's Constitution of Athens.
And so at last, in 1925, when Victor Ehrenberg published his Neugriinder des Staates. Cleisthenes came to replace Solon.
P27
But it took another generation before, in 1964, Pierre Leveque and Pierre Vidal-Naquet devoted a monograph to Cleisthenes.''
P. Leveque and P. Vidal-Naquet. Clisthene l'athenian (Besancon, 1964): English edn. (New York. 1993) trans. D. A. Curtis, Cleisthenes the Athenian.
And five more years passed before Martin Ostwald, in 1969, provided the Anglo-American historians with a book devoted to Cleisthenes.
M. Ostwald. Nomos and the Beginnings of the Athenian Democracy (Oxford, 1969).
Even today it is disputed whether Cleisthenes deserves to be credited with the introduction of democracy in Athens.
For my own part, however, I recommend that we trust Herodotus when he tells us that it was Cleisthenes who gave power to the people.
I am also prepared to follow Herodotus when he uses the term demokratia about Cleisthenes' reforms.
Many modern historians believe that the slogan used in Cleisthenes' time to describe popular government was isonomia not demokratia.
But Herodotus never spoke of Athenian isonomia.
In fact, by a closer scrutiny of the sources, much of the talk about equality being prior to liberty in early Athenian political thought vanishes into thin air.
注释13： O. Murray, Early Greece (2nd edn .. London 1993) 184: 'Solon was the founder of Athenian democracy', repeated 189 and 200.
P28
The evidence we have indicates that demokratia was the slogan used by the Athenians themselves about their own constitution as far back as our sources go that is to about 470; and before that we have to suspend judgement.
In short, I think it is essentially correct to have the anniversary of Athenian democracy now.
P29
Why ihas Cleisthenes had such an insignificant part to play in the modern tradition of Athenian democracy which spans the period from the American and French revolutions to this century?
There is, I think, a very simple answer to that: because Plutarch never wrote a life of Cleisthenes, and because the interest in Athenian democracy is a fairly recent phenomenon.
P30 For us today Athenian freedom is associated not with Solon, but with Pericles and his funeral oration as reported by Thucydides.
In the eighteenth century, when Pericles was mentioned, he was held up as a bugbear to warn champions of popular rule against the excesses of democracy.
P31
Why has the assessment of Pericles and of the origin of Athenian democracy changed so much between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries?
作者认为主要原因在于史料上的变化。
the authors who really shaped the Enlightenment's view of classical Greece were Plato. Aristotle, and above all Plutarch.
We simply have to admit that for the Enlightenment's understanding of Greek history Plutarch was more important than Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Demosthenes combined.
In Aristotle's Politics Solon is singled out as the father of Athenian democracy, whereas Ephialtes and Pericles are held responsible for its decline.
P32
Let me sum up by listing the three different views of the origin of Athenian democracy.
The view that Athenian democracy was introduced by Solon is found in almost all our fourth-century sources: orators, philosophers, and historians alike.
It was also the dominant view during the Enlightenment for a century from about 1750.
The view that Athenian democracy originated with Cleisthenes was propounded by Herodotus, but was forgotten in the fourth century when, in the light of the propaganda for a return to the 'ancestral democracy' (patrios demokratia).
The third view, that the Athenian democracy was introduced by Ephialtes, is a variant of the view that. essentially, Cleisthenes revived the Solonian constitution and did not set up a new constitution of his own.
P33
Following Herodotus and Grote most contemporary ancient historians give Cleisthenes the credit for the introduction of Athenian democracy.
But there are still champions of the two heretical views and both deserve a short comment.
Historians who credit Ephialtes with the introduction of Athenian democracy never do it because of what they read in Plutarch or in the Constitution of Athens. Instead they base their belief on the following two arguments.
One concerns the term demokratia and the concept of democracy. Many historians still hold that constitutionaJ concepts, such as democracy, first arose in the years around Ephialtes' reforms.
The other argument concerns the social and constitutional realities behind the concepts: it is a common belief that in the age of Cleisthenes popular rule was a novelty and so undeveloped that it must have taken more than a generation to reach a political system that deserves to be called a democracy in any sense of the word.
But historians who want to see Solon as the father of democracy take the opposite stand: the idea of giving power to the people is not an invention of the late sixth century.
On the contrary both the term and the reality behind it can be traced back to the Great Rhetra quoted by Plutarch in his Life of Lycurgus.
P34
In political and constitutional debates, on the other hand, when a historical example is needed. why have some chosen Pericles and others Demosthenes as their model?
In this case the problem of historical accuracy is irrelevant.
What matters is the ideological appeal.
P35
Next throughout world history Demosthenes has always been connected with freedom more than with democracy, but Pericles with democracy more than with freedom.
P36
The inclination to invoke Pericles has a much shorter history, since the liberty he advocates is specifically connected with democracy.
Therefore, Periclean liberty came to be an object of praise only after democracy had become an ideal, that is in Europe after the mid-nineteenth century.
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