(Athens: Acropolis and Agora)

The Old Oligarch

   Section I.

1. I do not approve of the form of government which the Athenians chose for themselves, for in so choosing the benefited the rabble rather than the citizens of a better sort. On these grounds, as I say, I disapprove. But granting that the Athenians did decide to establish such a form of government, I shall show that they preserve it well and, contrary to the belief of the rest of the Greeks, practice it successfully.
2.     First of let me point out that in Athens the poor and the common people seem quite justly to have the upper hand over the rich and well-born, for the common people are the ones who man the fleet and invest the city with power. The city’s might is in its helmsmen, coxswains, captains and lookouts, and in the men who build the ships, far more than in its infantry or its men of good birth and breeding. Since this is the case, it seems only right that all the citizens should be eligible to hold office and, where election is done by show of hands rather than by lot, to vote; and that any citizen who wishes to should have the right to speak before the Assembly
3.     On the other hand the people ask no part of those critical office upon whose good functioning the welfare and safety of the state depend—generalships, for example, and cavalry commands. These offices the common people do not think should be awarded among their own number by lot, for they realize that it is more to their benefit not to hold these offices, but to allow the most capable people to do so. It is the salaried positions and those which offer the prospect of private gain that the common people seek for themselves.
4.     Furthermore some people are puzzled at seeing the base, poor, and ordinary people preferred to those of a better sort, although we must realize that it is by this very means that the democracy is maintained. For if the poor and disreputable elements and the common run of people prosper and become numerous, they thereby strengthen the democracy. But if the wealthy and highly estimable prosper, then the common people, contrariwise, strengthen their own position.
5.     Everywhere in the world excellence is opposed to democracy. Among the best people license and injustice are found least, painstaking conscientiousness most. Ignorance prevails among the common people, and a moral slackness and depravity as well; for poverty and a lack of education—and that ignorance which is a consequence of poverty for some—lead them on to act in disgraceful and degrading ways.
6.     Now perhaps someone will say that they should not allow everyone to have a turn to speak and to sit in the Council of 500, but only the most discerning and finest men. But here again in giving the ignoble the right to speak they have provided for their own best interest; for if worthy people spoke and sat in the Council, it would be to the benefit of people like themselves and to the detriment of the common man. As it is now any wretch who likes can get up, and come away with what is good for him and those like him.
7.     How would such a man know what is good for himself or the people, you ask? The people know well enough that they stand to gain more from that man’s ignorance, baseness, and good will that from the intelligence, virtue, and hostility of a reputable man.
8.     It is quite true that a city so constituted is unlikely to be the best, but that is how a democracy may best be preserved. For the people do not want to be slaves to law and order in a well-governed city; they want to be free and to rule, and bad government hardly matters to them at all. In fact what you call bad government hardly matters to them at all. In fact what you call bad government is a source of strength and freedom to them.
9.     If good government is what you want, look for a constitution drafted by—and for—the most discerning and astute. Then your decent people will keep the rabble in line and govern the city themselves: they will shut the madmen out of the Council of 500, out of the Assembly, and forbid them to make speeches at all. What would be the consequence of this fine progress? Why your common man would find himself reduced in rank—to slavery.
10.     Now slaves and resident aliens are extraordinarily indulged in Athens. It is against the law there to beat them, and the slaves will not even move off the street when they see you coming. Why this is the custom there I shall explain. If the beating of slaves—or aliens or freedmen—by free men were lawful, Athenian citizens, mistaken for slaves, would be getting the beatings themselves; for your average Athenian is no better dressed than a slave or an alien and makes no better an appearance.
11.     And if anyone is shocked also at the sumptuous ease they allow their slaves and the positive splendor of their lives in some cases, it would appear that they do this too with good reason; for wherever you have a sea power, the slaves must be paid for their shipboard service—that way we get a cut of what they make as a price of their freedom. But where slaves are rich, there is no longer any reason for my slave to show you respect. Now in Sparta a slave really respects you. Here in Athens if your slave is afraid of me, he will likely even try to buy his way out with his own money.
12.     So it is that we Athenians have given freedom of speech to our slaves in their dealings with free men. Furthermore we have given the same right to aliens vis-à-vis full citizens, for the city needs foreign craftsmen to staff the shops and on account of the navy. For this reason, then, we have quite reasonably given the right of free speech to the resident aliens as well.
13.     The people have discouraged citizens from practicing music and gymnastics on the pretext that these are not fitting occupations. In fact they know that they themselves are incapable of practicing them. As for the dramatic choruses, the gymnasium staffs, and the triremes for the navy, these they know the rich are obliged to pay for, they themselves merely to enjoy. In any care the people think the money is coming to them no matter what they do—singing, running, dancing, sailing in the navy: the real point is to take from the rich and give to themselves. And in the courts they are less concerned with what is right than with what is good for them.
14.     The there is the matter of the allies—the fact that the Athenians sail out to persecute the upstanding citizens among their subjects and, as it would seem, conduct political witch-hunts among them. They know that the ruler is necessarily hated by the ruled and that if the rich and the reputable ever come to power in the subject cities, government by the Athenian people there will come to a sudden end. For these reasons, then, the Athenians deprive them of their civil rights, confiscate their money and property, and exile and execute them, nurturing the meanwhile the prosperity of the rabble. The reputable people of Athens, however, recognizing that the continued preservation of the better element in the cities is in their own best interest, defend them.
15.     Someone might object that the power of the Athenians depends upon this very thing, the ability of the allies to pay the tribute assessed. But to the common people at Athens it seems an even greater good to divide the money of the allies among themselves and, leaving them only enough to live on, render them incapable of conspiring against their masters.
16.     It would seem also that the Athenian people are misguided in requiring their allies to sail to Athens for trials. The people, however, count the many blessings which flow to them from this source alone: first they can depend on the jury duty (and the pay that comes out of the court fees) all year long; furthermore they administer the affairs of the allied cities at home without the trouble of sailing around, using the courts to shelter their friends and ruin their enemies. If the individual cities conducted their litigation locally, out of sheer hated for the Athenians they would convict and condemn those of their own people who were especially pro-Athenian.
17.     The Athenian people profit in other ways also from Athenian jurisdiction over allied litigation. There is the increase in state revenue which comes from the one percent harbor duty at the Piraeus.
18.     Then too it is good business for the man with a room to rent or a pair of horses—or perhaps a slave—for hire; and the town criers do better too because of the visits of the allies. Besides if the allies did not come for trials, they would respect on the Athenians who were sent overseas—the generals, ship-captains, and the ambassadors. But as things are now the allies are compelled, one and all, to ingratiate themselves with the Athenian people; for they know that they must come to Athens and have their cases tried by none other than the people themselves—for in Athens the people are the law. The litigant is forced to beg before the court and shake the hand of whoever happens to come into the courtroom. In this way, then, the allies have become more and more the slaves of the Athenian people.
19.     On account of possessions overseas, moreover, and the public offices which require overseas travel, Athenian voyagers and their staffs become experienced seamen, although not by intention. For a man who is continually aboard ship, and his servant as well, must as a matter of course handle an oar and learn nautical terms.

20.     They become good helmsmen too through their experience of sailing and actual practice: some will have steered transports, others freighters, while still others become good enough to be made helmsmen on warships. Most Athenians are able to handle an oar as soon as they get on board since they have already had abundant practice.
    
    
    Section II:
    

1.     The Athenian infantry would seem to be their weakest military branch and is so in fact. The Athenians recognize that in this respect they are inferior to their enemies both in numbers and ability, but they are superior even on land to their allies, who bring in the tribute, and they consider their infantry sufficient if it is better than any the allies can muster.
2.     Such as attitude arises from the very nature of things: small cities can combine forces to wage war in strength against a land power, but the island states subject to a sea power cannot gather their forces at a single place, for the sea divides them, and their rulers are masters of the sea.
3.     Even if the islanders could come together unnoticed onto one island, they would simply die of starvation. As for the mainland cities ruled by the Athenians, fear constrains the large ones, absolute necessity the small ones. For there is no city that does not need imports and exports, and these they will not have unless they yield to the will of those who rule the sea.
4.     Furthermore those who rule the sea have the ability to do at will what a land power can do only occasionally, lay waste the land of a greater power; for the sea power, coasting in ships, can land where there is no enemy to meet them, or very few. If the enemy starts to attack, they simply reembark and sail away, and so find themselves much less frustrated than the foot soldiers marching to the rescue.

    Also the masters of the sea can sail away from home on voyages as long as you please; land powers, on the other hand, are kept to overland marches within a few days of home because the going is slow for the man on foot and the food is quickly used up. The man on foot, moreover, must go through friendly territory or fight his way through, whereas the sailor can put in wherever he is stronger and sail on by those places where he is not until he comes to friendly or unmenacing territory.
    Furthermore the blights which Zeus sends upon the crops cause great suffering for the land power, but the sea power bears them easily. After all the whole earth is never blighted at once, and those who rule the sea can import crops from wherever they grow healthy.

5.     To come now to matters of less consequence, it is through their mastery at sea and their contact with other peoples in other places that the Athenians have acquired their high-living ways. Choosing those things which they find most delightful in Sicily, Italy, Cyprus, Egypt, Lydia, Pontus, the Peloponnesus, or anywhere else, they ship everything into one place.
6.     Then again they have heard every dialect and have adopted a word here and phrase there. Thus while the rest of the Greeks have their own distinct dialects, dress, and life-styles, the Athenians have concocted theirs from all over the world, Greek and barbarian.
7.     Regarding sacrifices, temples, festivals, and sacred precincts, the Athenian people know that the poor individually cannot afford to sacrifice, celebrate feasts, build temples, and make their city a great and good place to live; but they have found a way to have these things nonetheless. They perform large sacrifices corporately as "The City of Athens" and at public expense, and so it is "The Sovereign People of Athens" who are feasted and who get to share the sacrificed animals by lot.
8.     Gymnasia, baths, and dressing rooms are privately owned by some of the rich; but "The Sovereign People of Athens" build many wrestling schools, baths, and dressing rooms for their exclusive use. In fact that body politic owns more of them than all the distinguished and prosperous people put together.
9.     The Athenians alone of all the Greeks and barbarians are able to hold onto their wealth. For even if a city is rich in timber for shipbuilding, where can it find markets without the consent of those who rule the sea? Or if a city’s major export is iron or copper or canvas, where can that city find markets without the consent of those who rule the sea? But of course this is the very stuff my ships are made of: someone’s wood, someone else’s iron, copper from here, canvas from there, and wax from somewhere else.
10.     Furthermore these suppliers are required to sell exclusively to Athens, for anyone who would like to bid against us faces the prospect of being barred from the sea. All these products of the earth the sea brings me—I hardly life a finger for them. No other city has even two of these resources. Wood and canvas, for example, are not products of a single locality, for where linen is abundant, the land is flat and unwooded. One city will not produce both copper and iron either, nor will you find two or three of the others together in the same place, but one is found here, another there.
11.     Yet again every mainland coast has a jutting headland or an island close in or a narrow strait where those who control the sea can set up a blockade and prey upon those who live on the mainland.
12.     One thing the Athenians do lack is the advantage of geographical location, for if their city were on an island rather than on the mainland, they would have it within their power to inflict damage on others at will without suffering any themselves (as long as they kept control of the sea), secure from invasion and the devastation of their land. As it is now the farmers and the gentry tend to be conciliatory toward the enemy while the people, with no farms of their own to have burned or orchards to be cut down, live carefree and without compromise.
13.     In addition if they lived on an island, they would be free of the fear that a few men might betray the city by opening the gates and letting the enemy rush in, for how could this happen if they lived on an island? On an island there could be no uprising against the people either, for revolutionaries must count on inducing the enemy to march to their aid. On this account too, then, the Athenians would live more confidently as islanders.
14.     However, since they are not in fact islanders and never had been, the Athenians have found this remedy: they put their wealth on the islands and their trust in their control of the sea. Then if their land is laid waste, they ignore it, recognizing that weeping over its loss would merely keep them from enjoying other and better things.
15.     Furthermore oligarchical states have to cumber themselves with alliances and oaths, and if they fail to live up to their commitments, then the oligarchs, that small and well-known group of men who rule, must be held accountable. But "The Sovereign People" can shift the responsibility for any particular agreement onto a single man, the one who proposed it in the Assembly and put it to a vote, and deny any obligation to honor it. "Hardly anyone was there," would be the standard disclaimer, "and we surely wouldn’t have approved it if we had been"—although the injured party finds out soon enough that the agreement was ratified by the full Assembly. In fact if any agreement the Athenians make should come later to seem inexpedient to them, it makes no difference: they always manage to come up with a thousand excuses for not honoring agreements they do not wish to. And if some action of the people turns out badly, they cry that their intentions were subverted by an elitist conspiracy; but when some good comes of their actions, they give the credit to themselves.
16.     In order to prevent the popular image from being tarnished the comedians are forbidden to ridicule or denigrate the people in their plays, but unofficially they are encouraged to attack single individuals on the grounds that the person publicly ridiculed is not likely to be a man of the people, but rich, well-born, and influential. The people know that only some few of their own number will be attacked, and those will be the ambitious, who aspire to better things. Ridicule of men of this sort does not bother the people either.
17.     I contend, therefore, that the Athenian people know which among them are the decent men and which the disreputable, and with this in mind they favor the latter, who serve their purposes and are of advantage to them, but the former they are inclined to detest, for they suppose that a decent man’s virtue cannot contribute to their welfare, but only to their ruin. There are, however, some people who, although they are of low origin, are not democratic by temperament.

18.      Now the common people themselves can be forgiven their democracy: after all, people will act in their own best interest. But when a man not of the people chooses to live in a democratic city rather than in an oligarchic one, he must be planning to do something wrong and knows that a wrongdoer is less likely to be noticed in a democratic than in an oligarchic city.
    
    
            
                          (Athenian ostrakon voting for Themistokles' expulsion)
    
    
    Section III:

1.     I disapprove of the form of government of the Athenians; but granting that they did choose democracy, it seems to me that they preserve it well, just as I have shown. Still there are some who complain that a man may well wait around for a year in Athens before he can do business with the Council of 500 or the Assembly.
2.     Now this happens only because of the crowded calendar: it is simply impossible to send away every petitioner with his business done. And how could it be? In the first place the Athenians have to celebrate their holidays (no Greek city has more), and little can be accomplished then; then too in Athens there are more civil and criminal cases to be settled, as well as reviews of conduct in public office, than there are in all the rest of the world put together; and there are questions of war, revenue, legislation, current city business, the allies, tribute collection, and supervision of the shipyards and the holy precincts, each requiring long deliberation by the Council. Is it any wonder that people so burdened with business are unable to attend to every petitioner?
3.     True, one might argue: "If someone comes before the Council of 500 or the Assembly with money in hand, he will get his business done." I would certainly agree that money gets things done in Athens and that even more would get done if more people would pay. But even so I am certain that the city could not cope with so large a volume of business no matter how much gold and silver were offered.
4.     Additional items requiring adjudication are actions against those who fail to keep their ships in good repair and against those who build on public land; annual decrees designating those responsible for providing choruses at various festivals (the Dionysia, Thargelia, Panathenaea, Prometheia, and Hephaestia); annual decrees designating the four hundred trierarchs as well as annual hearings for those who wish to have their appointments reconsidered; investigation and certification of candidates for public office, investigation of the claims of orphans to public support, and the appointment of prison warders.
5.     These are annual procedures. From time to time military matters or some unforeseen injustice (gross misconduct, for example, or impiety) will require special proceedings. I have left out many things, but I have mentioned the most important ones, except for the assessing of the tribute, which usually happens every four years.
6.     Now then, do you not agree that all these matters require adjudication? Can anyone suggest even one that does not? If you agree, then, that all of these matters do require judicial action, clearly it must be done annually, for even though such is the practice now, still crime remains unchecked because of the large number of people.
7.     Well then, suppose someone agrees that there should be adjudication, but proposes that fewer people should sit on juries. In that case—unless the courts are reduced in number—there will necessarily be fewer jurors in each court and thus greater opportunity to manipulate juries or bribe them entire to render verdicts far short of just.
8.     Besides we must bear in mind that the Athenians must hold their festivals and that the courts are closed on those days. True, they celebrate twice as many festivals as others do; but all the same I am charging them with only as many as the city which celebrates the fewest.

    Given these circumstances, then, I can only assert that the situation in Athens could not be different from what it is now, except for minor additions and rescissions. Major changes are impossible without undermining the very character of democracy.

9.     Improving the government would be easy, but providing for good government within a democratic framework would not, except, as I have just said, for minor adjustments.
10.     Another apparently misguided practice of the Athenians is their customary support of the worse element in revolutions in other cities. But this they do with good reason, for if they sided with the better class, they would be preferring those who reject their values. Excellence is nowhere well-disposed to the man in the street; but what is most vile favors him everywhere, for like attracts like.
11.     Thus the Athenians prefer what best befits them. Whenever they have tried to side with the best people, things have not turned out well for them, but before long the commoners were enslaved, as in Boeotia. The same thing happened when they sided with the upper class in Miletus: within a short time the Milesian aristocrats rose and cut the people to ribbons. And again when they favored the Spartans over the Messenians, the Spartans soon put down the Messenians and began making war on the Athenians.
12.     One might assume, then, that no one in Athens has been unjustly deprived of his civil rights. I would say that some have, but few; and it would take more than a few to launch an attack on the democracy of Athens.
13.     After all, those who are angry are not the ones who have lost their civil rights justly, but those who were deprived of them unjustly. How then could anyone suppose that the common people in Athens have been deprived of their civil rights unjustly when the people themselves hold the offices and are disfranchised on such grounds as malfeasance in office and wrongful speech or action? Taking these things into account, we cannot suppose that there is any danger in Athens from those who have lost their civil rights.