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2 results

  • Chapter 5 - Mutual Coercion, Mutually Agreed Upon

  • M. D. Usher, University of Vermont
  • Book:
    Plato's Pigs and Other Ruminations
    Published online:
    26 September 2020
    Print publication:
    15 October 2020, pp 110-130

  • Summary

    “Mutual Coercion, Mutually Agreed Upon” (the phrase comes from Garrett Hardin's classic essay "Tragedy of the Commons") sees the democratic reforms and social reorganization of Attica by the Athenian statesman Cleisthenes in 508 BCE as a case study in systems leveraging. Cleisthenes’s reforms are situated in a nexus of Presocratic (Pythagorean) thinking about limit (peras) and in the context of ideas that circulated at the time under the banners of isonomy (isonomia) and harmony (harmonia). The ancient Athenians, newly freed from political tyranny and the social upheaval of 508, recognized the intrinsic value of limits and restraint and built them into the structures of democratic life. Their example, I argue further, stands as a challenge to environmental and social problems faced by democratic regimes today.

  • 4 - The Athenian revolution

  • Edited by David M. Lewis, John Boardman, J. K. Davies, M. Ostwald
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    26 March 1992, pp 62-95

  • Summary

    Themistocles was responsible for the rebuilding of Athens' walls after the Persian Wars. Themistocles and Cimon were rivals as individuals, and stood for different views of Athens' recent history and different views of the foreign policy which Athens ought to pursue. In the sixth century, the archonship had been the most important office of the Athenian state. The new organization given to the Athenian state by Cleisthenes required a considerable degree of participation by the citizens, both at polis level and at local level. The core of the Athenian state was the Athenian demos, the body of Athenian citizens, and under the democracy the state was run by the demos. Athens was the paradigm of a democratic state. Athens and Sparta came to be regarded as the leading exponents of democracy and oligarchy respectively. Constitutional government was an achievement of which the Greeks were justly proud.