In ancient Greece, manly men were thought to have invented popular rule and were considered capable, and worthy, of ruling themselves. The full appreciation of the gendered nature of democratic culture challenges our canonical vision of ancient politics. First, we have to place gender not at the margin, but at the heart of Athenian political culture. Second, we have to expand our primary ‘must-read’ sources, by including discourses that deal with the embodiment of a political identity: above all, the biological works of Aristotle. This chapter argues for a correlation between physiology and political theory within the Aristotelian corpus, as well as for the relevance of Aristotle’s insight for our understanding of ancient democracy.
