The Idea of Accountable Office in Ancient Greece and Beyond

While leaders in many times and places from ancient Greece to today have been called to account, it has been claimed that leaders in ancient Athens were called to account more than any other group in history. This paper surveys the distinctive ways in which Athenian accountability procedures gave the democratic people as a whole a meaningful voice in defining, revealing, and judging the misuse of office, and in holding every single official regularly and personally accountable for their use of their powers. By then assessing a drastic case of unaccountability in a certain moment of Athenian history – the rule of the Thirty in 404–403 BCE – and how accountability was ultimately imposed on them, the paper concludes with thoughts about what might deepen and restore trust in the accountability of public officials today.

A Final Appearance

This chapter highlights Alcibiades' final appearance in Athenian history. It happened on the eve of the battle that would mark the final and definitive defeat of Athens—the defeat at Aegospotami. It took place near Alcibiades' fortress, at the entry of the straits that bordered the Chersonese. Alcibiades suddenly appeared in the Athenian camp, confident in his experience and what he had been observing. He offered himself as an adviser at the most critical moment, a moment of high drama, and proved once more his incomparable abilities. Unfortunately, Athens was set on its path, to its peril; they would pay dearly for their attitude. Lysander fell upon the Athenian forces, which, as he knew, were imprudently dispersed. Lysander soon took Athens, burned the fleet, and destroyed the Long Walls that had guaranteed Athens safety and independence. The chapter then looks at Alcibiades' death, which, unlike his life, was obscure and miserable.

Views on the Past

Chapter 14 examines how versions of the past, particularly the Athenian past, figure and are deployed rhetorically in the public part of Demosthenes’ texts. It considers Demosthenes’ conception of Athenian history and the ways that he fashioned his historical material for communication to mass audiences by comparing his practice with that of Lycurgus, Aeschines, Hyperides, and Dinarchus. It discusses the basic unit of historical reference in Athenian oratorical texts, the paradeigma or illustrative analogy, and analyses Demosthenes’ uses of historical themes and argumentation in relation to the overall strategies of the speeches concerned. Finally, it highlights some key factors affecting the compositional and presentational choices made by orators as well as the extent to which orators modelled their self-presentation strategies on those of their political seniors (or indeed on more chronologically distant figures) and modified them to respond to those of successful rivals.

The Social and Legal Position of Metics, Foreigners, and Slaves

The Demosthenic Corpus is the richest source available to us on the social and legal position of foreigners, metics, and slaves in Athenian society. Partly because of its size but also because most of the speeches in it were composed at a critical point in Athenian history documenting the high point of classical culture and literary production but at the same time the dramatic end of the polis, the Corpus is marked by both the complexity and richness of classical culture but also the anxieties and historical conflicts of the times. In this respect it becomes a faithful mirror of fourth-century Athenian society, law, and history. This chapter will explore the social and legal position of foreigners, metics, and slaves in fourth-century Athens through the prism of the Corpus Demosthenicum, cross-referencing with other significant sources on the topic.

The City in Chorus: For a Choral History of Athenian Society

This chapter specifically aims to find a path that traverses — or a midway point between — both approaches to the study of the Greek world influenced by Actor-Network Theory and more traditional Durkheimian approaches centered on the city. It considers the model of the choros (as it was conceptualized by classical authors) as capable of offering a productive paradigm for understanding the mechanisms of belonging at work within Athenian civic society during the classical period. The choral reference also refers to a certain way of writing history—one inspired by the models of the novel and the choral film— that seems particularly fitting for describing the complex way in which the Athenian social sphere functioned. The article formulates the following hypothesis: a choral approach, at the crossroads between the specifically Greek conception of the chorus and the contemporary conceptualization of the chorus in the field of fiction, makes it possible to stay as close as possible to the ways in which the social sphere was composed, the formation of groups, and the identities at the various levels of community life. This hypothesis to put to the test by examining a unique moment in Athenian history: the years between 404 and 400.

Gifts for Cyrus, Tribute for Darius

In the introduction to the famous list of nomes Herodotus offers a rather idiosyncratic characterization of Darius I by means of calling him a huckster. Furthermore, he maintains that Cyrus II received gifts, whereas since the time of Darius the people of the Persian Empire had to pay tribute (phoros). Both issues are discussed against the background of Athenian history and political life in the fifth century BC. It is argued that Herodotus here as elsewhere in the Histories used the Persian Empire and its Kings as a mirror for the developments of his own times. In doing so he offers his opinions as to why the Persians failed in waging war against the Greeks, and consequently, the Athenians’ defeat in the war against the Spartans as well.

Greek History

This review commences with two important recent books on archaic Greek history. Hans van Wees sees fiscality as a main aspect of the development of Greek communities in the archaic period. He explores the trajectory of Greek, and more specifically Athenian, fiscality in the course of the archaic period from personal to institutional power, from informal to formal procedures, and from undifferentiated to specialized offices and activities. Van Wees argues convincingly that navies based on publicly built and funded triremes appeared from 530s onwards as a Greek reaction to the emergence of the Persian Empire; the resources for maintaining such navies revolutionized Greek fiscality. This means that the Athenian navy emerged decades before its traditional attribution to the Themistoclean programme of the 480s; but this revolution would have been impossible without the gradual transformation of Athenian fiscality in the previous decades from Solon onwards, as regards the delimitation of institutional and specialized fiscal offices, such as thenaukraroiandkolakretai, and the creation of formal procedures of taxation like theeisphora. This is a very important book that should have significant repercussions on the wider study of archaic Greece and Athenian history; but it also raises the major issue of the nature of our written sources for archaic Athens. While van Wees's use of the sources is plausible, there does not seem to be any wider principle of selection than what suits the argument (very sceptical on the tradition about Solon's fiscal measures, or Themistocles’ mines and navy policy; accepting of traditions about Hippias’ and Cleisthenes’ fiscal measures). We urgently need a focused methodological discussion of the full range of sources and the ways in which tradition, anachronism, ideology, and debate have shaped what we actually have.

Athenion of Athens Revisited*

SummaryThe usual view historiography has taken into account about the controversial data concerning the politician Athenion of Athens, mainly based in the perspective of one of Posidonius’ extant fragments, has portrayed Athenion as a tyrant. A close look at the information we have about him and his policies allows to ask new questions and to get a deeper perspective about the complex age of Athenian history that led the city to take part in the Ist Mithridatic War on the Pontic side, against Rome.

Die Methode der Atthidographen. Die Kleidemos-Fragmente in der Theseus-Vita des Plutarch

In the Life of Theseus Plutarch cites long passages from the Atthis of Cleidemus. These passages can exemplify the relationship between myth, fiction and historiography in the Atthides. The initial hypothesis of the present study was that the works of the Atthidographers may demonstrate a historical method, which gains its coherence from the description of cause and effect, the causal sequence of events and the chronological arrangement. This runs counter to the current opinion, which classifies the method of the Atthidographers as pseudohistorical or paradoxographical. This opinion is based on the fact that many, and to the last detail embellished, myths characterise the representations of Athenian history especially in the Atthis of Cleidemus. But if one compares the fragments of Cleidemus in Plutach’s Theseus-Vita with other fragments of Cleidemus (FGrH No. 323 F8 on the naucraries and FGrH No. 323 F21 on Themistocles), one can see that at least Cleidemus practiced in his Atthis an integration of myth and political history, that shows a consciously reflected methodological claim to historiography.