Athens: from Ancient Ideal to Modern City, a History, by Robin Waterfield (Basic Books, 2004)
The assault on the Capitol in Washington, and other events of this past week, have made it a bit difficult to concentrate, but a few notes are worth preserving on this very readable, insightful, and witty history of Athens, the city-state of Greece. Most of the book deals with Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, when it was at the height of its power and influence.
- Athenian democracy (literally people power) and its changing structure is too complicated to go into here (Waterfield describes it in the book, and even there, it takes close reading to understand it), but the underlying principle of democracy is equality -- the poor citizen had the same vote as the rich citizen.
- Democracy was messy. There were a number of bodies, and they could arrive at unjust directives and actions. Still, the Athenian constitution provided for unjust judgements to be overridden by other bodies.
- Ostracism could be brought up at any time by any citizen against an official. It was a check on the power of individuals, intended to prevent Athens from ruled by tyrants. I suppose ostracism is a form of impeachment, though in Athens the target had to be physically removed from Athens itself (he did, however, get to keep his property), and he did get to once again run for office.
- The Athenians named their first-born children after the name of the father's father. The same practice is still in use today among Greeks.
- Only adult men could be full citizens. Slaves outnumbered citizens. To our modern sensibility, it seems obviously strange that a city-state whose government was founded on the principle of equality would recognize slavery. Yet, it was a hundred fifty years ago that we still had slavery here in the United States.
- What's amazing is how long Athenian democracy was seriously maintained -- it lasted hundreds of years, even after the city shrank and declined in power until it was not much more than a crumbling university town, around the time of Christ.
- Waterfield's treatment of World War II Athens and Greece, the departure of Nazi German troops, the arming of former Right-wing collaborators by the British, the participation of British forces brutally suppressing Athenian crowds, the clashes between Right and Left forces in December 1944, the preamble to the catastrophic Civil War that was to follow, is some of the best, clearest, and most succinct writing I've read on that complicated period.
- The modern city of Athens is treated the last portion of the book.
Waterfield does show how the city -- the name itself "Athens" -- has
become a universal symbol of democracy and freedom to the entire world,
not simply the Western world.
