This book is the result of a long and fruitful conversation among practitioners of two very different fields: ancient history and political theory. The topic of the conversation is classical Greek democracy and its contemporary relevance. The nineteen contributors remain diverse in their political commitments and in their analytic approaches, but all have engaged deeply with Greek texts, with normative and historical concerns, and with each others' arguments. The issues and tensions examined here are basic to both history and political theory: revolution versus stability, freedom and equality, law and popular sovereignty, cultural ideals and social practice. While the authors are sharply critical of many aspects of Athenian society, culture, and government, they are united by a conviction that classical Athenian democracy has once again become a centrally important subject for political debate. The contributors are Benjamin R. Barber, Alan Boegehold, Paul Cartledge, Susan Guettel Cole, W. Robert Connor, Carol Dougherty, J. Peter Euben, Mogens H. Hansen, Victor D. Hanson, Carnes Lord, Philip Brook Manville, Ian Morris, Martin Ostwald, Kurt Raaflaub, Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, Barry S. Strauss, Robert W. Wallace, Sheldon S. Wolin, and Ellen Meiksins Wood.

Athens is often considered to have been the birth place of democracy but there were many democracies in Greece during the Archaic and Classical periods and this is a study of the other democratic states. Robinson begins by discussing ancient and modern definitions of democracy, he then examines Greek terminology, investigates the evidence for other early democratic states and draws conclusions about its emergence.

Twenty-five hundred years ago a small Mediterranean community devised a new civic order; the community was Athens and the civic order became democracy. Over almost two centuries Athens struggled to keep its democracy. Previous novels, The Demos at Dawn and The Children of Marathon, have described the early portions of this struggle. The present novel carries the struggle to a close. During the course of this final period, Athenians desperately fought foreign foes and each other, won, lost and suffered through strife, created a thriving commerce and an empire, only to have them lost and then regained and lost again, and produced architecture, art, drama and philosophy unrivaled then or now. This is a story of some men and women of that time, as well as the story of ancient Athenian democracy.

This book presents a state-of-the-art debate about the origins of Athenian democracy by five eminent scholars. The result is a stimulating, critical exploration and interpretation of the extant evidence on this intriguing and important topic. The authors address such questions as: Why was democracy first realized in ancient Greece? Was democracy "invented" or did it evolve over a long period of time? What were the conditions for democracy, the social and political foundations that made this development possible? And what factors turned the possibility of democracy into necessity and reality? The authors first examine the conditions in early Greek society that encouraged equality and "people’s power." They then scrutinize, in their social and political contexts, three crucial points in the evolution of democracy: the reforms connected with the names of Solon, Cleisthenes, and Ephialtes in the early and late sixth and mid-fifth century. Finally, an ancient historian and a political scientist review the arguments presented in the previous chapters and add their own perspectives, asking what lessons we can draw today from the ancient democratic experience. Designed for a general readership as well as students and scholars, the book intends to provoke discussion by presenting side by side the evidence and arguments that support various explanations of the origins of democracy, thus enabling readers to join in the debate and draw their own conclusions.

First full study of ancient Greek democracy in the Classical period outside Athens, which has three main goals: to identify where and when democratic governments established themselves; to explain why democracy spread to many parts of Greece; and to further our understanding of the nature of ancient democracy.

"A balanced, high-quality analysis of the developing nature of Athenian political society and its relationship to 'democracy' as a timeless concept."—Mark Munn, author of The School of History

Ancient Greece first coined the concept of "democracy", yet almost every major ancient Greek thinker-from Plato and Aristotle onwards- was ambivalent towards or even hostile to democracy in any form. The explanation for this is quite simple: the elite perceived majority power as tantamount to a dictatorship of the proletariat. In ancient Greece there can be traced not only the rudiments of modern democratic society but the entire Western tradition of anti-democratic thought. In Democracy, Paul Cartledge provides a detailed history of this ancient political system. In addition, by drawing out the salient differences between ancient and modern forms of democracy he enables a richer understanding of both. Cartledge contends that there is no one "ancient Greek democracy" as pure and simple as is often believed. Democracy surveys the emergence and development of Greek politics, the invention of political theory, and-intimately connected to the latter- the birth of democracy, first at Athens in c. 500 BCE and then at its greatest flourishing in the Greek world 150 years later. Cartledge then traces the decline of genuinely democratic Greek institutions at the hands of the Macedonians and-subsequently and decisively-the Romans. Throughout, he sheds light on the variety of democratic practices in the classical world as well as on their similarities to and dissimilarities from modern democratic forms, from the American and French revolutions to contemporary political thought. Authoritative and accessible, Cartledge's book will be regarded as the best account of ancient democracy and its long afterlife for many years to come.

Since it was no longer self-evident that "better men" meant "better government," critics of democracy sought new arguments to explain the relationship among politics, ethics, and morality.

In the hellenistic period the Greek city-states are thought to have lost their independence and thereby also their possibilities of democratic government. This study shows that interstate relations among the Greek cities of coastal Asia Minor were active. Measures were taken to solve conflicts and to strengthen ties of friendship among cities, but the cities did not refrain from claiming their rights vis-a-vis each other and even waging wars; in the power struggle between the changing hegemons, the poleis had possibilities to manoeuvre fairly independently. By systematizing and analyzing the frequency and contents of hellenistic decrees enacted by the council and the demos in four East Greek city-states, the study shows that the latter were democratically ruled, and the issues decided on foremost concerned foreign relations. However, in the second half of the second century polis decrees gradually decrease, to cease altogether towards the end of the first century BC. A possible reason is the growing power of Rome and the establishment of the Roman province of Asia in 129 BC. Under a sole hegemon the poleis no longer had possibilities to set their own agenda.