Excavations


... nothing is more essential to public interest than the preservation of public liberty.

- David Hume



Sunday, June 1, 2025

The Story of how Athens was freed from its tyrants

The American Founding Fathers did not look to ancient Athens as a model for democracy – instead they looked to Rome.[1]  Perhaps, if the Greeks had not executed Socrates, things might have been different. Similarly, if slaves, foreigners, and women were not excluded from Athenian citizenship, the ancient use of the word “democracy” would be more apt.  Nevertheless, the Athenian experience continues to stimulate minds even today.

In 594 BC Solon was elected leader and mediator of ancient Athens, a period of intense economic and social strife.  He was known by his poetry as someone who could dispute “against each side on behalf of the other.”[2]  And so, there was something of the ‘middle-way’ method to Solon’s approach two centuries before Socrates arrived on the scene.   Solon was a reconciler, and he was responsible for framing the Athenian Constitution as well as other laws which worked to broaden civic responsibility by making office holding a function of property as opposed to lineage.  It also appears that Solon preferred “justice for all” over democracy per se, otherwise known as government by the people. [3]

Neither side was left satisfied by Solon’s settlement of disputes which gave rise to the seizure of power – on three separate occasions – by Pisistratus.  His first coup was in 561, his second in 556 – each lasting only for a few months – and his third was in 546, which lasted almost 19 years.[4]  Pisistratus’s regime was later regarded as a “Golden Age”[5] which didn’t turn truly oppressive until the arrival of his two sons, Hipparchus and Hippias, following Pisistratus’s death.

Here is an account by Herodotus which relates how Spartan intervention helped overthrow Athenian tyranny:

[62] … I must proceed with the matter whereof I was intending before to speak; to wit, the way in which the Athenians got quit of their tyrants. Upon the death of Hipparchus, Hippias, who was king, grew harsh towards the Athenians; and the Alcaeonidae, an Athenian family which had been banished by the Pisistratidae, joined the other exiles, and endeavoured to procure their own return, and to free Athens, by force. They seized and fortified Leipsydrium above Paeonia, and tried to gain their object by arms; but great disasters befell them, and their purpose remained unaccomplished. They therefore resolved to shrink from no contrivance that might bring them success; and accordingly they contracted with the Amphictyons to build the temple which now stands at Delphi, but which in those days did not exist. Having done this, they proceeded, being men of great wealth and members of an ancient and distinguished family, to build the temple much more magnificently than the plan obliged them. Besides other improvements, instead of the coarse stone whereof by the contract the temple was to have been constructed, they made the facings of Parian marble.

[63] These same men, if we may believe the Athenians, during their stay at Delphi persuaded the Pythoness by a bribe to tell the Spartans, whenever any of them came to consult the oracle, either on their own private affairs or on the business of the state, that they must free Athens. So the Lacedaemonians, when they found no answer ever returned to them but this, sent at last Anchimolius, the son of Aster - a man of note among their citizens - at the head of an army against Athens, with orders to drive out the Pisistratidae, albeit they were bound to them by the closest ties of friendship. For they esteemed the things of heaven more highly than the things of men. The troops went by sea and were conveyed in transports. Anchimolius brought them to an anchorage at Phalerum; and there the men disembarked. But the Pisistratidae, who had previous knowledge of their intentions, had sent to Thessaly, between which country and Athens there was an alliance, with a request for aid. The Thessalians, in reply to their entreaties, sent them by a public vote 1000 horsemen, under the command of their king, Cineas, who was a Coniaean. When this help came, the Pisistratidae laid their plan accordingly: they cleared the whole plain about Phalerum so as to make it fit for the movements of cavalry, and then charged the enemy's camp with their horse, which fell with such fury upon the Lacedaemonians as to kill numbers, among the rest Anchimolius, the general, and to drive the remainder to their ships. Such was the fate of the first army sent from Lacedaemon, and the tomb of Anchimolius may be seen to this day in Attica; it is at Alopecae (Foxtown), near the temple of Hercules in Cynosargos.

[64] Afterwards, the Lacedaemonians despatched a larger force against Athens, which they put under the command of Cleomenes, son of Anaxandridas, one of their kings. These troops were not sent by sea, but marched by the mainland. When they were come into Attica, their first encounter was with the Thessalian horse, which they shortly put to flight, killing above forty men; the remainder made good their escape, and fled straight to Thessaly. Cleomenes proceeded to the city, and, with the aid of such of the Athenians as wished for freedom, besieged the tyrants, who had shut themselves up in the Pelasgic fortress.

[65] And now there had been small chance of the Pisistratidae falling into the hands of the Spartans, who did not even design to sit down before the place, which had moreover been well provisioned beforehand with stores both of meat and drink, - nay, it is likely that after a few days' blockade the Lacedaemonians would have quitted Attica altogether, and gone back to Sparta - had not an event occurred most unlucky for the besieged, and most advantageous for the besiegers. The children of the Pisistratidae were made prisoners, as they were being removed out of the country. By this calamity all their plans were deranged, and - as the ransom of their children - they consented to the demands of the Athenians, and agreed within five days' time to quit Attica. Accordingly they soon afterwards left the country, and withdrew to Sigeum on the Scamander, after reigning thirty-six years over the Athenians. By descent they were Pylians, of the family of the Neleids, to which Codrus and Melanthus likewise belonged, men who in former times from foreign settlers became kings of Athens. And hence it was that Hippocrates came to think of calling his son Pisistratus: he named him after the Pisistratus who was a son of Nestor. Such then was the mode in which the Athenians got quit of their tyrants. [6]

 

 

 

 

 



[1][1] Kurt A. Raaflaub, “Democracy” in Konrad H. Kinzl, ed., The Companion to the Classical Greek World (Chichester, West Sussex, 2010), p. 497.

[2] Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution, tr. P.J. Rhodes (London: Penguin, 2002), p. 46 [para. 5].

[3] Raaflaub in Companion to the Classical Greek World, p. 395.

[4] See Aristotle, Athenian Constitution, p. 56.

[5] Raaflaub in Companion to the Classical Greek World, p. 395.

[6] Herodotus, The Histories, tr. George Rawlinson (Moscow, Idaho: Roman Roads Media, 2013), available online [Book V, para. 62-65]. 

Friday, May 16, 2025

The Waste Land

1 year of war has rendered Gaza ...

Photo: Radio Canada

   What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

 

From T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922)[1]



[1] T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land” in T.S. Eliot: The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1971), pp. 37-50.  See lines 367-377 on p. 48.

Friday, April 18, 2025

Remembering William Lyon Mackenzie King

 

With Trump back in Washington, Canadians today face threats to our national sovereignty which we have not seen in well over eight decades.  Former Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, a Liberal, guided us through the difficult terrain of much of the Great Depression and the Second World War.  He is the longest serving prime minister of Canada, and he bears comparison with the shortest serving prime minister to date we have ever had: Mark Carney, also a Liberal. 

In addition to being trained as a lawyer, King had a doctorate in Political Economy from Harvard.  Carney, a Commonwealth Scholar, has a doctorate in Economics from Oxford.  These two individuals are the only Canadians who served as prime minister to have a doctorate – Pierre Trudeau’s doctoral studies at the London School of Economic were never completed.  Carney’s experiences at the Bank of Canada (handling the Great Recession of 2007-8) and at the Bank of England (handling Brexit) can, in some ways, compare with the weight of the disruptive threats facing the world in the 1930’s and the 1940’s. 

Certainly today’s political landscape, when looking at Trump and across many parts of the globe, resembles the authoritarian path taken by Europe - not just Germany - in the 1930’s.[1]  On top of that, Trump’s tariffs can be seen as a new iteration of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, imposed by the USA in 1930, which promoted economic protectionism and further precipitated the depths of the Great Depression.

So, as Mark Carney seems to have risen to today’s occasion, let us not forget Mackenzie King who dominated Canadian politics under similar circumstances.  Here is a poetic reminder of Mackenzie King’s political skills:

W.L.M.K.

How shall we speak of Canada,
Mackenzie King dead?
The Mother’s boy in the lonely room
With his dog, his medium and his ruins?

He blunted us.

We had no shape
Because he never took sides,
And no sides
Because he never allowed them to take shape.

He skillfully avoided what was wrong
Without saying what was right,
And never let his on the one hand
Know what his on the other hand was doing.

The height of ambition
Was to pile a Parliamentary Committee on a Royal Commission
To have “conscription if necessary
But not necessarily conscription”,
To let Parliament decide –
Later.

Postpone, postpone, abstain.

Only one thread was certain:
After World War I
Business as usual,
After World War II
Orderly decontrol.
Always he led us back to where we were before.

He seemed to be in the centre
Because we had no centre,
No vision
To pierce the smoke-screen of his politics.

Truly he will be remembered
Whenever men honour ingenuity,
Ambiguity, inactivity, and potential longevity.

Let us raise up a temple
To the cult of mediocrity,
Do nothing by halves
Which can be done by quarters
. [2]     

                                 F.R. Scott

                              

 

 



[1] See David Clay Large, Between Two Fires: Europe’s Path in the 1930’s (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990).

[2] F.R. Scott and A.J.M. Smith, The Blasted Pine: An Anthology of Satire, Invective and Disrespectful Verse, Chiefly by Canadian Writers (Toronto: MacMillan, 1962), pp. 27,28.

Friday, April 11, 2025

Pericles was ahead of the democratic curve – others, less so

After the first year of the war between Athens and Sparta (431 B.C.), Pericles, the democratically elected leader, delivered his famous Funeral Oration in honour of the Athenians who had already died in the war.  Here it is, in part, as recorded by Thucydides, the historian, who also had high praise for Athenian democracy:

Let me say that our system of government does not copy the institutions of our neighbours.  It is more the case of our being a model to others, than of imitating anyone else.  Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people.  When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law, when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses.  No one, so long as he has it in him to be of service to the state, is kept in political obscurity because of poverty.  And, just as our political life is free and open, so is our day-to-day life in our relations with each other.  We do not get into a state with our next-door neighbours if he enjoys himself in his own way, nor do we give him the kind of black looks which, though they do no real harm, still do hurt people’s feelings.  We are free and tolerant in our private lives; but in public affairs we keep to the law.  This is because it commands our deep respect. …

Our love of what is beautiful does not lead to extravagance; our love of things of the mind does not make us soft.  We regard wealth as something to be properly used, rather than as something to boast about.  As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it: the real shame is not taking practical measures to escape from it.  Here each individual is interested not only in his own affairs but the affairs of state as well: even those who are mostly occupied with their own business are extremely well-informed on general politics – this is a peculiarity of ours: we do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say he has no business here at all.  We Athenians, in our own persons, take our decisions on policy or submit them to proper discussions: for we do not think that there is an incompatibility between words and deeds; the worst thing is to rush into action before the consequences have been properly debated. …

We make friends by doing good to others, not by receiving good from them.  This makes our friendship all the more reliable, since we want to keep alive the gratitude of those who are in our debt by showing continued goodwill to them: whereas the feelings of those who owes us something lack the same enthusiasm, since he knows that, when he repays our kindness, it will be more like paying back a debt than giving something spontaneously.  We are unique in this.  When we do kindnesses to others, we do not do them out of any calculations of profit or loss: we do them without afterthought, relying on our free liberality.  Taking everything together then, I declare that our city is an education to Greece, and I declare that in my opinion each single one of our citizens, in all the manifold aspects of life, is able to show himself the rightful lord and owner of his own person [1]

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (431 BC)



[1] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, tr. Rex Warner, intro. M.I. Finley (London: Penguin, 1972), pp. 145, 147.

Thursday, March 20, 2025

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