The Ionian Revolt & Athenian Democracy
The birth of Athenian democracy and the Ionian Revolt
Contents
The Power of National Unity
After Darius’ failed incursion into Scythia, he turned toward Thrace. Thrace is located in northern Greece across the Hellespont from Asia Minor. The best way to understand the Thracians is to think of them on a scale between the civilized Greeks and the barbaric Scythians. Being in the middle, they possessed neither advantage belonging to the extremes making them relatively easy for the Persians to subdue. Herodotus uses the beginning of Book V to discuss various customs and the history of the Thracians. This is the first thing he says about them:
Now the Thracian race is the most numerous, except the Indians, in all the world: and if it should come to be ruled over by one man, or to agree together in one, it would be irresistible in battle and the strongest by far of all nations, in my opinion. Since however this is impossible for them and cannot ever come to pass among them, they are in fact weak for that reason.
Through the first four books, we have seen many people crushed by stronger forces. As a people, if you want to remain a people and preserve your way of life, you must be strong and remain united. Nevertheless, the ancients had a notoriously difficult time unifying and putting aside smaller tribal interests. Our tradition is marked by this constant friction between individualism and communal solidarity, and the story of Western civilization is rich with examples showcasing the excellencies and shortfalls of each. I believe it is best to have a proper disposition towards individualism and communal solidarity in their own turn. To oscillate and dance between these two instincts may appear as contradictions to smaller minds, but why should the accusations of smaller minds matter to you? Nietzsche says, “The ability to endure contradiction is an indication of high culture.” Peoples that cannot dance this dance perish in an inglorious fashion. What good are all those petty disagreements and tribal loyalties if you just end up subjugated to a new master?
On Life and Death
The Trausians were a Thracian tribe. Herodotus tells us that they viewed life and death in the following way:
The Trausians perform everything else in the same manner as the other Thracians, but in regard to those who are born and die among them they do as follows: — when a child has been born, the nearest of kin sit round it and make lamentation for all the evils of which he must fulfil the measure, now that he is born, enumerating the whole number of human ills; but when a man is dead, they cover him up in the earth with sport and rejoicing, saying at the same time from what great evils he has escaped and is now in perfect bliss.
This seems like a very Platonic view: the soul is good, the body is evil, and death is the release of the soul from its prison. On life and death, I maintain that the Spartans held the superior view. Plutarch said that the Spartans found happiness alike in living and in dying:
They died, but not as lavish of their blood,
Or thinking death itself was simply good;
Their wishes neither were to live nor die,
But to do both alike commendably.
The Parian Plan
The Will To Power: Kleisthenes
Kleisthenes is famously known for being the father of Athenian democracy. With the help of the Spartans in 510 BC, Kleisthenes removed the last Peisistratid tyrant Hippias. The subsequent power vacuum left Athens vulnerable to more political strife, and a fierce rivalry between Kleisthenes and another noble named Isagoras was born:
Athens, which even before that time was great, then, after having been freed from despots, became gradually yet greater; and in it two men exercised power, namely Kleisthenes a descendant of Alkmeon, the same who is reported to have bribed the Pythian prophetess, and Isagoras, the son of Teisander, of a family which was highly reputed, but of his original descent I am not able to declare; his kinsmen however offer sacrifices to the Carian Zeus.
These men came to party strife for power; and then Kleisthenes was being worsted in the struggle, he made common cause with the people. After this he caused the Athenians to be in ten tribes, who were formerly in four; and he changed the names by which they were called after the sons of Ion, namely Geleon, Aigicoreus, Argades, and Hoples, and invented for them names taken from other heroes, all native Athenians except Ajax, whom he added as a neighbour and ally, although he was no Athenian.
Kleisthenes did not come out on top because he was “right.” He won because he had a relentless will to power. In one case, he bribed an oracle in order to deceive the Spartans into helping remove the tyrant Hippias. In the next, when he was facing political defeat, he enlisted the support of the common people. I am curious if Kleisthenes really cared about democracy, why did he not enlist the people’s support from the start?
While modern democracy-enjoyers like yourself may look at Kleisthenes as some sort of Marvel hero, the popular story around the birth of Athenian democracy gives me a bad feeling. I am highly suspicious of Kleisthenes. I do not believe he had this great love of the people or even a desire to actualize the full promise of the earlier Solonian reforms. I think he was aiming for a new type of tyranny: a regime in which he and his family would enjoy all the benefits of being tyrants without the negative stigma and constant fear of being deposed. Instead of the people’s masters, the Alkmeonids would be the city’s first citizens. It is ironic that two Alkmeonids, Perikles and Alkibiades, would later go on to wreck Athenian democracy not even one hundred years after its foundation. Yes — I am not a fan of Perikles. We will get to him when we cover Thucydides one day.
But I do admire Kleisthenes for his ruthless cunning. We moderns like to think that democracy is something organic that just springs up out of nowhere because people are inherently “rational.” This is absurd. The will to power of one man, not the collective enlightenment or reason of the people, created Athenian democracy.
Kleisthenes’ most remarkable reform, in my mind, was how he reorganized the Athenian tribe system. Each of the ten new tribes was comprised of men from each of the three geographic regions in Athens: the city, the coast, and the inland hills. Reorganizing and intermixing the tribes based on geography instead of kinship disrupted old identities and interests. From then on, the Athenians would have greater community consciousness which certainly played into their resilience during the Greco-Persian Wars. It is incredible to me that Kleisthenes was able to uproot these old tribal identities (that seemed to have run their course) and created new tribal identities that would go on to benefit the polis at large. This may be an example where “identities” can become a form of baggage that the people carry around with them. Great lawgivers seem to find a way to shrug off the old baggage and reconstitute dilapidated people anew.
The Democratic Mirage
Throughout the Histories, Herodotus leaves one with a romantic view of democracy. Just look how the Athenians freed themselves from tyrants, defeated the Persian menace, and preserved not only their own freedom but the freedom and independence of all of Greece. There is a clear link in Herodotus between democracy and the prosperity, happiness, and the triumph of the people:
The Athenians accordingly increased in power; and it is evident, not by one instance only but in every way, that Equality is an excellent thing, since the Athenians while they were ruled by despots were not better in war that any of those who dwelt about them, whereas after they had got rid of despots they became far the first. This proves that when they were kept down they were willfully slack, because they were working for a master, whereas when they had been set free each one was eager to achieve something for himself.
Before democracy, the Athenians were nothing remarkable but with democracy everything became possible. The Democratic Mirage does not take anything away from the great and heroic deeds of the Athenians — the point is simply this: with democracy, all things do in fact become possible… for about one or two generations. Democracies are strongest at their inception. In the beginning, public-spiritedness is usually riding high, and virtue is broadly disbursed across the enfranchised citizenry. But look at the Athenians of 340 BC. Montesquieu tells us that they were cockroaches! A completely different stock of men compared to the Athenians of 480 BC:
When Philip attempted to lord over Greece and appeared at the gates of Athens, she had even then lost nothing but time. We may see in Demosthenes how difficult it was to awaken the Athenian people; they dreaded Philip, not as the enemy of her liberty, but of her pleasures.
We are far off track, but here Montesquieu introduces us to the tragedy of Demosthenes. Demosthenes was a leading Athenian Statesman during the Macedon crisis, and he desperately tried to convince the Athenians to rally once again to the cause of freedom and independence. It was not due to any lack of talent on Demosthenes' part as to why he could not awaken the Athenian people against Philip's invasion the same way Themistokles would go on to rally the country against Xerxes. Demosthenes is remembered as one of the greatest orators of all time, but he simply was not speaking to the same audience that Themistokles spoke to. If Demosthenes were speaking to the same twenty-thousand citizens who rallied around Themistokles to defy Xerxes, perhaps history would contain one more heroic episode where a free people resisted invasion and preserved their freedom.
When I think of Athenian democracy, I recall the wisdom of the great Athenian Solon when King Croesus asked him who was the happiest man of all. We cannot judge a man happy, no matter how blessed his current fortune, without knowing how his story ends. Similarly, we cannot judge “democracies” to be the happiest governments, despite what they may accomplish initially, without knowing how they come to perish. Democracies tend to have the ugliest and most ignoble deaths — how can we possibly judge this to be the best form of government? Montesquieu provides the final accounting:
Athens was possessed of the same number of forces when she triumphed so gloriously as when with such infamy she was enslaved. She had twenty thousand citizens when she defended the Greeks against the Persians, when she contended for empire with Sparta, and invaded Sicily. After She had twenty thousand when Demetrius Phalereus numbered them as slaves beings sold in the market.
This famous city, which had withstood so many defeats, and having been so often destroyed had as often risen out of her ashes, was overthrown at Chaeronea…What does it avail Athens that Philip sends back her soldiers, if he does not return her men? It was ever after as easy to triumph over the forces of Athens as it had been difficult to subdue her virtue.
Good-Faith Foreign Policy Resets
It is ironic that the Spartans would largely be responsible for the birth of Athenian democracy. Their piety came back to bite them, as they obeyed a rigged oracle ordering them to overthrow Hippias which opened the door for Kleisthenes and his democratic reforms. Sparta sent envoys to the Peisistratid tyrants they earlier helped depose, apologized, and offered to march back to Athens and restore them to power:
At this time, then, when the Lacedemonians had recovered the oracles and when they saw that the Athenians were increasing in power and were not at all willing to submit to them, observing that the Athenian race now that it was free was becoming a match for their own, whereas when held down by despots it was weak and ready to be ruled, — perceiving, I say, all these things, they sent for Hippias the son of Peisistratos to come from Sigeion on the Hellespont, whither the family of Peisistratos go for refuge; and when Hippias had come upon the summons, the Spartans sent also for envoys to come from their other allies and spoke to them as follows:
"Allies, we are conscious within ourselves that we have not acted rightly; for incited by counterfeit oracles we drove out into exile men who were very closely united with us as guest-friends and who undertook the task of rendering Athens submissive to us, and then after having done this we delivered over the State to a thankless populace, which so soon as it had raised its head, having been freed by our means drove out us and our king with wanton outrage; and now exalted with pride it is increasing in power, so that the neighbours of these men first of all, that is the Boeotians and Chalkidians, have already learnt, and perhaps some others also will afterwards learn, that they committed an error.
As however we erred in doing those things of which we have spoken, we will try now to take vengeance on them, going thither together with you; since it was for this very purpose that we sent for Hippias, whom ye see here, and for you also, to come from your cities, in order that with common counsel and a common force we might conduct him to Athens and render back to him that which we formerly took away."
Despite the trouble they had brought to the Peisistratids, the Spartan apology seems genuine. “We were wrong, and we want to make things right.” Imagine if the rulers of our own regime acted with similar dignity! Imagine a world today where the Western democracies approached Russia in this manner. Good-faith foreign policy resets requires honor which our rulers do not possess.
Democratic Resentment of Sparta
Sparta’s allies were quick to dismiss their plan to restore Hippias in Athens. Rather than seriously consider Sparta’s good faith proposal, they complained like a bunch of smug and degenerate children. The Spartans were deliberately deceived, and to them, the impious Kleisthenes was not in any position to claim moral superiority over the tyrant Hippias. Herodotus records the screeching of the allies in detail:
"Surely now the heaven shall be below the earth, and the earth raised up on high above the heaven, and men shall have their dwelling in the sea, and fishes shall have that habitation which men had before, seeing that ye, Lacedemonians, are doing away with free governments and are preparing to bring back despotism again into our cities, than which there is no more unjust or more murderous thing among men. For if in truth this seems to you to be good, namely that the cities should be ruled by despots, do ye yourselves first set up a despot in your own State, and then endeavor to establish them also for others: but as it is, ye are acting unfairly towards your allies, seeing that ye have had no experience of despots yourselves and provide with the greatest care at Sparta that this may never come to pass.”
Why do the allies assume “free governments” are somehow more legitimate or more moral than “tyrannies?” They provide no explanation and just assume this to be the case. Why are they so passionately defending the “free government” of democratic Athens when it was established through deceit and the muscle of foreigners?
The allies complain that because Sparta has never experienced tyranny they are in no position to restore Hippias. This argument is absurd — it seems that Sparta would be most fit to decide such things given their experience. Sparta’s actual system of political equality is a rebuke against this fake Athenian regime, and all the allies are just resentful of this fact.
The allies complained that because Sparta had never experienced tyranny, they were in no position to restore Hippias. This argument is absurd — it seems that Sparta would be most fit to decide such things given their experience. Sparta’s actual free government is a total rebuke against this fake Athenian regime, and all the allies are just resentful of this fact. Sparta never experienced tyrants because they were better men. They never had to deal with a Hippias. They never had to bribe oracles and call upon someone else to do what they themselves were morally and physically incapable of doing.
Periandros, Tyrant of Corinth
From 627 to 585 BC, Periandros ruled Corinth as tyrant. Some say he was a harsh autocrat while others suggest he was a superb ruler that helped Corinth rise to become one of the premier city-states. He is also considered one of the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece.
To bolster their argument against tyranny, a Corinthian named Sokleas brought up the famous example of when Periandros sent envoys to learn from the tyrant of Miletus named Thrasyboulos:
Thrasyboulos led forth the messenger who had come from Periandros out of the city, and entered into a field of growing corn; and as he passed through the crop of corn, while inquiring and asking questions repeatedly of the messenger about the occasion of his coming from Corinth, he kept cutting off the heads of those ears of corn which he saw higher than the rest; and as he cut off their heads he cast them away, until he had destroyed in this manner the finest and richest part of the crop. So having passed through the place and having suggested no word of counsel, he dismissed the messenger.
When the messenger returned to Corinth, Periandros was anxious to hear the counsel which had been given; but he said that Thrasyboulos had given him no counsel, and added that he wondered at the deed of Periandros in sending him to such a man, for the man was out of his senses and a waster of his own goods — relating at the same time that which he had seen Thrasyboulos do. So Periandros, understanding that which had been done and perceiving that Thrasyboulos counselled him to put to death those who were eminent among his subjects, began then to display all manner of evil treatment to the citizens of the State; for whatsoever Kypselos [Periandros’ predecessor] had left undone in killing and driving into exile, this Periandros completed.
In a tyranny, the tyrant must be the beacon of all virtue and excellence; the tyrant must literally stand above all others. But tyranny is a very tricky subject to get your head around. If the prevailing valuations of good and bad are decadent, a tyrant may be very helpful — a strong man that can come in and pull-off a transvaluation of values. He can act as a flood that sweeps in to wash away the refuse of the present clearing the field for better people to rule and better values to prevail. But on the other hand, tyrants can act as wrecking balls that destroy civilizations and run them into the gutters of history. From a certain perspective, a “tyrant” can be a hero. Discerning the truth in this matter requires the most serious and honest mind.
Athenian Democracy and Virtuous Stupidity
Aristagoras of Miletus was the famous instigator of the Ionian Revolt against the Persian Empire. He knew that in order to succeed, he would have to enlist the support of mainland Greeks. The Spartans understood the futility of Aristagoras’ plans and quickly sent him away; however, he was able to find the Athenians much easier to convince:
Aristagoras the Milesian was ordered away from Sparta by Kleomenes the Lacedemonian, and arrived at Athens; for this was the city which had most power of all the rest besides Sparta. And Aristagoras came forward before the assembly of the people and said the same things as he had said at Sparta about the wealth which there was in Asia, and about the Persian manner of making war, how they used neither shield nor spear and were easy to overcome.
Thus I say he said, and also he added this, namely that the Milesians were colonists from the Athenians, and that it was reasonable that the Athenians should rescue them, since they had such great power; and there was nothing which he did not promise, being very urgent in his request, until at last he persuaded them: for it would seem that it is easier to deceive many than one, seeing that, though he did not prove able to deceive Kleomenes the Lacedemonian by himself, yet he did this to thirty thousand Athenians. The Athenians then, I say, being persuaded, voted a resolution to dispatch twenty ships to help the Ionians, and appointed to command them Melanthios one of their citizens, who was in all things highly reputed. These ships proved to be the beginning of evils for the Hellenes and the Barbarians.
So the Athenians were convinced by the clever Aristagoras to participate in the Ionian Revolt. By sending a mere twenty ships, Athens would win nothing but the ire of King Darius. A generation later, Xerxes would march to Athens and burn the city to the ground. This episode should not be seen as a critique of democracy but an opportunity to highlight one of its most illustrious features: virtuous stupidity. If they had not been so stupid as to send twenty ships to Ionian, Athens may have never had the opportunity to become great. Stupid democratic decisions positioned them to win eternal glory at Marathon and later at Salamis. Whenever you feel distraught that your country is making stupid “democratic” decisions you might be able to find some consolation in the fact that stupidity can be the beginning of a great destiny.