3 ms·

The Constitution of Athens

hliyan 4y ago
CHAP. II seems to indicate that what the world is experiencing now, and experienced at the turn of the twentieth century, is a recurring phenomenon: a growing, systemic asymmetry in power and wealth, un-remedied and eventually resulting in a catastrophic reorganisation of the social order (and then the cycle restarts).
- roenxi 4y ago
  Power and wealth is always asymmetric. The effect is competent people holding power and building some impressive society -> slow reversion to the mean of that society's elites -> a challenge comes up that requires renewal and an above-average response which they can't meet -> collapse.
  - kkoncevicius 4y ago
    To me it seems like there is a lot more to this building-flourishing-decay-collapse cycle than power and competence with regression to the mean. I first got interested by this topic after reading "The Fate of Empires" [1] where the author puts the "blame" so to speak, not on competence, but on the generational gap. His thesis is that it takes approximately 10 generations before the values that built the society are no longer followed by their descendants. [1] http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
- thom 4y ago
  The Greeks even had a word for this recurring cycle: kyklos. The historian Polybius believed the Roman constitution allowed them to avoid this cycle by balancing the forces of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. You can compare and contrast the constitutional setup in Rome in his Book 6; http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Polybius/6*.html http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Polybius/6... Of course, he stopped writing towards the end of the second century BC when Rome’s Republic began to slowly fall apart, but even the Empire that came after proved somewhat durable.
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    "proved somewhat durable" People consider Norway or Switzerland durable because they lasted 800+ years so far. The Eastern Roman Empire, as a continuation of the unified Empire, lasted more than twice as long, on much bigger territory which attracted all sorts of external invaders (Goths, Persians, Arabs, Slavs, Crusaders, Venetians, Turks). Compared to the ancient-ness of the Romans, England and Sweden are middle-age countries, the US is a youngster with a fresh driving licence and the EU is a toddler who can barely say "mama". Of the currently existing countries, only Japan seems somewhat comparable to the Roman Empire as far as continuity goes, and it is an island state well shielded against invaders by the sea and its fierce storms.
    - thom 4y ago
      Depends on your definition of continuity. Succession crises, revolts and changing borders have been the norm throughout history and I’d argue we still haven’t found political structures which are guaranteed to prevent them. Even during the Republic, you could argue (as Harriet Flower has, for example) that Rome experienced several discontinuities between the kings and Augustus.
      - inglor_cz 4y ago
        Everyone's limit is different, but I would say that most people wouldn't consider contemporary Turkey (a republic speaking a Turkic language whose population is mostly Muslim) a continuation of the Eastern Roman empire in any but purely geographical meaning, so we have a fairly clean break around 1453, when the ruling elite in Constantinople was forcibly displaced by an entirely different group of people with other traditions, languages etc. On the other hand, mere Christianization of the Roman Empire doesn't seem as crucial (pun intended) as to create a break in its statehood. Most of the institutions went on just like before, most of the important families stayed the same, the legal system and the language of the realm didn't change at all or only very little etc. The republic period is more interesting, but I believe that the Romans considered themselves the same people and the some country in that period, without breaks in identity - which IMHO should matter more than a purely academic take from the early 21st century.
- vt85 4y ago
  [dead]
DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
Aristotle (and his students) documented the constitutions of over a hundred Greek states. Unfortunately, all of them, except for that of Athens, are lost. It's a real shame, because these constitutions would be a treasure trove for understanding Greek politics in the 4th Century BC.
motohagiography 4y ago
A current "cancellation of debts," would mean that your bank gets to keep all your money. However, it might be interesting to translate this constitution into modern language and logic and see how it might apply to tech platforms.
cs702 4y ago
The author is Aristotle.[a] I prefer the translation hosted by MIT at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/athenian_const.1.1.html http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/athenian_const.1.1.html instead of the OP's translation, hosted by an organization that many people consider highly ideological and politically divisive.[b] In the translation hosted by MIT, Aristotle starts with this: > After this event there was contention for a long time between the upper classes and the populace. Not only was the constitution at this time oligarchical in every respect, but the poorer classes, men, women, and children, were the serfs of the rich. They were known as Pelatae and also as Hectemori, because they cultivated the lands of the rich at the rent thus indicated. The whole country was in the hands of a few persons, and if the tenants failed to pay their rent they were liable to be haled into slavery, and their children with them. All loans secured upon the debtor's person, a custom which prevailed until the time of Solon, who was the first to appear as the champion of the people. But the hardest and bitterest part of the constitution in the eyes of the masses was their state of serfdom. Not but what they were also discontented with every other feature of their lot; for, to speak generally, they had no part nor share in anything. Aristotle wrote this 2372 years ago. Go read the whole thing. It will make you appreciate that many societal problems we have today are... not new. -- [a] It may have been written by one of his pupils. [b] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Fund
- lo_zamoyski 4y ago
  > hosted by an organization that many people consider highly ideological and politically divisive. Isn't your remark itself divisive? We should be paying attention to ideas and verifying them, not flirting with ad hominem. The last thing we need to encourage is more emotionalism and prejudice. > It will make you appreciate that many societal problems we have today are... not new. Indeed, as the famous passage from Ecclesiastes says, there nothing new under the sun. Another text worth reading is "The Republic" in which there is an analysis of the stages of political decadence which are also discernible in our own times[0][1]. [0] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1562889060602916864.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1562889060602916864.html [1] https://americanmind.org/salvo/woke-ideology-is-a-psychological-disorder/ https://americanmind.org/salvo/woke-ideology-is-a-psychologi...
dr_dshiv 4y ago
“Share in the government was assigned to those who provided themselves with arms” I think there is something to this. Perhaps we should all be willing to fight for our country or send our children to fight, if we want to have political power? A mercenary state is more dangerous, IMO.
- qwytw 4y ago
  It used to be usual to go to war with the next city 30km or so away over some farmland every other year or so. So there really wasn't much of a choice if you wanted to protect your land and personal liberty (inhabitants of conquered cities were often sold off to slavery). One would hope that we have moved a bit beyond this in the last 2000 years.. > we should all The 'all' you're referring is a small male warrior elite. Even in democratic Athens it's unlikely that the majority of the male population ever had civil rights (citizens were outnumbered by foreigners and slaves)
  - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
    It probably wasn't a majority of the male population, but it was a very sizeable fraction, not just a small elite. Out of a total population of around 300,000 people, about 50,000 were male citizens. This is a far larger level of participation in government than in virtually any other society of the time (aside from the other Greek democracies).
- cafard 4y ago
  I would point out that "providing oneself with arms" implied prosperity. It restricted the franchise considerably.
dr_dshiv 4y ago
Seems there are a fair number of HN classics geeks. Something about understanding ancient civilization in order to build a sustainable future civilization? I know there is a lot of work to be done in making classical ideas accessible. I’d love to find a platform or online community that supports technical hobbyists in this space.
pyuser583 4y ago
Remember: Aristotle was a propagandist for Phillip of Macedon, who overthrew the Athenian constitution. This is the victors commenting on the defeated.
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  Plato, who predates the conquest, made a broadly similar claim. Aristocracy > Timocracy > Oligarchy > Democracy > Tyranny and repeat.
  - pyuser583 4y ago
    Machiavelli turned the argument on its head. He said the Roman Republic was great because it had all three forms of government at the same time: the consuls were “monarchs”, the senate was “aristocratic”, and the people/tribune of the plebes were the “democracy.” This is where the modern idea of separation of powers comes from.
    - thom 4y ago
      It's hard to prove this, but it's very likely he just took this idea from Polybius.
      - pyuser583 4y ago
        Oooh interesting … Some searching brings up this: https://jhiblog.org/2021/03/04/machiavellis-debt-to-polybius/ https://jhiblog.org/2021/03/04/machiavellis-debt-to-polybius.... I’ll have to read and digest later.
peter_d_sherman 4y ago
Another translation: http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/athenian_const.1.1.html http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/athenian_const.1.1.html
- fikama 4y ago
  It requires login and password :'(
  - necovek 4y ago
    Not for me.

CHAP. II seems to indicate that what the world is experiencing now, and experienced at the turn of the twentieth century, is a recurring phenomenon: a growing, systemic asymmetry in power and wealth, un-remedied and eventually resulting in a catastrophic reorganisation of the social order (and then the cycle restarts).

roenxi 4y ago
Power and wealth is always asymmetric. The effect is competent people holding power and building some impressive society -> slow reversion to the mean of that society's elites -> a challenge comes up that requires renewal and an above-average response which they can't meet -> collapse.
- kkoncevicius 4y ago
  To me it seems like there is a lot more to this building-flourishing-decay-collapse cycle than power and competence with regression to the mean. I first got interested by this topic after reading "The Fate of Empires" [1] where the author puts the "blame" so to speak, not on competence, but on the generational gap. His thesis is that it takes approximately 10 generations before the values that built the society are no longer followed by their descendants. [1] http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
thom 4y ago
The Greeks even had a word for this recurring cycle: kyklos. The historian Polybius believed the Roman constitution allowed them to avoid this cycle by balancing the forces of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. You can compare and contrast the constitutional setup in Rome in his Book 6; http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Polybius/6*.html http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Polybius/6... Of course, he stopped writing towards the end of the second century BC when Rome’s Republic began to slowly fall apart, but even the Empire that came after proved somewhat durable.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  "proved somewhat durable" People consider Norway or Switzerland durable because they lasted 800+ years so far. The Eastern Roman Empire, as a continuation of the unified Empire, lasted more than twice as long, on much bigger territory which attracted all sorts of external invaders (Goths, Persians, Arabs, Slavs, Crusaders, Venetians, Turks). Compared to the ancient-ness of the Romans, England and Sweden are middle-age countries, the US is a youngster with a fresh driving licence and the EU is a toddler who can barely say "mama". Of the currently existing countries, only Japan seems somewhat comparable to the Roman Empire as far as continuity goes, and it is an island state well shielded against invaders by the sea and its fierce storms.
  - thom 4y ago
    Depends on your definition of continuity. Succession crises, revolts and changing borders have been the norm throughout history and I’d argue we still haven’t found political structures which are guaranteed to prevent them. Even during the Republic, you could argue (as Harriet Flower has, for example) that Rome experienced several discontinuities between the kings and Augustus.
    - inglor_cz 4y ago
      Everyone's limit is different, but I would say that most people wouldn't consider contemporary Turkey (a republic speaking a Turkic language whose population is mostly Muslim) a continuation of the Eastern Roman empire in any but purely geographical meaning, so we have a fairly clean break around 1453, when the ruling elite in Constantinople was forcibly displaced by an entirely different group of people with other traditions, languages etc. On the other hand, mere Christianization of the Roman Empire doesn't seem as crucial (pun intended) as to create a break in its statehood. Most of the institutions went on just like before, most of the important families stayed the same, the legal system and the language of the realm didn't change at all or only very little etc. The republic period is more interesting, but I believe that the Romans considered themselves the same people and the some country in that period, without breaks in identity - which IMHO should matter more than a purely academic take from the early 21st century.
vt85 4y ago
[dead]

DiogenesKynikos 4y ago

Aristotle (and his students) documented the constitutions of over a hundred Greek states. Unfortunately, all of them, except for that of Athens, are lost. It's a real shame, because these constitutions would be a treasure trove for understanding Greek politics in the 4th Century BC.

motohagiography 4y ago

A current "cancellation of debts," would mean that your bank gets to keep all your money. However, it might be interesting to translate this constitution into modern language and logic and see how it might apply to tech platforms.

cs702 4y ago

The author is Aristotle.[a] I prefer the translation hosted by MIT at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/athenian_const.1.1.html http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/athenian_const.1.1.html instead of the OP's translation, hosted by an organization that many people consider highly ideological and politically divisive.[b] In the translation hosted by MIT, Aristotle starts with this: > After this event there was contention for a long time between the upper classes and the populace. Not only was the constitution at this time oligarchical in every respect, but the poorer classes, men, women, and children, were the serfs of the rich. They were known as Pelatae and also as Hectemori, because they cultivated the lands of the rich at the rent thus indicated. The whole country was in the hands of a few persons, and if the tenants failed to pay their rent they were liable to be haled into slavery, and their children with them. All loans secured upon the debtor's person, a custom which prevailed until the time of Solon, who was the first to appear as the champion of the people. But the hardest and bitterest part of the constitution in the eyes of the masses was their state of serfdom. Not but what they were also discontented with every other feature of their lot; for, to speak generally, they had no part nor share in anything. Aristotle wrote this 2372 years ago. Go read the whole thing. It will make you appreciate that many societal problems we have today are... not new. -- [a] It may have been written by one of his pupils. [b] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Fund

lo_zamoyski 4y ago
> hosted by an organization that many people consider highly ideological and politically divisive. Isn't your remark itself divisive? We should be paying attention to ideas and verifying them, not flirting with ad hominem. The last thing we need to encourage is more emotionalism and prejudice. > It will make you appreciate that many societal problems we have today are... not new. Indeed, as the famous passage from Ecclesiastes says, there nothing new under the sun. Another text worth reading is "The Republic" in which there is an analysis of the stages of political decadence which are also discernible in our own times[0][1]. [0] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1562889060602916864.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1562889060602916864.html [1] https://americanmind.org/salvo/woke-ideology-is-a-psychological-disorder/ https://americanmind.org/salvo/woke-ideology-is-a-psychologi...

dr_dshiv 4y ago

“Share in the government was assigned to those who provided themselves with arms” I think there is something to this. Perhaps we should all be willing to fight for our country or send our children to fight, if we want to have political power? A mercenary state is more dangerous, IMO.

qwytw 4y ago
It used to be usual to go to war with the next city 30km or so away over some farmland every other year or so. So there really wasn't much of a choice if you wanted to protect your land and personal liberty (inhabitants of conquered cities were often sold off to slavery). One would hope that we have moved a bit beyond this in the last 2000 years.. > we should all The 'all' you're referring is a small male warrior elite. Even in democratic Athens it's unlikely that the majority of the male population ever had civil rights (citizens were outnumbered by foreigners and slaves)
- DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
  It probably wasn't a majority of the male population, but it was a very sizeable fraction, not just a small elite. Out of a total population of around 300,000 people, about 50,000 were male citizens. This is a far larger level of participation in government than in virtually any other society of the time (aside from the other Greek democracies).
cafard 4y ago
I would point out that "providing oneself with arms" implied prosperity. It restricted the franchise considerably.

dr_dshiv 4y ago

Seems there are a fair number of HN classics geeks. Something about understanding ancient civilization in order to build a sustainable future civilization? I know there is a lot of work to be done in making classical ideas accessible. I’d love to find a platform or online community that supports technical hobbyists in this space.

pyuser583 4y ago

Remember: Aristotle was a propagandist for Phillip of Macedon, who overthrew the Athenian constitution. This is the victors commenting on the defeated.

MichaelZuo 4y ago
Plato, who predates the conquest, made a broadly similar claim. Aristocracy > Timocracy > Oligarchy > Democracy > Tyranny and repeat.
- pyuser583 4y ago
  Machiavelli turned the argument on its head. He said the Roman Republic was great because it had all three forms of government at the same time: the consuls were “monarchs”, the senate was “aristocratic”, and the people/tribune of the plebes were the “democracy.” This is where the modern idea of separation of powers comes from.
  - thom 4y ago
    It's hard to prove this, but it's very likely he just took this idea from Polybius.
    - pyuser583 4y ago
      Oooh interesting … Some searching brings up this: https://jhiblog.org/2021/03/04/machiavellis-debt-to-polybius/ https://jhiblog.org/2021/03/04/machiavellis-debt-to-polybius.... I’ll have to read and digest later.

peter_d_sherman 4y ago

Another translation: http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/athenian_const.1.1.html http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/athenian_const.1.1.html

fikama 4y ago
It requires login and password :'(
- necovek 4y ago
  Not for me.