Ancient politics: the Agora

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

We often hear about democracy being rooted in ancient Greece, but where did ancient Greek democracy really occur? I mean, the central place of it all. Well, that must have definitely been the so called agora, the place where ordinary folk could trade goods of any kind, and where political topics of any kind could be discussed, various ideas be exchanged between thinkers with too much spare time on their hands like Aristotle and Plato.

The world certainly wouldn't be the same place if these agoras never existed. Because what was happening in that relatively narrow place by far transcended everyday trade transactions. It wasn't just a market, it was actually the place where new ideas were being forged, some of them continuing to echo to this day - in a sense, the very way the scientific method works, or the process of forging new laws, were both shaped up in the agora.

Obviously, almost every mid- to big-sized city in Greece had such a place, especially at the time of the classical period of Greek antiquity. The agora was typically located near the centre of the city so that it could be easily accessible by any citizen. There was the public market place surrounded by the main public buildings, and this helped the agora become the hub of the community, and of the Greek civilisation by extension. Most of the heaviest traffic in town would normally pass through there, so that most people would turn up at that place at least once a day. Including politicians, criminals, philosophers, gentry, scientists, slaves, rulers, and of course traders. People went there not just to buy food and essential goods or show off their new clothes and socialise with friends, relatives and acquaintances; in reality, it was all much like a business lunch featuring the most active minds of the time, all happening in a casual setting.

So it's normal that some of the world's most significant ideas were first conceived and tinkered with within the boundaries of the Greek agora - like the very concept of democracy itself. Ordinary citizens had the power to vote on decisions that affected them or the community, and were jealously guarding their democratic principles. It was where the notion was born that no citizen should be above the law, and where laws were written and placed for all to see. No one was excluded or immune to the legal process. It was where the judicial jury was born, the function of juror being considered among the highest forms of civic honor. The city legislature and the judicial courts were both also located at the agora, and were accessible to any citizen who was interested to witness the way they operated - the ultimate form of open political process. All of this has become the basis of the modern systems of government and justice.

And let's not forget that the agora also served as a sort of focal point for the brain potential of the community. The greatest thinkers of their time came there to exchange ideas, to debate, and come up with solutions to complex problems. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, whose ideas are at the foundation of both Medieval and modern Western society, frequently attended those meetings. Particularly the latter, who vastly contributed to the development of science, having developed the empirical method above all, while probably just sitting there and having a casual chat around the food stalls or by the fountains. We could add Hippocrates, the founder of modern medicine, and Pythagoras, the father of geometry, who were both highly esteemed frequents at the agora.

All in all, that place was the main inspiration behind the creation of the main rules and principles for what has become civil association. Today, that sort of direct democracy may seem impossibly utopian, but still, its principles remain deeply embedded in the very fabric of modern society.

Comments

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

And then things soon started to become rather complicated...

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the forum...

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Let me guess. You found a coin on the ground, and decided to share it with the unwashed masses.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

A coin wouldn't do the masses a lot of good...much better in my pocket.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Now you're talking. Cheers, Sir!

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

How else will I have the wherewithal to buy the politicians I need to ensure that any money found on the street finds its way into my pocket, after all?

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Oooh wherewithal, fancy word!

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Oh goody, vocabulary inflation. I love it when an ordinary Anglo-Saxon compound becomes fancy.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Oooh he speaks Anglo-Saxon! Ooh goody!

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

So why did the Agora lead to proto-fascism in Sparta and absolute hereditary monarchy in Macedon? What Ancient Athens and its empire proved was that democracy, against a sufficiently clever and resilient autocracy, will lose every time it tries to fight because the democracies make self-destructive decisions and have everyone to blame for it, while autocracies can be far more ruthless and unfettered and thereby more effective in the grand game of power. Plus, there's the equally grim irony from the perspective of modern times that Spartan autocracy had more to recommend itself in one area than did Athenian democracy: Sparta was much more egalitarian than Athens where Spartiates were concerned and Spartan women had more rights than any women would after the collapse of Sparta in the Battle of Leuctra ever again. The only price paid was the reduction of an entire group far more numerous than the Spartiates themselves into a permanent slave caste, but there's no such thing as a free lunch.

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

The Agora led directly to autocracy? How?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Well, you said 'Greece' had the agora and the agora as a geographical place serves as a good representation of the Greek ideal of direct diplomacy. In reality democracy in Athens was a murkier and a more convoluted concept in origin and it crashed and burned fairly swiftly in the Peloponnesian War and had little relevance to the postwar Greek Empires on the Spartan or Macedonian models.

Sparta and Macedon, as Hellenistic societies too, had Poleis. So did Thebes, Rhodes, Marseilles, and the like. Yet aside from Athens, the agora did not automatically translate to expectation that the narrow caste of people defined as citizens were guaranteed rights, nor did Greek culture and Greek gods and Greek trade guarantee that the Hellenes would all think that the people had some say-so in their own affairs. Macedon, Thebes, Sparta, and the like certainly did not think on those lines. Nor did Alexander the Great and his successors the Ptolemies and Seleucids, who created long-lived autocratic states even when spreading the Hellenistic world over a wide swathe of Asia.

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

That still does not answer the very specific question that I asked.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I would answer your direct question by noting that I think the premise that ancient Greece was democratic first and foremost is a bit of an overstatement and thus a good deal of the original premise is invalid.

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

I said the agora is the foundation for the development of direct democracy, not that "ancient Greece was democratic". Words have specific meanings, and I try to use them carefully. I also am not impressed by the employment of strawman arguments, which seems to have become a norm in most political forums.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And that's my point: the un-democratic Greek societies also had agorae as it was a part of the institution of the Polis working as intended. Obviously it did not have any direct connection to Athenian Democracy when Sparta and Macedon also had them and it did not lead either in any kind of democratic direction. If there is this direct connection between the Agora and the democracy of Athens, then no form of Greek autocracy could have co-existed with the Agora because it would have been directly influential on the society in question. As the Agora clearly co-existed nicely with slavery and autocratic hereditary monarchy, your premise is invalid and thus the entire post has problems for that reason.

Athenian Democracy to me seems to be derived more on the experience with tyranny, both internal and imposed, and wanting to forestall its recurrence than on a Pan-Hellenistic concept. If the same institution exists in two vastly different societies that go two different routes, attributing its influence to that taken in the one society has to be correlated with why it didn't lead to the same development in the other.

So.....yeah, I'm actually not making a strawman so much as asking why only one Polis went this route when they all had Agorae.

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

Modern dictatorships also have parliaments - doesn't mean the presence of a parliament leads to a dictatorship. And yet, the presence of a parliament is a prerequisite for democracy. That is my point.

It is a strawman, because I never said "Greece was democratic".

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

That form of democracy may have been applicable to a community as small as Athens at the time, but it's not today. Way too many variables, to be able to afford to rely on the good nature of everyone involved.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

The agora reminds of the veche in the Novgorodian Republic (and other similar Slavonic republics), where some form of representative democracy was also practiced until the time when the more centralised Duchy of Moscow conquered them and imposed its feudal system upon them.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Albeit the agora was a general institution of the Polis as a society, so that means that dictatorships and hereditary monarchies like Sparta and Macedon also had them and yet it didn't lead either to any path to democracy as such. So I think that raises the question of what influence, if any, the Agora had if it could lead to hereditary monarchies and slave states that ran on terrorizing the slaves and served as the basis for totalitarian structures that inwardly were more egalitarian than Athens for the Spartiates as a whole but the Gods have mercy on you if you're a helot.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

I said it reminded me of it, not that the two were the same.