The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes: Structure, Principles, and Ideology

Hansen, Mogens Herman

ISBN 10: 0806131438 / ISBN 13: 9780806131436

Published by University of Oklahoma Press, 1999

About this Item

Good condition. This is the average used book, that has all pages or leaves present, but may include writing. Book may be ex-library with stamps and stickers. 1.1. Seller Inventory # 353-0806131438-gdd

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Athenian Democracy in the Age of ...

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Publication Date: 1999

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis:

The Athenian democracy of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. is the most famous and perhaps the most nearly perfect example of direct democracy. Covering the period 403-322 B.C., Mogens Herman Hansen focuses on the crucial last thirty years, which coincided with the political career of Demosthenes. Hansen distinguishes between the city’s seven political institutions: the Assembly, the nomothetai, the People’s Court, the boards of magistrates, the Council of Five Hundred, the Areopagos, and ho boulomenos. He discusses how Athenians conceived liberty both as the ability to participate in the decision-making process and as the right to live without oppression from the state or other citizens.

From the Back Cover:

The system of government in classical Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries BC has provided the world with the most famous and perhaps the most perfect example of direct democracy. When democratic rule was ended by the conquering Macedonians in 322, the Athenians had evolved principles and practice of democratic ideology that became the direct inspiration of those liberal ideas cherished by the Western world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Mogens Hansen examines Athenian democracy both as a political system and as an ideology. In describing the former he distinguishes between the three major decision-making organs - the Assembly, the Legislators and the Peoples Courts, and the magistrates who were responsible both for preparing the agenda for the legislature and for carrying its decisions into effect. In discussing Athenian democratic ideology Dr Hansen also makes the important distinction between the ideals held by the democrats themselves and those imputed to them by the critics of democracy, principally (and ironically, given that they would barely have survived under any other system) the philosophers. The Athenians conceived liberty both as the ability to participate in the decision-making process, and as the right to live without oppression from the state or other citizens. Equality was conceived not as an equality of nature, but as an equality of opportunity.

The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes is based on unrivaled knowledge of the subject, the result of more than thirty years' sustained research.