Athens: The Truth about Democracy

[nairiporter]

Athens: The Truth about Democracy

We choose to forget that in the name of democracy, Athens followed a policy of aggressive overseas expansion and persecuted some of its leading intellectuals. Despite its recent popularity in the West, democracy in ancient Athens did not flourish but quickly died.

Bettany Hughes searches for the truth about the Golden Age of Ancient Athens, investigating how a barren rock wedged between the East and West became the first democracy 2,500 years ago.

Democracy, liberty and the freedom of speech are trumpeted as the bedrock of western civilisation, but what was Athens really like?

Bettany goes deep underground to explore a treasure trove of pre-historic bones and ancient artefacts. In silver mines and tombs she uncovers evidence for what this society was really like.

This was a democratic city built on slave labour, manipulated by aristocrats, where women wore the veil and men pursued a bloody foreign policy, slaughtering thousands in the pursuit of the world’s first democratic empire.

The programme reveals amazing, sophisticated voting systems but also a society where smooth-talking politicians used spin, and where those who didn’t vote were known as idiotes.

The film charts the epic story of Athens’ victory in one of the greatest sea battles of the ancient world, when the Athenian triremes defeat Xerxes’ mighty Persian fleet at Salamis, and reveals the real story of the building of the greatest monument of this first democracy – the Parthenon – as a symbol of Athenian power.

Watch documentary: Part 1

Watch documentary: Part 2

Comments

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

Yes, the Athenians figured that if they did not expand they would be conquered. They had to meet the Persians far away from their borders if they wanted to survive. And the only way was to expand and create an empire of their own.

Another aspect of this film demonstrates how the Athenian democracy was not exactly what we are told and what we imagine it to have been. Democracy was there only for a select few - the Athenian-born, free, males. Everyone else was excluded.

Also democracy meant that the majority could impose even the most outrageous decisions on the minority (or just one person, like Socrates in this case.) And that, while it did encourage pluralism, it guarded democracy itself very jealously. And anyone who dared to question it, like Socrates, would get burned.

I am now reading the Socratic and Platonic dialogues about the state and the philosopher king and benevolent elites, and the more I read, the more I resent it. I'm wondering if I should venture into reading the Aristotelian works because I'm starting to feel uncomfortable already.

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

Look, I ventured (http://community.livejournal.com/talk_politics/915378.html) to share this with a broader audience. I might like to hear a broader range of opinions on this...

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

No problem. I actually hope that I would learn some new things from him. Apart from the endless verbiage. :-)

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I find this ironic as far as focus on Athens and Sparta goes. The southern part of Italy became known as Magna Graecia for a reason. And it should be noted that Marseilles was originally the Greek colony of Massalia. The Polis couldn't grow beyond a certain size, and that dilemma was ultimately resolved by formation of the Ptolemaic, Antigonid, and Seleucid Empires. Which proved very much that Greeks were very, very good at the whole absolute monarchy thing.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Hey, look at the size of the Seleucid Empire, dude:



They had to be doing *something* right to have held that empire as long as they did.

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

I love maps!

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

Well they came up with the idea of "tyrants".

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Ironically by modern standards the average Tyrant would have been more populist, and more interested in the welfare of the common man. Tyrants were able to crack the aristocracies and lead to temporary and major improvements. The problem was that tyrannies always passed from father to son, and seldom was Tyrant Jr. equal to Tyrant Sr., which is why the term began to attract the later odium that it did.

Just like originally there were a lot of Roman dictators who made a sport of who held that position the shortest.....

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Athens was in a lot of way the British Empire of its day, fighting a war (that it ended up losing) against the real-life Domination of Draka. Where the truly bitter irony comes in is that the Achaemenid Padishahs abolished slavery, and ruled a cosmopolitan multi-ethnic and multi-religious state. The *Persians* were infinitely closer to modern states in reality than the precursors of democracy were.

The Persians, like all Empires, got very, very vicious whenever someone dared to challenge their rule, but that's not anything different from the 20th and 21st Century (Y HALLO THAR XINJIANG).

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

I've only heard of one Socrates. Doctor Socrates. And he was a legend.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

But still, a bit more seriously.