Plato's Democratic Entanglements

Athenian Politics and the Practice of Philosophy

S. Sara Monoson

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2000
• Print ISBN: 9780691158587, 9780691043661
• eBook ISBN: 9781400823741
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

In this book, Sara Monoson challenges the longstanding and widely held view that Plato is a virulent opponent of all things democratic. She does not, however, offer in its place the equally mistaken idea that he is somehow a partisan of democracy. Instead, she argues that we should attend more closely to Plato's suggestion that democracy is horrifying and exciting, and she seeks to explain why he found it morally and politically intriguing.


Monoson focuses on Plato's engagement with democracy as he knew it: a cluster of cultural practices that reach into private and public life, as well as a set of governing institutions. She proposes that while Plato charts tensions between the claims of democratic legitimacy and philosophical truth, he also exhibits a striking attraction to four practices central to Athenian democratic politics: intense antityrantism, frank speaking, public funeral oratory, and theater-going. By juxtaposing detailed examination of these aspects of Athenian democracy with analysis of the figurative language, dramatic structure, and arguments of the dialogues, she shows that Plato systematically links democratic ideals and activities to philosophic labor. Monoson finds that Plato's political thought exposes intimate connections between Athenian democratic politics and the practice of philosophy.


Situating Plato's political thought in the context of the Athenian democratic imaginary, Monoson develops a new, textured way of thinking of the relationship between Plato's thought and the politics of his city.

PART ONE

Aspects of the Athenian Civic Self-Image

Chapter One

THE ALLURE OF HARMODIUS AND ARISTOGEITON: PUBLIC/PRIVATE RELATIONS IN THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRATIC IMAGINARY

ATHENIANS CELEBRATED Harmodius and Aristogeiton as heroic men who slew a tyrant and, though they perished themselves in the process, founded democracy at Athens. That the legend of the tyrannicide forms part of the iconography of the Athenian democratic order is well known. Precisely what it signifies remains little understood. This is largely because mixed in with sharp attention to its resonance as a symbol of Athenian daring as well as general antityrantism is the assumption that Athenians admired the pair centrally for their spirited self-sacrifice.¹ The story is indeed a parable of public-private relations in the democratic city. But it does not celebrate sacrifice. Rather, this tale associates the achievement of freedom, democracy, and steadfast opposition to tyranny with the principle of political equality, the maintenance of unity among citizens, and a vigorous relation of mutual exchange between individuals and the city as a whole—even the accomplishment of the coincidence of individual citizens’ personal and private interests. This constellation of meanings is in play whether the myth is being celebrated in song, art, or decrees, appealed to in oratory, or critically evaluated in historical writing such as that of Thucydides.²

In this chapter I demonstrate that the story of Harmodius and Aristogeiton was the common currency of civic discourse about the character of the relations between the private and public lives of citizens of democratic Athens. I detail how this patriotic tale worked economically to represent Athenian civic ideals, specifically unity and reciprocity. This involves examining the occasions on which an actor or author typically appealed to their story as well as the ways in which this simple story differs from contemporaneously known accounts of the complexity of the events surrounding the liberation from tyranny. I begin with an account of the history of the period, followed by a brief review of the evidence for the Athenians’ embrace of the mythic version in civic discourse. I then explore the symbolic resonances of the hygienic version of the founding of democracy at Athens and the critical response to it in Thucydides’ History and Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens.³

TELLING THE TALE

The story of the liberation of Athens from tyranny and the introduction of democratic institutions as it emerges from the historical writings of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Aristotle is not a flattering tale.⁴ On these accounts, the events pivot on bumbling, bribery, foreign intervention, mob action, and the projection of personal, specifically erotic, passions onto the public stage. Pooling the details offered by these writers,⁵ we find the following version of events leading up to the democratic “revolution”⁶ at Athens. In the year 527 B.C., the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus died, and his son Hippias assumed power. Thirteen years later, in 514, two Athenian citizens, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, plotted to kill the reigning tyrant and his brother, Hipparchus. Their motive was personal; they aimed neither to create a democracy nor to seize the tyranny for themselves. Rather, Hipparchus, the tyrant’s brother, had unsuccessfully approached Harmodius sexually and, rebuffed, had used his position to take revenge by insulting Harmodius’ sister sexually. He forbade her to take part in the Panathenaic Procession, a grand civic ritual event, dismissing her as unworthy and, by implication, no longer a virgin or honorable (and thus marriageable).⁷ The slander of the sister touched the entire family, but the brother most of all. A response from Harmodius was required for his family to regain honor. Thus the public affront to his family prompted the youthful Harmodius, assisted by his adult lover Aristogeiton, to act, specifically to kill Hipparchus, the source of the insult. They conspired to cut down the tyrant Hippias and his brother Hipparchus while they presided over the Panathenaic Procession. Yet when the moment arrived, young Harmodius panicked and, believing his plan to have been exposed, frantically attacked Hipparchus. Harmodius killed Hipparchus, but was slain on the spot himself. Aristogeiton, having had no time even to strike at Hippias, was arrested, tortured, and put to death.

The tyranny became much harsher after the murder. Opposition to the tyrant Hippias persisted. Members of a prominent Athenian family (the Alcmaeonids) tried to fortify a base from which to attack the tyrant. Failing in this attempt, they changed their strategy. While at Delphi on a contract to help rebuild the temple, this family bribed the Delphic prophetess, the Pythia, to advise Sparta to free Athens. From then on, in answer to routine queries, the Pythia repeatedly admonished the Spartans to “free Athens first.” In 510, four years after the murder of Hipparchus, Sparta intervened militarily, and Hippias was deposed. A rivalry ensued between two elites, Cleisthenes and Isagoras, for power in Athens. Cleisthenes gained the upper hand by allying himself with the demos (Herodotus 5.66, 67). Isagoras then persuaded King Cleomenes of Sparta to intervene to support his faltering aristocratic faction. Cleisthenes, who was not only the leader of the democratic faction but also a member of the family that had bribed the Pythia, fled the city. But even with Cleisthenes out of the city, Isagoras’ faction met with popular resistance. The people forced Isagoras and King Cleomenes to withdraw to the Acropolis, where an angry mass of people besieged them. A truce was arranged; the two men were expelled from the city; Cleisthenes was recalled to Athens; and soon after, he set in motion his famous, extensive reforms, which scholars today generally consider the founding of democracy at Athens.⁸

In the years following these events as well as throughout the fourth-century, a very different version of the revolutionary establishment of democracy was promoted and, most importantly, remembered in a variety of contexts. There was an official cult and an annual public sacrifice; songs were sung at private drinking parties and statues prominently displayed in civic spaces; oratory and decrees proclaiming this version were heard on public occasions. The patriotic version of events hails Harmodius and Aristogeiton as heroic men who killed the tyrant, liberated Athens, and founded its democracy. This account reduces the complexity of the events to a tale remarkable for its “utmost simplicity”⁹ and striking emotional appeal.

The lean account of the liberation of Athens captured Athenian imaginations in the period after the murder of Hipparchus and for generations to follow. The evidence for this is strong.¹⁰ Very soon after the expulsion of Hippias, possibly as early as 509, the sculptor Antenor made a group statue of Harmodius and Aristogeiton that was placed in the agora, a public space that grew in size and significance with the development of democracy.¹¹ This was the first political monument in Greek history. The Tyrannicides are the first historical figures so honored, and remained the only such figures for over 100 years.¹² Drinking songs celebrating their heroism also appeared soon after the liberation and remained popular for generations.¹³ The particular importance of the statues as “tangible symbols” of Athenian freedom is attested to by the fact that they were stolen by Xerxes during the Persian Wars (480/79).¹⁴ They were quickly replaced by a new statuary group by leading artists, the sculptors Kritios and Nesiotes. The new group was set up in the agora following the defeat of the Persians at the battle of Salamis. The verse attributed to Simonides inscribed on the base of the rededicated statue group reads: “A great light came to the Athenians, when Aristogeiton and Harmodius killed Hipparchus.”¹⁵ In the years following the rededication of the new, more impressive statue grouping, the official veneration of Harmodius and Aristogeiton seriously took hold. Soon the Tyrannicides were being represented on vases and coins.¹⁶ They were also honored by a tomb in the Kerameikos¹⁷ and the establishment of a hero cult that included an annual public sacrifice conducted by the chief magistrate overseeing military affairs, the Polemarch.¹⁸

Later activity also indicates their enduring symbolic resonance. The Athenians awarded special honors to the descendants of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. In the 440s or 430s (the period of Pericles’ prominence), the Assembly by specific act gave the descendants of the Tyrannicides the right to take meals at public expense in the Prytaneum (sitēsis).¹⁹ The decree lists first priests and then descendants of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. This was the same privilege that Athenian citizens serving as Council members enjoyed during their turn as the presiding tribe and that the city bestowed on victors in the Olympic, Nemean, and Pythian Games. It is also the “punishment” Socrates suggests that he deserves for having lived his life as a gadfly to the body politic (Apology 36c–e). Early in the fourth century, after the restoration of the democracy following the defeat of the Thirty, the Athenians extended two additional privileges to descendants of the Tyrannicides—exemption from liturgies (ateleia) and front-row seats in the theater (proedria).²⁰ As late as 323, after Athens had lost the critical battle at Chaeronea to the forces of Macedon, orators continued to appeal to their memory. In a speech in support of the prosecution of Demosthenes for bribery, Dinarchus tries to discredit the accused by noting that he had encouraged the city to imprison descendants of Harmodius.²¹ Later in the same speech, he complains that the accused did not protest when pro-Macedon elements in the city “share[d] entertainment in the Prytaneum with the descendants of Harmodius and Aristogeiton.”²²

It is impossible to say whether a significant number of Athenians from a variety of walks of life objected to the new and persistent symbolism. It is plausible that the original celebration of the Tyrannicides played a part in the articulation of aristocratic rivalries in Athens, as some scholars have insisted, though our sources do not permit us to settle this question.²³ On the whole, scholarly efforts to fix the partisan origins of the cult of the Tyrannicides miss the great political significance of the myth. What is striking and in need of explanation is that the legend quickly became widely embraced among Athenians and an enduring symbol not of aristocratic ideals or partisan divisions but of common aspirations. Whatever the circumstances of its initial promotion, it was rapidly transformed into a “national mythos in which all Athenians could take pride.”²⁴

EMBRACING THE SIMPLIFIED TALE

As a sociologist writing about the cult of George Washington has observed, “People in crisis fortify themselves by embracing their culture’s most meaningful experiences.”²⁵ The Athenians’ embrace of a cult of Harmodius and Aristogeiton suggests that they found in the sanitized tale an account of the Athenians’ self-interpretation of the nourishment they thought would indeed “fortify” them. As Michael Taylor stresses, “That the metamorphosis of the Tyrant Slayers into founding heroes could be said to have an uncertain basis in historical fact was practically irrelevant [to the establishment of a cult]. A need was felt and Harmodius and Aristogeiton were the figures most conveniently situated to supply that need.” The religious innovation of creating a cult may, he continues, “smack of expediency” and appear “shocking to modern consciences.”²⁶ But the obviously political circumstances of the origin of the cult and the rapidity of the institution of new founding heroes would have detracted from neither the legitimacy nor the solemnity of the rites in the eyes of the Athenians.²⁷ In the Athenian context, religious and political life ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction Siting Plato
• Part One: Aspects of the Athenian Civic Self-Image
• Part Two: Plato’s Democratic Entanglements
• Citation Index
• General Index