¹ Aristotle, Politics, 1253a and 1326b.

² Millar, Fergus, The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Millar's particular contention that late republican Rome was in significant ways directly democratic has not persuaded everyone, but the notion that the polis is an appropriate lens through which to view Rome has a wider constituency—indeed, Millar appropriated that idea from Cornell, T. J., “Rome: The History of an Anachronism,” in Molho, A., Raaflaub, K., and Emlen, J., eds., City-States in Classical Antiquity and Medieval Italy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991)Google Scholar. One also sees an investigation into the specificity of the Roman polis experience in the likes of Morstein-Marx's, RobertMass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 74Google Scholar; idem, “Machiavelli, Harrington and English Political Ideologies in the Eighteenth Century,” in idem, Politics, Language, and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (New York: Atheneum, 1971), 114; and idem, “Cambridge Paradigms and Scotch Philosophers: A Study of the Relations between the Civic Humanist and Civil Jurisprudential Interpretation of Eighteenth-Century Social Thought,” in Hont, Istvan and Ignatieff, Michael, eds., Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 242CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is no coincidence that Pocock has revealed in the 2002 afterword to the Machiavellian Moment that “the recent political philosopher whose work has the greatest resonance for me [was] the late Hannah Arendt.” See The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 573.

⁴ Josiah Ober's contention that the Athenian polis remains paradigmatic today is most conspicuous in his recent work—such as A Company of Citizens: What the World's First Democracy Teaches Leaders about Creating Great Organizations (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2003); and idem, Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008)—but it is important to note that in such works Ober is building on foundations laid in idem, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), where he extracted a portrait of democratic practice from the Demosthenian corpus, and in idem, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), where he deepened his account of Athenian democracy by comparing democratic practice to the largely antidemocratic initiatives in Athenian political theory.

⁵ Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 198–9Google Scholar.

⁶ Habermas, Jürgen, “Hannah Arendt's Communications Concept of Power,” Social Research 44/1 (1977), 3–24Google Scholar. Even earlier, there was O'Sullivan, Noel, “Hannah Arendt: Hellenic Nostalgia and Industrial Society,” in Crespigny, Anthony de and Minogue, Kenneth, eds., Contemporary Political Philosophers (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1975), 228–51Google Scholar. See also McKenna, George, “Bannisterless Politics: Hannah Arendt and Her Children,” History of Political Thought 5/2 (1984), 333–60Google Scholar. Wolin, Richard, Heidegger's Children: Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas, and Herbert Marcuse (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 69Google Scholar, has accused Arendt of a kind of “polis envy,” echoing remarks made by Jean Elshtain at the 1988 APSA convention—as cited in Arendt, Hannah, Love and Saint Augustine, ed. Scott, Joanna Vecchiarelli and Stark, Judith Chelius (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 174Google Scholar. Pangle, Thomas, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 293–4Google Scholar, argues that Arendt's secular political agenda forced her to secularize the Athenian polis inappropriately so as to use it as a standard against which to measure other political initiatives. In comparison to the definition of the political given by Carl Schmitt, Willibald Steinmetz, “Neue Wege einer Historischen Semantik des Politischen,” in “Politik”: Situationen eines Wortgebrauchs im Europa der Neuzeit (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 2007), 12, associates Arendt with Karl Löwith as a purveyor of “eine letztlich am antiken polis-Ideal orientierte Verständigung über die Grundlagen des Gemeinwesens.” In the opinion of Patricia Springborg, “Arendt, Republicanism, and Patriarchalism,” History of Political Thought 10 (1989), 523, “claims to the mantle of Roman power had an obvious legacy in the Third Reich and its characteristic forms, dictator, Kaiser reincarnating caesar and imperator. Claims to the legacy of Athens were less dangerous, though no less fantastic. Hannah Arendt, iconoclast and unmasker in respect to the former, is nevertheless a contributor to the latter tradition in its specifically German form. That she found the New Republic in the United States is not inconsistent, nor does it Anglicize her.” For his part, Josiah Ober, The Athenian Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 145, has argued that “Arendt's polis was an ahistorical ideal, based in large part on her own reading of Aristotle's Politics.”

⁷ Benhabib, Seyla, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), xxxviii–xxxixGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Taminaux, Jacques, “Performativité et grecomanie?”, Revue Internationale de Philosophie 53/2 (1999), 191–205Google Scholar.

⁹ Kateb, George, Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1984), 1 and 7Google Scholar. Comparable finesses can be observed in Euben, J. Peter, “Arendt's Hellenism,” in Villa, Dana, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 151–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where “Arendt is a dramatist of modernity who no more aims to return to ancient Athens than Sophocles aimed to return to the Athens of Theseus” (161) and where, in the end, Arendt, like Benjamin, “is a pearl diver whose aim is not to resuscitate the past or renew extinct ages, but to introduce crystallizations of rare beauty and profundity into the lives we share with each other” (163); and in Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), where the contemporary resonance of Arendt's polis-orientation is illustrated with the example of the Solidarity leader Adam Michnik, who “released from prison . . . received a prize, which he chose to dedicate to one project: having the works of Hannah Arendt translated into Polish to help the Poles orient themselves for life in the world after the Warsaw Pact” (xxxii).

¹⁰ Canovan, Margaret, Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation of Her Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ Hannah Arendt, Denktagebuch, ed. Ursula Ludz and Ingeborg Nordmann, 2 vols. (Munich: Piper, 2002). For further discussion of the Denktagebuch see Bouretz, Pierre, “Hannah Arendt—L'Atelier d'un Penseur,” Le Magazine littéraire 445 (2005), 52–4Google Scholar; and Weigel, Sigrid, “Poetics as a Presupposition of Philosophy: Hannah Arendt's Denktagebuch,” Telos 146 (Spring 2009), 97–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Stressing the intensity of Arendt's engagement with other thinkers, Bouretz speaks suggestively of the Denktagebuch as a “processus d'émancipation” (54).

¹² Arendt, Denktagebuch, 1: 183 and 1: 402. We encounter Arendt's first decisive association of the polis with the political as such in Denktagebuch, 1: 379: “was wir politisch nennen, entsteht mit der Polis” (“What we call ‘political’ arose with the polis”) and “so wird in der polis das Ausserordentliche der ‘basileia’ zum Durchschnittlichen” (“in this way, what was extraordinary in the monarchy became average in the polis”).

¹³ Arendt, Human Condition, 197.

¹⁴ Arendt, Denktagebuch, 1: 106, 112.

¹⁵ Canovan, Hannah Arendt, chap. 3.

¹⁶ Arendt, Denktagebuch, 1: 183: “Arbeit ist Sklaverei, unabhängig von ihrer Legalisierung.”

¹⁷ Ibid., 1: 182–3: “nur der Sklave war ein Arbeiter, und jeder Arbeiter war ein Sklave.” Original emphasis.

¹⁸ Arendt, Human Condition, 37, 66 n.

¹⁹ Arendt, Denktagebuch, 1: 183. The emphasis on “bodily degradation” comes from Aristotle, Politics, 1258b35 ff., discussed in Arendt, Human Condition, 81–2.

²⁰ Arendt, Denktagebuch, 1: 402.

²¹ Burckhardt, Jacob, The Greeks and Greek Civilization, ed. Murray, O., trans. Stern, S. (New York: St Martin's Griffin, 1999), 47Google Scholar.

²² Herodotus, 1.29; cited in Burckhardt, Greeks, 52.

²³ Burckhardt, Greeks, 54; in turn, Burckhardt cites Strabo, 14.5.19.

²⁴ Aristotle, Politics, 1326b3–25: “the best limiting principle for a state is the largest expansion of the population, with a view to self-sufficiency that can well be taken in at one view.”

²⁵ Arendt, Human Condition, 43. Arendt herself adopted the Greek position and determined that “the larger the population in any given body politic, the more likely it will be the social rather than the political that constitutes the public realm.”

²⁶ Arendt, Hannah, On Revolution (New York: Viking, 1963), 31Google Scholar.

²⁷ Arendt, Human Condition, 201. See also, Arendt, On Revolution, 275.

²⁸ As Aristotle reported it, “when there is civil war in the city, anyone who does not take up arms on one side or the other shall be deprived of civil rights and of all share in the affairs of government.” Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 8.5.

²⁹ Arendt, Denktagebuch, 1: 402.

³⁰ Arendt, Human Condition, 14.

³¹ Arendt, Denktagebuch, 1: 379.

³² de Coulanges, Fustel, The Ancient City: A Study on the Religion, Laws and Institutions of Greece and Rome (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956), 329Google Scholar.

³³ Arendt, Human Condition, 56.

³⁴ On Arendt's debt to the Romans more generally see Hammer, Dean, “Hannah Arendt and Roman Political Thought: The Practice of Theory,” Political Theory 30/1 (2002), 124–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In his Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), Robert Morstein-Marx does hint at the historical time experienced by participants in the contio. See also Connolly, Joy, The State of Speech: Rhetoric and Political Thought in Ancient Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 23Google Scholar.

³⁵ Cicero, De re publica, 2.26: “qui sibi cum suis civibus, qui denique cum omni hominum genere nullam iuris communionem, nullam humanitatis societatem velit.” Arendt, Denktagebuch, 1: 255.

³⁶ Cicero, De officiis, 3.88; Arendt, Denktagebuch, 1: 447. Jacques Taminaux has spoken of “the advantage of Rome over Athens,” from Arendt's perspective—Jacques Taminaux, “Athens and Rome,” in Villa, Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt, 173.

³⁷ Arendt, Hannah, The Promise of Politics, ed., Kohn, Jerome (New York: Schocken, 2005), 49Google Scholar.

³⁸ Arendt, Hannah, Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Viking, 1968), 120 ffGoogle Scholar.

³⁹ Arendt, On Revolution, 200 ff.

⁴⁰ Arendt, Denktagebuch, 1: 390: “zu den zwei logoi der Sophisten: Dies ist die eigentlich philosophisch-politische Entdeckung der Polis.”

⁴¹ Compare Arendt, Denktagebuch, 1: 391; Heidegger, Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie (Frankfurt a.M.: V. Klostermann, 2002), 114; and Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1355b25.

⁴² Arendt, Denktagebuch, 1: 400.

⁴³ Ibid., 1:453.

⁴⁴ Ibid., 1:482–3.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 1:480–1.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 1:483–4.

⁴⁷ Arendt, Hannah, Vita activa: oder, vom tätigen Leben (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1960), 191Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Arendt, Hannah, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 68Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Arendt, Human Condition, 63–4. Further investigation of the concept of nomos in Arendt and Schmitt has been undertaken recently in Lindahl, Hans, “Give and Take: Arendt and the Nomos of Political Community,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 32/7 (2006), 881–901CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁰ Arendt, Hannah, “Totalitarian Imperialism: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution,” Journal of Politics 20/1 (1958), 5–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵¹ Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 27–8: “Hannah Arendt remembered being taken along by her mother, who was an ardent admirer of Rosa Luxemburg, to the first excited discussions among the Königsberg circle of the news from Berlin that there had been an uprising. As they ran through the streets, Martha Arendt shouted to her daughter, ‘You must pay attention, this is a historical moment!’”

⁵² Arendt, On Revolution, 281. Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus. The key Greek term here (lampron) means not simply “splendid” but also “bright, radiant, limpid, clear, distinct.”

⁵³ Arendt, On Revolution, 279–80.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 267.

⁵⁵ Arendt, Human Condition, 198–9.

⁵⁶ Ronald Beiner, “Hannah Arendt on Judging,” in Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, 101.

⁵⁷ See David L. Marshall, “The Origin and Character of Hannah Arendt's Theory of Judgment,” Political Theory (forthcoming).

⁵⁸ Arendt, Denktagebuch, 1: 570: “die Bedingung der Möglichkeit der Urteilskraft ist die Präsenz der Andern, die Öffentlichkeit.”

⁵⁹ Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, §40; cited in Arendt, Denktagebuch, 1: 579, and then again in Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, 71. Original italics.

⁶⁰ Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, 63.

⁶¹ Ibid., 74.

⁶² Ibid., 42.

⁶³ Ibid., 67.

⁶⁴ Parmenides, fragment 4; cited in Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, 80.

⁶⁵ Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, 80.

⁶⁶ Ibid., 66.

⁶⁷ Ibid., 67.

⁶⁸ Arendt, Human Condition, 197—glossing Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 2.41.

⁶⁹ Arendt, Hannah, “Culture and Politics,” in idem, Reflections on Literature and Culture, ed. Gottlieb, Susannah Young-Ah (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 186Google Scholar. See Arendt, Hannah, “Kultur und Politik,” Merkur 12 (1959), 1129Google Scholar. Arendt, Between Past and Future, 214; Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 2.40.

⁷⁰ Arendt, “Culture and Politics,” 188–9; “Kultur und Politik,” 1131–2.

⁷¹ Arendt, “Culture and Politics,” 199; “Kultur und Politik,” 1134, 1143.

⁷² Arendt, “Culture and Politics,” 191, 202; “Kultur und Politik,” 1145. On Arendt's misgivings about the capacity of Athens to fulfill completely the two functions of the polis, see Roy T. Tsao, “Arendt against Athens: Rereading The Human Condition,” Political Theory 30/1 (2002), 97–123.

⁷³ Arendt, Denktagebuch, 2: 753.

⁷⁴ Arendt, Denktagebuch, 2: 749, 753, 757; and idem, The Life of the Mind, 2 vols. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978) 1: 97, 201.

⁷⁵ Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 1: 201. Stephen Schneck is therefore right to intuit that for Arendt “the space of the polis . . . is not empty but structured and full of meaning,” and right to suggest that Arendt's understanding of space might be usefully traced back to phenomenological receptions of Kant in the early twentieth century. See Schneck, Stephen, “A Question of Space: Max Scheler and Hannah Arendt on the Place of the Person,” in idem, ed., Max Scheler's Acting Persons: New Perspectives (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002), 157, 165Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ For further analysis of these themes see Marshall, David L., Vico and the Transformation of Rhetoric in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.