¹ Weingast, Barry R., “The Political Foundations of Democracy and the Rule of Law,” American Political Science Review 91, no. 2 (06 1997): 245–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar, develops the game-theoretic basis for a rational choice model along these lines. Although my argument here focuses on social practices and values rather than on rational choice, it is compatible with Weingast's model. I received very helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper delivered at New York University, the University of California at Santa Cruz, Stanford University, and Princeton University's Center for Human Values. Special thanks to Barry Strauss and Phillip Mitsis, for discussions that led to the writing of this paper, and to Emily Mackil for editorial assistance and substantive comments.

² Zakaria, Fareed, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” Foreign Affairs 76, no. 6 (11/12 1997): 23–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a good discussion of the traditional conflict between the liberal “rights of the moderns” (religious liberty; liberty of conscience, thought, and expression; rights of person and property) and the democratic “rights of the ancients” (freedom of political speech, and participation rights), and an argument that these can be conjoined within a conception of deliberative democracy based on reasonable plurality, see Cohen, Joshua, “Procedure and Substance in Deliberative Democracy,” in Democracy and Difference, ed. Benhabib, Seyla (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 94–119.Google Scholar

³ Zakaria, , “Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” 28.Google Scholar Zakaria's examples of constitutional liberal ism leading to democracy include nineteenth-century Britain, Hong Kong, and contemporary “semi-democratic” East Asian regimes. His examples of democracy failing to bring about constitutional liberalism include sub-Saharan Africa, Haiti, Central Asia, and “the Islamic world” (ibid., 26–29).

⁴ Ibid., 26.

⁵ Constant, Benjamin, “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns,” in Benjamin Constant, Political Writings, ed. and trans. Fontana, Biancamaria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 307–28Google Scholar; Berlin, Isaiah, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 163ff., esp. 164f.Google Scholar On Berlin's conception of negative liberty and his debt to Constant, see Gray, John, Isaiah Berlin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 5–37, esp. 20.Google Scholar The Berlin quotes in this paragraph are drawn from “Two Concepts of Liberty,” 14, 56Google Scholar, cited by Skinner, Quentin, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge and New York:. Cambridge University Press, 1998), 115.Google Scholar

⁶ See Whitehead, David, The Demes of Attica 508/7-ca. 250 b.c.: A Political and Social Study (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 67.Google Scholar

⁷ For a general discussion of Athenian democratic equality, see Raaflaub, Kurt A., “Equal ities and Inequalities in Athenian Democracy,” in Demokratia: A Conversation on Democracies, Ancient and Modern, ed. Ober, Josiah and Hedrick, Charles (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 139–74.Google Scholar

⁸ Aristotle, , Politics 1291b3–34.Google Scholar

⁹ The story of how the dêmos came to be defined in terms of “non-leisured” Athenians (or, conversely, all native adult males) rather than in terms of the elite is important and interesting, but is not my main focus here: cf. Ober, Josiah, The Athenian Revolution: Essays on Ancient Greek Democracy and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), esp. ch. 6Google Scholar; Hanson, Victor D., “Hoplites into Democrats: The Changing Ideology of Athenian Infantry,”Google Scholar in Demokratia, ed. Ober, and Hedrick, , 289–312Google Scholar; Strauss, Barry S., “The Athenian Trireme, School of Democracy,”Google Scholar in ibid., 313–26; and my exchange with Kurt Raaflaub in Democracy 2500? Questions and Challenges, ed. Raaflaub, K. and Morris, I., Archaeological Institute of America, Colloquia and Conference Papers 2 (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt, 1998), 67–85.Google Scholar

¹⁰ See Hunter, Virginia J., Policing Athens: Social Control in the Attic Lawsuits, 420–320 b.c. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; and Cohen, David, Law, Sexuality, and Society: The Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ Thucydides, , The Peloponnesian War, ed. and trans. Jowett, Benjamin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1881)Google Scholar, with revisions of Hornblower, Simon, A Commentary on Thucydides (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 2.37.2.Google Scholar

¹² On Athenian demographics, see Hansen, Mogens H., Demography and Democracy: The Number of Athenian Citizens in the Fourth Century b.c. (Herning, Denmark: Systime, 1985).Google Scholar The number of foreign residents and slaves was large, but cannot be accurately estimated. In any event, citizens cannot have been more than about one-fifth of the total population at any time during the democracy.

¹³ On this distinction, see Ober, , Athenian Revolution, ch. 11Google Scholar, and the literature cited therein.

¹⁴ On the bipolarity of Athenians and others, see Cartledge, Paul, The Greeks: A Portrait of Self and Others (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; on the link between this bipolarity and democracy, see Roberts, Jennifer Tolbert, “Athenian Equality: A Constant Surrounded by Flux,”Google Scholar in Demokratia, ed. Ober, and Hedrick, , 187–202Google Scholar; on racism and misogyny, see Morris, Ian, Archaeology as Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar

¹⁵ See Ober, , Athenian Revolution, ch. 11.Google Scholar

¹⁶ The distinctions between what people say and what they do, and between what people say in official circumstances and what they say among intimates, is relevant here, but hard to specify.

¹⁷ See, for example, Ober, , Athenian Revolution, ch. 5Google Scholar, on the inevitability of criticism.

¹⁸ Butler, Judith, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York: Routledge, 1997)Google Scholar, offers one account of the relationship between performance and culture; my thanks to Susan Lape for clarifying for me how Butler's work can be applied to Athens. My own understanding of how dominant ideologies are challenged by alternative performances is sketched in Athenian Revolution, 148–54.Google Scholar

¹⁹ See Morris, , Archaeology as Cultural History.Google Scholar

²⁰ Ibid., ch. 4. In my own work, I have tended to use the term “ideology” to cover aspects of both thought and practice, and it is important to keep in mind that there is no practical way to segregate “mentality” from “ideology” in the thought of any given person at any given time.

²¹ Chattel slaves, either Greek prisoners of war or (more often) non-Greeks imported specifically to serve as slaves, could be bought and sold as ordinary property. Helots and other unfree “serfs” were tied to the land; they could not be bought or sold, but otherwise lacked liberties and immunities.

²² See Morris, Ian, “The Strong Principle of Equality and the Archaic Origins of Greek Democracy,”Google Scholar in Demokratia, ed. Ober, and Hedrick, , 19–48Google Scholar; Kurke, Leslie, “The Politics of Habrosunê in Archaic Greece,” Classical Antiquity 11 (1992): 91–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and (believing the metrics ideal to be a reality rather than an ideology) Hanson, “Hoplites into Democrats.”

²³ Manville, Philip Brook, The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

²⁴ Ober, , Athenian Revolution, ch. 4.Google Scholar

²⁵ For the struggle between the habrosunê mentality and the metrios mentality, see Morris, , “Strong Principle of Equality”Google Scholar; Kurke, , “Politics of Habrosunê”Google Scholar; and Kurke, , The Politics of Meaning in Archaic Greece: Coinage, Bodies, Games, and Gold (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).Google Scholar

²⁶ On the centrality of politics, see Lèvêque, Pierre and Vidal-Naquet, Pierre, Cleisthenes the Athenian: An Essay on the Representation of Space and Time in Greek Political Thought from the End of the Sixth Century to the Death of Plato, ed. and trans. Curtis, David Ames (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Meier, Christian, The Greek Discovery of Politics, trans. McLintock, David (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Vernant, Jean-Pierre, The Origins of Greek Thought (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982).Google Scholar My argument does not embrace extreme claims about the “primacy of politics” in Greek culture (see, e.g., Rahe, Paul A., Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992])Google Scholar, but it likewise rejects the attempt to read Athens as primarily family- and cult-centered (see, e.g., Patterson, Cynthia, The Family in Greek History [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998]).Google Scholar

²⁷ See Ober, Josiah, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; and Ober, , Athenian Revolution.Google Scholar

²⁸ On inscriptions, see Whitehead, David, “Cardinal Virtues: The Language of Public Approbation in Democratic Athens,” Classica et Mediaevalia 34 (1983): 55–74.Google Scholar On speeches, see Ober, , Mass and Elite.Google Scholar

²⁹ The contrast, among republics, is with societies like that of ancient Rome, in which religious, social, economic, and political power were concentrated in the hands of an aristocratic oligarchy. I know much less about monarchical societies (e.g., classical China), but I suppose that they might manifest an even more fully developed isomorphism between various sorts of power, and consequently fewer obvious contradictions or opportunities for ideological confusion.

³⁰ On democracy in post-classical Athens, see Habicht, Christian, Athens from Alexander to Antony (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).Google Scholar On the ways in which postclassical Athenian political culture may have resorted to essentializing ideological tactics, see Lape, Susan, “Community and Politics in Menander,” Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1998.Google Scholar

³¹ Pseudo-Xenophon, , Constitution of the Athenians, ed. Bowersock, G. W. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

³² On this passage of Pseudo-Xenophon, cf. Gomme, Arnold W., “The Old Oligarch,” in Gomme, More Essays in Greek History and Literature, ed. Campbell, David A. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962), 61–62, 67–68Google Scholar; originally published in Athenian Studies Presented to W. S. Ferguson: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, supplementary vol. 1 (1940), 211–45.Google Scholar The association of revolutionary change in the politeia with a change in the dominant element in the citizen body (politeuma) is a key issue for Aristotle in the Politics; see below.

³³ For a fuller account, see Ober, , Athenian Revolution, ch. 11.Google Scholar

³⁴ For Aristotle's doctrine of natural slavery, see Aristotle, , Politics 1252a24–1256b40Google Scholar, and the discussion of Garnsey, Peter, Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), and the literature cited therein.Google Scholar

³⁵ The Greek text is partially corrupt here; see Bechtle, Gerald, “A Note on Pseudo-Xenophon, The Constitution of the Athenians 1.11,” Classical Quarterly 46, no. 2 (1996): 564–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where Bechtle discusses the difficulties and offers a sensible solution. The point, for Pseudo-Xenophon, is that because the Athenians enter into legally binding financial agreements with their slaves, under the terms of which the slaves are eventually able to manumit themselves, the free Athenians are not able to do whatever they wish with respect to slaves and are therefore “slaves to slaves.”

³⁶ Fisher, N. R. E., Hybris: A Study in the Values of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greece (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1992).Google Scholar

³⁷ See note 38 for a modern edition of Demosthenes' speech. I offer a detailed analysis of the speech in Athenian Revolution, ch. 7.

³⁸ MacDowell, Douglas M., Demosthenes, Against Meidias (Oration 21) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 21.47.Google Scholar

³⁹ On enktêsis and isoteleia, see Whitehead, David, The Ideology of the Athenian Metic (Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society, 1977).Google Scholar On wealthy metics and slaves, see Cohen, Edward E., Athenian Nation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁰ See Cohen, Edward E., Ancient Athenian Maritime Courts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973)Google Scholar; and Cohen, , Athenian Nation.Google Scholar

⁴¹ On the question of religious freedom and the law against impiety, see Parker, Robert, Athenian Religion: A History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 207–11, 214–15.Google Scholar On metics and slaves in Athenian religious life, see Cohen, , Athenian Nation.Google Scholar The Eleusinian Mysteries were celebrated each year with a grand procession from Athens to the deme of Eleusis, where initiates were shown and told secret things that led them to have hopes for the afterlife.

⁴² On Periclean citizenship law, see Boegehold, Alan L., “Perikles' Citizenship Law of 451/0 b.c.,” in Athenian Identity and Civic Ideology, ed. Boegehold, Alan L. and Scafuro, Adele C. (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 57–66Google Scholar, and the literature cited therein. On the move from autochthony to patriotism, see Ober, , Mass and Elite, 261–66.Google Scholar In Athenian Nation, Cohen discusses the evidence for naturalization in detail. He also argues that the citizenship law potentially allows any individual to be legally accepted as a citizen so long as he was born of two long-term noncitizen residents of Attica, but I do not believe that the evidence he cites supports the sharp legal distinction between the terms astos and politês upon which his argument depends.

⁴³ On the procedure for enfranchisement and its relative rarity, see Osborne, M. J., Naturalization in Athens (Brussels: AWLSK, Klasse der Lettern, Jaargang 43, Nr. 98, 1981).Google Scholar On the house of Pasion and Apollodorus, see Ober, , Mass and Elite, 212–14.Google Scholar See also Trevett, Jeremy, Apollodoros the Son of Pasion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ On metic service in Athenian armed forces, see Whitehead, , Ideology of the Athenian Metic, 82–86.Google Scholar On slaves in military service, see Hunt, Peter, Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology in the Greek Historians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Cohen, , in Athenian Nation, discusses the evidence in detail.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ For the claim that women in democratic Athens were actually less free than in aristocratic poleis, couched in negative terms, see Roberts, , “Athenian Equality.”Google Scholar

⁴⁷ On gunaikonomoi at Athens and elsewhere, see Garland, B. J., “Gynaikonomoi: An Investigation of Greek Censors of Women,” Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1981.Google Scholar See Cohen, David, Law, Sexuality, and Society: The Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on the myth of seclusion of women at Athens.

⁴⁸ Cf. Thucydides 2.45.2: “If I may speak also about the women who will now be widows, I shall define it all in a brief admonition. For great is the glory for you not to be worse than your existing nature, and not to be talked about for good or evil among men” (trans. Rusten, J. S., Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Book II [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989]Google Scholar, with adaptations suggested by Hornblower, , A Commentary on Thucydides).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ See also Ober, Josiah, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 122–55.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ The argument here is made in more detail in Ober, , “How to Criticize Democracy in Late Fifth- and Fourth-Century Athens,” in Athenian Revolution.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Although Aristotle's concept of aristocracy is a complicated philosophical contrivance, the fact that some nondemocratic poleis did indeed have “controllers of women” allows us to use the term “aristocracy” rather more broadly than Aristotle (sometimes) did. Some scholars have supposed (although it is not provable) that the hubris law was enacted by Solon, to whom are also attributed laws restricting the behavior of Athenian women at funerals (Plutarch, , Solon 21.5Google Scholar). But the point here concerns what laws are enforced under the democratic regime.

⁵² On Plato's Crito, see Kraut, Richard, Socrates and the State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

⁵³ This would be a problematic procedure if the primary concern was the intention of the original lawmaker, but since that is unknowable and undatable (per note 51 above), I am concerned here with the way the law was used and understood in fourth-century practice.

⁵⁴ On the phrase kataluein ton demon (or similar phrases) and its association with hubris, see Aristophanes, , Ecdesiazusae 453Google Scholar; and Thucydides, , The Peloponnesian War 3.81.4 (civil war on Corcyra).Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Demosthenes' description of the various bad things done to him in private life by Meidias and his cronies illustrates the potential harms that could arise from challenging the powerful, even in Athens.

⁵⁶ The Athenians annually appointed many magistrates (by election or, more often, by lot) to undertake various aspects of public business; see Hansen, Mogens H., The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 225–45.Google Scholar But the work of magistrates was subordinate to the popular Assemblies and lawcourts, and did not include moral policing.

⁵⁷ A good deal of recent work is summed up in Euben, Peter, Corrupting Youth: Political Education, Democratic Culture, and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Demokratia, ed. Ober and Hedrick; and the bibliographies of both books point to more.

⁵⁸ See, for example, Taylor, Charles et al. , Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Gutmann, Amy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).Google Scholar