The Athenian Origins of Direct DemocracyAnswer the following questions: What is democracy? Give your definition. How does it differ from other political regimes? What is «polis»? Is it similar to modern cities? Give Russian equivalents to the following terms: Athens ['æθ(ə)nz] The Acropolis [ə'krɒpəlis] Aristotle ['ærisˏtɒut(ə)l] Plato ['pleitəu] Sparta ['spa:tə]
Study the following words and expressions:
agora (the) ['ægərə], n – Агора (место собраний, рыночная площадь) citizenry ['sitiz(ə)nri], n – граждане, гражданское население defensible [di'fensəbl], adj – легко обороняемый, защищаемый hereditary [hi'reditəri], adj - наследственный inferior [in'fiəriə], adj - наихудший juror ['dʒuərə], n - присяжный magistrate ['mædʒistreit], n – мировой судья peasant ['pezənt], n - крестьянин replica ['replikə], n – копия, повторение reprehensible [ˏrepri'hensəbl], adj - предосудительный retreat [ri'tri:t], v - отступать shirk ['∫ɜ:k], v – увиливать, уклоняться, избегать slave ['sleiv], n - раб socially disruptive ['səu∫əli diz'rʌptiv], adj – социально опасный
artistic pursuit [a:'tistik pə'sju:t] – художественное призвание cast a vote [ka:st ə'vəut] – подавать голос, голосовать на выборах commercial convenience [kə'm ɜ: ∫əl] – преимущества (удобства) ведения торговли public assembly ['pʌblik ə'sembli] – общественное собрание resident alien ['rezidənt 'eiliən] – подданный другого государства
Read and translate the text using a dictionary if necessary: One of the hallmarks of Greek Civilization was the polis, or city-state. The city-states were small, independent communities which were male-dominated and bound together by race. What this means is that membership in the polis was hereditary and could not be passed on to someone outside the citizen family. The citizens of any given polis were an elite group of people – slaves, peasants, women and resident aliens were not part of the body of citizens. Originally the polis referred to a defensible area to which farmers of a particular area could retreat in the event of an attack. The Acropolis in Athens is one such example. Over time, towns grew around these defensible areas. The growth of these towns was unplanned and they were not placed for commercial convenience near rivers or seas. In fact, the poleis were situated well inland to avoid raids by sea. With time, the agora or marketplace began to appear within the polis. The agora was not only a marketplace but the heart of Greek intellectual life and discourse. The scale of the polis was indeed small. When the philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) came to discuss the origins of the polis in his book “Politics” in the early 4th century B.C. he suggested that "it is necessary for the citizens to be of such a number that they knew each other's personal qualities and thus can elect their officials and judge their fellows in a court of law sensibly." Before Aristotle, Plato fixed the number of citizens in an ideal state at 5040 adult males. For Plato (c.427-c.347 B.C.), as it was for Aristotle, the one true criteria of the size of the polis was that all the citizens know one another. The issue at stake here is between public and private worlds. The ancient Greeks did not really see two distinct worlds in the lives of the citizenry. Instead, the public world was to be joined with the private world. The citizens in any given polis were related to one another by blood and so family ties were very strong. As boys, they grew up together in schools, and as men, they served side by side during times of war. They debated one another in public assemblies – they elected one another as magistrates – they cast their votes as jurors for or against their fellow citizens. In such a society – the society of the polis – all citizens were intimately and directly involved in politics, justice, military service, religious ceremonies, intellectual discussion, athletics and artistic pursuits. To shirk one's responsibilities was not only rare but reprehensible in the eyes of the Greek citizen. Greek citizens did not have rights, but duties. A citizen who did not fulfill his duties was socially disruptive. At the polis of Sparta, such a citizen was called "an Inferior." At Athens, a citizen who held no official position or who was not a habitual orator in the Assembly was branded as idiotai. Every polis was different from another. For example, some poleis had different names for the months of the year. Although there were similarities and differences between the city-states, they all made the effort to preserve their own unique identity. What we call the ancient Greek world was really hundreds of independent city-states or poleis. No one polis was a replica of another. Those who lived within the confines of a city state considered everyone else to be inferior. Furthermore, those people who did not speak Greek were referred to as barbar, the root of our word barbarian.
Ex. 1. Answer the following questions: 1) What is a city-state? 2) Who were and who were not the citizens of a polis? 3) What era did the polis originally refer to? 4) What was “the heart” of intellectual life in the polis? 5) What, in Plato’s opinion, the number of citizens had to be? 6) What was a citizen who didn’t fulfill his duties called at the polis of Sparta? 7) Were poleis similar to each other?
Ex. 2. Match the words with their definitions:
Ex. 3. Choose the word from A, B, C or D that best keeps the meaning of the original sentences below if substituted for the underlined word or phrase:
1) One of the hallmarks of Greek Civilization was the polis, or city-state
A) symbol C) mark B) objective D) label
2) Originally the polis referred to a defensible area to which farmers could retreat in the event of an attack.
A) go forward C) escape B) move D) pass
3)To shirk one's responsibilities was not only rare but reprehensible in the eyes of the Greek citizen.
A) innocent C) blameworthy B) excellent D) trustworthy
4) A citizen who was not a habitual orator in the Assembly was called as idiotai.
A) unusual C) former B) customary D) further
5) No one polis was a replica of another.
A) reduplication C) fax message B) twin D) copy
Ex. 4. Read the passage below and answer which of the following is not true?
Athens and Sparta were the most advanced Greek cities of the Hellenic period (750-338 B.C.). Both had a city-state type of government, and both took slaves from peoples they conquered. However, the differences outweigh the similarities in these two ancient civilizations. Sparta was hostile, warlike (constantly fighting the neighboring cities), and military, while Athens catered more toward the democratic and cultural way of life. The latter city left its mark in the fields of art, literature, philosophy and science, while the former passed on its totalitarianism and superior military traditions. The present system of a well-rounded education is based on the ancient Athenian idea. The Spartan system, on the other hand, was concerned only with military education.
A) Both cities had city-state types of government. B) Both cities took slaves. C) Both cities were advanced, but in different areas. D) Both cities developed a well-rounded education.
Ex. 5. Translate the following sentences from Russian into English: 1. Города-государства представляли собой небольшие сообщества. 2. Членство в полисе передавалось по наследству. 3. Гражданами полисов являлись лишь элитные группы людей, а рабы и крестьяне не входили в состав гражданского населения. 4. Структура полиса предусматривала защиту от вражеских нападений. Со временем вокруг полисов стали складываться города. 5. Центром интеллектуальной жизни городов стала Агора, которая изначально была торговой площадью. 6. Жители полисов были связаны крепкими семейными узами, участвовали в политической, интеллектуальной и спортивной жизни. 7. Уклонение от своих гражданских обязанностей считалось социально опасным явлением. 8. Ни один древнегреческий полис не был похож на другой.
Ex. 6. Role – play: “Elect a magistrate!” Work in pairs. Each of you is a habitual orator in the Public Assembly. Elect one another a magistrate and prove your choice. Use the active vocabulary from the text. Text B Polis (City-State) Read the text without a dictionary and answer the following questions: 1) How did the first city-states arise? 2) Which city-state was the greatest? 3) Which word in modern English or other languages reveals the importance of the polis in the world history? 4) What was the most common form of government in the Greek city-states? The single greatest political innovation of the ancient Greeks was the establishment of the polis, or "city-state”. In the Mycenean age, the Greeks lived in small, war-oriented kingdoms, but for reasons unknown to us, they abandoned their cities and their kingdoms sometime between 1200 and 1100 BC. From that point onwards, they lived in either sedentary or nomadic tribal groups; the period is called the Greek Dark Ages and lasted until sometime between 800 and 700 BC. The tribal or clan units of the dark ages slowly grew into larger political units at the end of this period; beginning around 800 BC, trade began to dramatically accelerate between the peoples of Greece. Marketplaces grew up in Greek villages and communities began to gather together into large defensive units, building fortifications to use in common. On this foundation, the Greek-speaking people who lived on the Greek peninsula, the mainland, and the coast of Asia Minor, developed political units that were centrally based on a single city. These city-states were independent states that controlled a limited amount of territory surrounding the state. The largest of these city-states, for instance, was Sparta, which controlled more than 3000 square miles of surrounding territory. The overwhelming characteristic of the city-state was its small size; this allowed for a certain amount of experimentation in its political structure. The age of the city-state in Greece is an age of dynamic and continual experimentation with political structures; this period of experimentation gave the European world most of its available political structures. Its small size also allowed for democracy, since individual city-states were small enough that the free male citizens constituted a body small enough to make policy decisions relatively efficiently. The overwhelming importance of the polis in the evolution of European political structures is betrayed by the word "political" itself: derived from the word polis, "political" etymologically means "of or relating to the polis. " Politically, all the Greek city-states began as monarchies. In their earliest stages, they were ruled by a basileus, or hereditary king. The Greeks living in those city-states, however, soon tired of the kings, many of which were overthrown in the eighth century BC. A variety of political alternatives were experimented with in place of the basileus: these included oligarchy, timocracy, tyranny, and democracy. The most common form of government in the Greek city-states was oligarchy, or "rule by a few." The oligarchs were almost always drawn from the noble classes or from the wealthiest citizens of the state ("rule by the wealthy" is called a timocracy), but a variety of oligarchic forms were invented in the eighth century. These include having the members of the oligarchy chosen by lot, having them elected, or rotating the oligarchy among members of a certain class. The oligarchs most often ruled absolutely; they had many of the powers granted to a king. However, many oligarchies ruled in conjunction with other political structures: in Sparta, for instance, the oligarchy ruled over and with a pair of kings, a council, and a democratic assembly. The reforms of Solon in Athens left in oligarchy of nobles in charge of the state, but granted enormous powers to an elected, democratic Assembly. Even though the powers of the oligarchs were diffused among a group (which could be surprisingly large), the power of the oligarchy could be remarkably totalitarian, since many of the members of the oligarchy were drawn from the same class and had the same interests. Many of the early oligarchic governments and a few of the kings were overthrown by "tyrants" (in Greek, tyrranos); oligarchy could be a particularly unstable form of government when it was also a timocracy, or "rule by the wealthy." While Greek history is generally unkind to the tyrants, we can through the haze of later Greek propaganda come to some dispassionate conclusions about the nature of the tyrannies. The Greeks believed that the tyrants were illegitimate usurpers of political power; they seem, however, to have had in many cases popular support. The Greek tyrants were often swept into power by dissatisfaction or crisis; they were more often then not extremely popular leaders when they assumed the tyranny. They often assumed absolute control in the name of reforming the government; Solon, the great reformer of the Athenian constitution, was essentially granted all the powers of a tyrant. Many of the tyrants, in fact, were brilliant and morally sound reformers and activists; many, however, were not. Once in power, they ruled as a king would rule, and many attempted, and some succeeded, to make the tyranny hereditary—in essence, a form of monarchy. The tyrants ruled only by a thread; they maintained power only by their hold on military force and often fear. The tyrannies were by nature highly unstable, and they fell apart rapidly. Even so, tyranny was a widespread political institution throughout the Greek-speaking world. By the sixth century the tyrannies never died out, but oligarchy became the settled norm of the Greek city-states. Several of these oligarchies, however, were replaced by a second alternative that originated sometime in the sixth century: democracy. The word means, "rule by the demos (people)," but the Greek democracies looked nothing like modern democracies. First, they really do mean rule by the people; the Greek democracies were not representative governments, they were governments run by the free, male citizens of the city-state. Second, all the members of a city-state were not involved in the government: slaves, foreigners, and women were all disbarred from the democracy. So, in reality, the democratic city-states more closely resembled oligarchies for a minority ruled the state—it was a very large minority, to be sure, but still a minority.
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