Athens’ Decline, And How It Mirrors Our Own
Much of the beauty of Athens came from her civil liberties – there were no nobles, nor a designated class of aristocrats. The civil administration was extensive for its time, by virtue of the fact that anyone could, and was indeed encouraged to, participate.
Serving for a maximum of one year in any given role, the incompetent were usually swiftly weeded out, whilst the competent rose to greater heights, creating a robust administration with, unlike today, genuine equality of opportunity.
The high public participation in their democracy spawned a system that, though possible to game, was in any case organic; there were no real political parties, or factions, besides the opposing interests of the rich and poor. Foreigners were very rarely granted citizenship, and if they were, then their children would not be considered citizens.
And yet, despite these ideals and safeguards, the shadow of their gradual decline appears strikingly familiar. A population hollowed out by questionable wars, the survivors locked in endless discourse, their sparkling city turned to rot. The cradle of democracy fascinates – yet, even in its purest form, it reveals its weaknesses.
Fragile Beginnings
Athens was envied across the Ancient world for her tenacity in the pursuit of her interests, invariably accompanied by a clever, fiery wit. Yet this famed wit, possible only by the intellectualism of her citizens, did not shield her from cunning politicians.
Plutarch recounts that the ambitious Pisistratus, seeking power, wounded himself, drove into the marketplace, and claimed his enemies had tried to murder him for his political stance. A crowd gathered, crying out in sympathy, even as Solon stepped forward and exposed the ruse:
‘Son of Hippocrates, this is not the way to play Homer’s Odysseus. When he wounded himself, it was to deceive his enemies, the Trojans, but you are doing it to mislead your fellow-citizens!’
Despite Solon’s warning, the poor were too credulous, and the rich too fearful, to resist. At the Assembly, it was decided by way of vote that Pisistratus should be granted a bodyguard of fifty men armed with clubs, with whom, to everyone's dismay, he seized the Acropolis.
Solon’s bitter verses, aimed at those who failed to heed his warnings and oppose tyranny, prophetically encapsulate the folly of democracy:
When you are managing your own affairs.
Each of you is as clever as a fox on the run,
But as soon as you come together, you lose your wits.
Yet despite such flaws, the Athenian still prided himself on his civic duty to defend Athenian ideals. He was liable for military service from eighteen to sixty, and though there was no standing army, the call to arms was almost constant.
Notices would appear in the Agora, summoning men to muster with their armour and rations, and they would dutifully obey, however poor the leadership or doubtful the prospect of success.
Ascendance To Decline
After the Persian Wars, Athens assumed leadership of the newly formed Delian League – a coalition of Greek city-states sworn to defend against future Persian aggression. Initially framed as mutual protection, Athens cunningly transformed the League into an empire in all but name, demanding tribute from her allies, and sieging those who objected.
The wealth of empire, borne on the backs of tributary allies, draped Athens in silken comforts – magnificent temples of marble, festivals of wine, and the opulent leisure of a people who had tamed the seas.
Having lucked into an empire, they saw no reason to give it up without a fight. So, when Sparta – wary of Athens’ growing reach – entered into bitter war, the Athenians staked everything.
During a truce in the Peloponnesian War, the young, charismatic general Alcibiades was the chief advocate for the doomed expedition to Sicily. In the Ecclesia, he used fiery rhetoric to stoke Athenian pride, ambition, and fear of missing an opportunity. According to Thucydides, Alcibiades framed the expedition as a glorious chance to expand Athens’ empire, secure wealth, and pre-empt Syracuse’s potential aid to Sparta. He appealed to Athenian philotimia (love of honour) and ambition, painting a grandiose vision of conquest.
The venture, just as the Peloponnesian War itself, succeeded only in draining Athenian coffers, and, with the assistance of an untimely plague, bled the population white. By the end of the Peloponnesian War, more than half of Athens’ adult male citizens had perished. The empire was gone, and the city would never truly recover.
Despite this, habitual appeals to emotion in the Assembly, rallying Athenians to check the balance of power in Hellas, the Aegean Sea, or beyond, found willing and numerous supporters in the Assembly, regardless of if the venture was affordable or practicable.
The citizens, priding themselves on their wit and enlightenment, engaged in seemingly endless discourse. In this climate, philosophies such as the Cyrenaics’ advocation for the pursuit of bodily pleasure as the highest good, found eager audiences. Athenians relished dissecting fresh ideas, for there was not much they had not heard before. However, they did so without having embraced and acted upon the previous idea.
Though several centuries later, Luke the Evangelist would remark on the seemingly unchanged nature of the Athenians during Paul the Apostle’s visit:
‘Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.’
Subjugation
To fulfil the obligations that democracy had bestowed unto her, once-dreaded barbarians were increasingly admitted into the Athenian ranks in times of war, and paid handsomely to fight alongside her.
Owing to past wars, plagues, and other misfortunes, by the time Athens was fighting to prevent her very subjugation to Macedon at Chaeronea, she could field only 10,000 to face Philip II and his son Alexander, of which several thousand were mercenaries.
Following defeat, it did not take long for Athens to be considered domesticated. Under Alexander the Great, she adorned her conqueror with statues, even as he campaigned a world away.
Several decades later, in 307 BC, a saviour arrived; Demetrius the Besieger, son of Antigonus – one of Alexander the Great’s most senior generals – arrived in a fleet of 250 ships, laden with 5000 talents. Rather embarrassingly, he entered the Athenian harbours entirely unopposed – the guards assumed him to be Ptolemy, King of Egypt.
After demanding silence of the gathering crowd, he proposed to lift Athens from servitude, and to restore her ancient form of governance, if only they would expel their Macedonian garrison.
However, the hard-won freedoms that once epitomised what it meant to be a citizen of Athens were now alien to its inhabitants; the Athenians wielded their newly reacquired democracy to elect to proclaim Demetrius a saviour-god. Though he shied away from such an honour, the Athenians were incessant; they changed the name of the month Mounychion to Demetrion, and that of the last day of a month, the “Old and New,” to Demetrias, and to the festival called Dionysia they gave the name of Demetria.
The saviour, in turn, became corrupted by the weakness of the Athenians. Plutarch describes a man lost in the adulation; Demetrius revelled in excess, his court a whirl of “wanton treatment” and debauchery, reflecting his subjects, who prized comfort over their own honour. In deifying their liberator, Athens bound herself anew, and allowed the gentle tyranny of ease to arrest what the Great Kings Darius and Xerxes could not wrest by force.
Athens forfeited her sovereignty and pride, and proclaimed an outsider – once the very image of what she most distrusted – as a god, and surrendered the spirit that had once made her free.
If we might return to the prophetic Solon:
If you are suffering now through your own cowardice,
You should blame yourselves and not the gods for this.
No one but you has made the tyrant strong,
And that is why you are all slaves today.