Demos Pyknites

An account of popular sovereignty that begins with the fifth century BCE may seem to be off to a false start. 1 Foundational works in the history of political thought have taught us that the very notion of sovereignty, and thus of popular sovereignty, emerged from the particular historical circumstances of the early modern era. One might thus believe that fifth-century Greeks could not be discussing popular sovereignty some two thousand years before this concept's emergence. 2 Leading ancient historians and classicists have adopted this view, deeming 'sovereignty' a misleadingly anachronistic way of thinking about Athenian democracy in the classical period. 3 For the concept of sovereignty seems 1 By agreement, my primary focus is on the fifth century BCE (esp. its second half) and Melissa Lane's in her contribution is on the fourth.

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Representing the Demos: Adapting Insights From the Constructivist Turn in Political Representation

Simonton¹

2021

Ramus

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One of the commonest clichés in the study of ancient and modern democracy is the claim that the former is ‘direct’, the latter ‘representative’. A few scholars have recently explored areas in which the Classical Athenian democracy had representative features, particularly the magistracies. These studies continue, however, to understand ‘political representation’ according to the definition proposed by the political scientist Hanna Pitkin, that is, as ‘acting [on the part of the political representative] in the interest of the represented, in a manner responsive to them’. In this paper I introduce the insights of the recent ‘constructivist turn’ in studies of political representation to the analysis of Athenian politics in the hope of suggesting, in what will necessarily be a brief and incomplete exercise, how productive this exciting new paradigm can be for understanding the dynamics of ancient democracy. I first lay out the basic tenets of constructivist representation, particularly the notion of the ‘representative claim’ as developed by the political theorist Michael Saward, and argue for their suitability for studying ancient Greek history and political thought. Next, I adapt the model of the representative claim to two episodes of Athenian democratic deliberation, showing how it illuminates processes of demotic will- and identity-formation. I conclude by briefly underscoring how approaching Athenian politics in terms of constructivist notions of representation restores an aesthetic dimension to ancient democratic debate, one that allows us to compare more productively the ‘demos’ of symbouleutic oratory with its counterparts in poetry, sculpture, and other media, namely as a represented object fashioned for creative and rhetorical purposes.

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Demos Pyknites

Cited by 3 publications

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Politics and Aristophanic Comedy

Politics and Aristophanic Comedy

Athenian democracy and popular tyranny

Representing the Demos: Adapting Insights From the Constructivist Turn in Political Representation

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