Democracy 2500? : Questions and challenges

Abstract

IntroductionThis volume grew out of concerns about democracy,nmodern as much as ancient. Wenstarted talking about it at the end of 1992. Democracy,nit seemed, was on everyone's mind.nOver the previous three years, prodemocraticnuprisings had challenged totalitarian regimesnfrom Beijing to Berlin; and at just the same time,nwestern intellectuals from Hamburg to Washington,nD.C., were proclaiming that history wasnreaching its end in the form of western socialndemocracy (e.g., Niethammer 1989; Fukuyaman1989). If history has a telos, it presumably hasnan arche too, and the vagaries of the calendarnpromptly supplied it. qWe are all Greeks now,qna prominent newspaper advertisement was tonassure us just a few months later: 1993, whichnmarked the 2,500th anniversary of Cleisthenes'nreforms in Athens in 508/7 b.c., was also beingntaken to mark the 2,500th anniversary of ournown democracies.The closing of this putative two-and-a-half-millenniumncycle suddenly, if fleetingly, gaventhe study of ancient Greece a prominence andnrelevance that it had not enjoyed since thenmid-19th century. Government agencies offerednfunding at every level for our inquiries into thenorigins of this democratic trajectory, paying fornsummer institutes, graduate fellowships, facultynstipends, television specials, and internationalnconferences. The question that motivatednus to produce this volume was a simple one:nwhat were we, as members of the professionsncharged with representing ancient Greece tonwider audiences, doing with this responsibility?People outside the academy were only toonready to relieve us of the responsibility for suchnquestions. In 1988 Diana Buitron-Oliver, guestncurator at the National Gallery of Art, had putntogether a successful exhibition, The Human Figurenin Early Greek Art (Buitron-Oliver 1991: 9).nShe planned a follow-up exhibition, pursuingnthe development of Greek sculpture into thenClassical period, for 1992. But with qDemocracyn2500q looming on the horizon, politicians tooknover from the curator. A new title was dreamednup: The Greek Miracle: Classical Sculpture from thenDawn of Democracy; The Fifth Century B.C.nThenGreek government insisted, against the resistancenof those in charge of its museums and antiquities,non allowing an unparalleled numbernof outstanding objects to leave the country. Thenreason was obvious. As then Prime MinisternConstantin Mitsotakis declared in the exhibitionncatalogue:n n n The exhibition . . . celebrates the birth of humanismnin Greece twenty-five centuries ago.nThere the value of the individual was first recognized, and that recognition produced the firstnself-government on earth --- the first democracy n--- The birth of humanism 2,500 yearsnago in Greece also produced an outburst of thencreative spirit that has never been surpassed.nThe sculptures in the exhibitionnare the finestnpieces that have survived from Greece's GoldennAge. It is fitting that their first journey fromntheir homeland is to nthe United States, a countrynfounded on the model of Greek Democracy.n(In Buitron-Oliver 1992: 6)Author Nicholas Gage seconded the sentiment:n n n First there was the vision. In the fifth centurynbefore Christ, an unprecedented idea rose from a small Greek city on the dustynplains of Atticanand exploded over the Western Hemisphere likenthe birth of a new sun. Its light has nwarmednand illuminated us ever since; sometimes obscurednby shadows, then bursting forth anewnas it did when our own nation was created onnthe modelnof the Greek original. The vision ---nthe classical Greek idea --- was that society functionsnbest if all citizens are equal and free tonshape their lives and share in running theirnstate: in a word, democracy.n n n With this new day came an explosion of thencreative spirit in Greece, producing the architecture,nthe art, the drama, and the philosophynthat have shaped Western civilization evernsince. (1992:17)Three bold statements: Athenian democracynwas Greek democracy; Greek democracy providednthe model for American democracy; andnGreek democracy triggered an artistic and cultural qexplosionq that turned the fifth centurynB.C. into Greece's qGolden Age.q Reasonnenough to celebrate, if things were that simple.nBut as critics of the exhibition relentlesslynpointed out, it is not at all clear that the Hellenicnqcultural miracleq of the fifth century was connectednwith democracy. n n

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