Controlling the State SVN Y Constitutionalism from i | Ancient Athens to Today Scott Gordon Harvard University Press Cambridge, Masechusers, and London, England | 1999Copyright © 1999 bythe President and Fellows of Harvard College Printed in the Unive States of America in Pa consttaionaksn from ancient Ashens Includes bibliographical references and indes, ISBN 0:674-16987-5 1, Separation of power. 2 4, Consitstiona! story. J. Th 3F229 G67 1999 321.8°01—de2L shorty. $. Liber. . 99-20812 ose aatintie In all government there is a perpetual intestine struggle, open ot secret, between Authority and Liberty, and. neither of them can ever absolutely prevail in the contest. A great sactifice of liberty must necessarily be made in every government; yet even the authority which confines liberty can never, and perhaps ought never, in any constitution to become quite entire and ancontrollable . . . It must be owned that liberty is the perfection of civil society, but still authority must be acknowledged essential to its very existence. DAVID BUMEAthenian Democracy anslates the Greek demokratia, which de- and bratos, rule or authority. Lite ‘would seem 10 mean government of t sible method of governance, even in a r ancient Athens, the term is likely to mislead, 25 one the politcal discousse of our own time, But we do not have a better term to f ich there is free and widespread in this broad sense that T here, as elsewhere in this book.* ing of a regime of democratic government in Athens cannot be dated precisely because it was not initiated by a singular event, but through tutional reforms that took place over a lengthy period. Some eforms introduced by Solon in $94 3.c. (henceforth in this chapter “B.C.” will be taken as understood, where appropriate) beginning, others the reforms of Klcisthenes in 508, while stil others p ‘out that important elements of the political system were not in existence before the reforms of Ephialtes in 461. ‘The end of the Athenian democracy is more distinct because it did not gradually degenerate, as republican Rome id, from indigenous difficulties, but was overwhelmed by the superior mil tary force of Macedon, in 338. The Athenian democracy lasted (with a few sruptions) for roughly two centuries—long enongh to qualify as more than a transitory experiment in democratic government. ‘Athens had become the largest and most powerful city chousand square ‘conquest and assem- the whole coast of the Aegean Subsequen: bled a large em Sea, and westward, system of Athens, yond Attica, ‘embarked on a policy of te with dependencies arou was, indeed 2 city-state whose boundaries did not go be- ‘most, but one must bear in mind that its government had to 1. On the evolution of the In classical Greece, see Hansen (1991, 678). Athenian Democracy | 61 administer an extensive colonial region and defend its hegemony there in al- empire provided Athens with alarge flow of weal fe been able to maintain its hold on it n of home government. impressive as signify and cultural efflorescence that took place there during the democratic era. familiat more than two millennia later include not only the great philosophers Plato and Aristotle, but numerous others: the historians Aeschylus, A cles, and Euripides; the sculptors Praxiteles and there are many whose creations we acimire but (3 whose works were copied by iudging from the enormous amount of Attican 4 continuous influence upon the history of the West. Indced, that influence ‘was suppressed, almost to the point of extinction, during the many centuries that clapsed between the beginning of the Chistian era and the late Middle Ages. With the rediscovery, ancient texts, Greek philosophical, scientific, and political ies of ‘Western civilization. We might note the following as features of modern constitutional democracy (without undertaking to determine what was inherited and what was indigenous): 1. A secular and utilitarian view of government as an instrument for making ive choices on matters of general interest?