Livingstone - Athens

Athens

The city as university

The citizens of ancient Athens were directly responsible for the development and power of its democracy; but how did they learn about politics and what their roles were within it? In this volume, Livingstone argues that learning about political praxis (how to be a citizen) was an integral part of the everyday life of ancient Athenians. In the streets, shops and other meeting-places of the city, people from all levels of society, from slaves to the very wealthy, exchanged knowledge and competed for power and status. Athens: The City as University explores the spaces and occasions where Athenians practised the arts of citizenship for which they and their city became famous.

In the agora and on the pnyx, Athenian democracy was about performance and oratory, but the written word opened the way to ever-increasing sophistication in both the practice and theory of politics. As the arts of spin proliferated, spontaneous live debate in which the speakers authority came from being one of the many remained a core democratic value. Livingstone explores how ideas of democratic leadership evolved from the poetry of the legendary law-giver Solon to the writings of the sophist Alcidamas of Elaia. The volume offers a new approach to the study of ancient education and will be an invaluable tool to students of ancient politics and culture, and to all those studying the history of democracy.

Niall Livingstone is a Senior Lecturer in Classics, Ancient History, and Archaeology at the University of Birmingham.

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Athens

The city as university

Niall Livingstone

First published 2017
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2017 Niall Livingstone

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Livingstone, Niall.

Title: Athens: the city as university / Niall Livingstone.

Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2016. Series: Routledge monographs in classical studies | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015044494| ISBN 9780415212960 (hardback : alkaline paper) | ISBN 9781315646084 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Athens (Greece)Intellectual life. | Education, HigherGreeceAthensHistoryTo 1500. | Learning and scholarshipGreeceAthensHistoryTo 1500. | Greek literatureHistory and criticism. | CitizenshipGreeceAthensHistoryTo 1500. | DemocracyGreeceAthensHistoryTo 1500. | Political cultureGreeceAthensHistoryTo 1500. | Athens (Greece)Politics and government. | Athens (Greece)Social life and customs. | GreeceHistoryTo 146 B.C.

Classification: LCC DF275.L58 2016 | DDC 938/.5dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044494

ISBN: 978-0-415-21296-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-64608-4 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK

The City as University asks how citizens learned to play their roles in the democratic government of the ancient city of Athens. It shows that the answer to this question is not to be found in any systematic course of learning to which citizens had varying levels of access, or in education understood as something compartmentalised, a preparation for life ritually and institutionally set apart from life itself. Learning in Athens was pervasive and immersive. Athenian citizens were able to make participatory democracy work because learning political praxis, learning to act as citizens, was woven into the daily practice of citizen life itself.

Citizen involvement in government in ancient Athens was on an overwhelming scale. It was extraordinary in terms of the numbers of people participating in decision-making bodies such as the assembly, the council and the courts; the number of public bodies demanding such participation; the range and complexity of the social networks underpinning these institutions, and the degree of responsibility which often rested either on a single majority vote or on small numbers of democratically appointed, and democratically accountable, office holders. At one extreme, there was the brutal physical labour routinely exacted from slaves of both sexes. At the other, there was the exceptional leisured freedom of a small number of elite male citizens. In between these extremes, though, there was a long continuum, which is only beginning to be understood in all its complexity, consisting not only of the rest of the enfranchised citizen men but also of Athenian women, free non-Athenians both male and female, and those slaves whose work was such as to give them some limited measure of independence from their owners. Along this continuum were many who could have very little experience if any of formal education, but whose learning and expertise was crucial to the democracy. This book seeks to contribute to our understanding of the context and spaces in which this know-how was acquired and exercised.

, The citizen performer, focuses on Alcidamas of Elaias On Writers an important text often neglected by modern scholarship to show how it provides both a populist critique of elite formal education and a practical demonstration of how citizen expertise can be realised in political practice.