Greek philosophers did not think about politics in the abstract. They lived in the polis, the small self-governing city-state, and Athens offered the most famous experiment in popular rule in the ancient world.

How Athenian democracy worked

Athenian democracy grew from reforms by Cleisthenes around 508 BCE and developed through the fifth century. Its institutions differed sharply from modern representative systems:

• The Assembly (ekklesia), open to all adult male citizens, met regularly to vote directly on laws, war and peace.
• The Council of 500 prepared business for the Assembly. Its members were chosen by lot, fifty from each of ten tribes.
• Most officials and huge citizen juries were also selected by lot, which Greeks saw as the truly democratic method. Elections, they thought, favored the rich and famous. Generals, whose work needed skill, were elected.
• Ostracism let citizens vote to exile a powerful man for ten years, a guard against would-be tyrants.

The limits were severe. Citizenship belonged only to free adult men of Athenian descent. Women, slaves and resident foreigners (metics) were excluded, so citizens were a minority of the population. The democracy also ran an empire, and it voted for harsh acts, such as the destruction of Melos in 416 BCE described by the historian Thucydides. Thucydides also records Pericles' funeral oration, which praises Athens as a city where power rests with the many, not the few, and where citizens are judged by merit.

The philosophers' verdicts

Many philosophers were wary of democracy. Plato, as we saw, thought it handed power to people without knowledge and led to tyranny, and he never forgot that a democratic jury had condemned Socrates. Yet in Plato's Protagoras, the Sophist tells a myth in which Zeus gives a sense of justice and shame to all people, which is why every citizen may advise on public affairs. This is one of the earliest arguments for democratic equality, and Plato reports it fairly.

Aristotle's Politics

Aristotle opens the Politics by calling the human being, in Jowett's translation, “by nature a political animal.” We fulfill our nature only in a community where we deliberate together about justice. He and his students gathered accounts of 158 constitutions of Greek cities, of which only the Constitution of the Athenians largely survives.

He classified governments by who rules (one, few or many) and for whose benefit. Rule for the common good gives kingship, aristocracy and polity; rule for the rulers' own benefit gives tyranny, oligarchy and democracy (which he meant as rule by the poor in their own interest). The best practical constitution, he argued, is a mixed constitution resting on a large middle class, which balances rich and poor. He also offered a cautious argument for popular rule: many ordinary people, each with some virtue and judgment, may together judge better than a few experts, as a feast to which many contribute can be better than one provided by a single host.

Slavery and women: a fair criticism

Aristotle also defended things we must reject. In Book I he argued that some people are slaves by nature, fit to be ruled by others, and that slavery is just for them. He admitted that many actual slaves were captured in war and not natural slaves at all, which undercuts his own case, but he never condemned the institution. He also held that women possess the power to deliberate but that in them it is “without authority,” so men should rule the household.

Fairness means saying both things. These views were common in his society and were challenged even then: Aristotle himself mentions people who held that slavery is against nature. They were also used for centuries to justify cruelty. Reading Aristotle well means taking his insights on citizenship and the middle class seriously while recognizing that his circle of who counts as a full person was far too narrow.

Worked example: a day in the Athenian Assembly

Imagine an invented Athenian citizen, Demeas, a potter, in the late fifth century BCE. At dawn he walks to the Pnyx, the hill where the Assembly meets, along with several thousand other men. The Council, whose members were chosen by lot, has prepared an agenda: a proposal to send ships to aid an ally.

A herald asks, “Who wishes to speak?” Any citizen may. A famous general speaks for the expedition; a farmer speaks against it, worried about the cost. Demeas does not speak, but he listens and votes by raising his hand. The proposal passes. Next year, Demeas himself might be chosen by lot to serve on the Council or to sit on a jury of hundreds.

Now look at the scene through three philosophers' eyes.

• Plato would ask whether anyone in the crowd actually understands naval strategy, or whether the most persuasive speaker simply won. This is the ship analogy.
• Protagoras, as Plato presents him, would reply that every citizen shares in justice, so Demeas's judgment counts.
• Aristotle would note that thousands of ordinary judgments may add up to good collective sense, like a feast to which many contribute, while asking whether the middle class is strong enough to keep the city balanced.

Finally, count who is not there: Demeas's wife and daughters, the enslaved workers in his pottery, and the foreign-born trader who buys his pots. A full picture of Athenian democracy has to include them too.