The Aftermath of the Persian Invasion of Greece
The following text is primary discussing the changes in Athenian philosophical and political thought after the invasion up until the end of the Peloponnesian war, including the rise of skepticism and the Oligarchical party, and the eventual fall of Athens to Sparta.
From 490 B.C. to 470 B.C., Sparta and Athens joined their forces to fight off the Persians led by Darius and Xerxes (in an effort to make Greece a colony of the Asiatic empire.) During the struggle, Sparta provided the army, while Athens provided the navy. When the war was over, Sparta demobilized her troops are suffered the economic disturbances natural to that process; while Athens turned her navy into a merchant fleet, and became one of the greatest trading cities of the ancient world.
Sparta relapsed into agricultural seclusion and stagnation, while Athens became a busy mart and port, the meeting place of many races of men and of diverse cults and customs, whose contact and rivalry begot comparison, analysis, and thought.
The Rise of Philosophy
"Traditions and dogmas rub one another down to a minimum in such centers of varied intercourse; where there are a thousand faiths we are apt to become skeptical of them all." [1]
Traders may have been the first skeptics; the general disposition of merchants to classify all men all men as either fools or knaves[2] inclined them to question every creed. They are, gradually, developing science; mathematics grew with the increasing complexity of exchange, astronomy with the increasing audacity of navigation.
"The growth of wealth brought the leisure and security, which are the prerequisites of research and speculation; men now asked the stars not only for guidance on the seas but as well as the answer to the riddles of the universe."
"Proud of their achievements, men pushed farther afield after the Persian wars; they took all knowledge for their province, and sought"[3]
At first, this philosophy was (largely) physical; and asked what was the final and irreducible constituent of things. The natural termination of this line of thought was the materialism of Democritus, who believed that in reality there was nothing but atoms and space. This line of thinking passed underground during Plato's time, but emerged in Epicurus, and became a torrent of eloquence in Luceretius.
But the most characteristic and fertile development happened with the Sophists[4] who looked upon their own thought and nature, rather than the world of things. They asked questions about anything; they stood unafraid in the presence of religious of political taboos. In politics, they divided into two schools:
- One argued that nature is good, and civilization is bad[5]; that by nature all men are equal, becoming unequal only by class-made institutions; and that law is an invention of the strong to claim and rule the weak.
- And other school[6] claimed that nature is beyond good and evil; that by nature all men are unequal; that morality is an invention of the weak to limit and deter the strong; that power is the supreme virtue, and that of all forms of government the wisest and most natural is aristocracy.
- I disagree that the wisest and most natural form of government is an aristocracy. I do understand how it is easy to arrive at that conclusion; especially since, in the past, an aristocracy may have, in effect, been similar to a modern day meritocracy, since the rich and powerful were highly educated compared to the common man. Additionally, it is important to note that certain democracies, like the democracy in Athens, were direct democracies, rather than representative - which may have further promoted the idea that giving power to the masses was inefficient and often led to worse actions.
- Durant believes that Nietzsche falls in the second camp; but from my understanding of the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche seemed to distinguish between Master and Slave Morality, and seemed to argue that although earlier societies were dominated by Master Morality, eventually Slave Morality became dominant. [7] In this sense, morality's purpose is to either maintain the status-quo or overthrow it entirely - a thought which I, in part, agree with.
The Fall of Athenian Democracy
This attack on democracy reflected the rise of a wealthy minority at Athens which called itself the Oligarchical Party, which denounced democracy as an incompetent sham.
In a sense there was not much democracy to denounce; for of the 400,000 inhabitants of Athens, 250,000 were slaves, without political rights of any kind; and of the 150,000 freemen or citizens only a small number presented themselves at the Ecclesia, or general assembly, where the policies of the state were discussed and determined. And the highest official body, the Dikasteria, or supreme court, consisted of over a thousand members[8], selected by alphabetical rote from the roll of all the citizens.
"No institution could have been more democratic, nor, said its opponents, more absurd."
During the generation-long Peloponnesian War, in which the military power of Sparta fought and at last defeated the naval power of Athens, the Athenian Oligarchical Party, led by Critias advocated for the abandonment of democracy on the score of its inefficiency in war.
The same Critias was a pupil of Socrates, and an uncle of Plato