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4.0 out of 5 starsDemocracy Under Stress
ByRobert L. Piepenbrinkon September 7, 2016
I like it. Clear, simple without talking down, and covers an event not in Thucydides. I'm knocking off one star for being so pro-Athens and pro-Athenian democracy that a few things weren't thought through. A couple of examples:
Lysander was not a "reserve" or an "auxiliary." He was a mothrax--the illegitimate son probably of a helot mother. That is, exactly the sort of person the Athenian democracy barred from citizenship or command. But in Sparta, if you passed the agogae alive and paid your mess dues, you were a Spartan, Likewise it's democratic if Athens makes slaves rowers in the fleet, but evidently not when Sparta frees helots and makes them hoplites.
So too the Athenian empire. Athens was as democratic at home as any city of the period could have been, but the dependence of the governments in Athens' empire on the Athenian fleet and sometimes garrisons makes on think of the Warsaw Pact "people's republics" or the servile "republics" of Revolutionary France. It's a point that needed to be addressed.
But this is still very good writing on an important point in classical history with implications for democracy and constitutional government. Buy it and enjoy.
