constituted and empowered to interpret law, evidence, custom and notions ofjustice in whatever way they felt fair. Yet courts were called only as a last resort in resolving a conflict: prosecutors were fined if unsuccessful, cutting down on unnecessary legal proceedings, and the overwhelming social preference was settlement through informal mediation or sometimes arbitration. Citizens over sixty years old were expected to make themselves available to anyone needing mediation. Citizens over sixty years old were expected to be available to anyone needing mediation. At every turn we see Athenians resisting state structure. They considered the maintenance of standing armies in times of peace a waste of the individual. In the end, however, they maintained a small empire, in part because of the employment opportunities its navy offered some of its poorer citizens. This was something of a circular trap they inherited: the poor could find few other jobs mostly because of the import of slaves captured in imperial looting. Even within their empire the Athenians tried to convert others to a direct democratic model of government, and in most subject cities they counted on the support of the poor and the hostility of the rich. They were well aware that their social and political achievements were unique - the theme runs through the best of Greek drama. But their ideas of progress and empire were not boundless. For example, unlike many later empires they were acutely aware of the limited ability of their local ecology to sustain them. Athens was the political center of a rural region, more like a modem county than a city, with most of its wealthiest and poorest citizens living directly off the land. Since the citizens of Athens were overwhelmingly agriculturalists, it should not be surprising that self-reliance was the mark of success in this city. In fact, those who did not grow their own food were considered politically suspect - how could they form an independent judgement if they were not independent in life? Because many of those who were not independent were urban manual workers, this thinking is often misinterpreted as some general Greek disparagement of work, brought on by the over-dependence on slave labor. It was instead a disparagement of producers totally dependent on buyers, and of employee-employer dependent relationships. Most wealthy and poor citizens worked very hard for themselves and for the community. The community was of course not always united and cooperative. The Greeks were keenly aware of the battle between rich and poor. The rich often put up much money to hold festivals, developing a patron-client relationship in city and countryside. This largesse was encouraged, and its influence held in check, by Athens' diverse political body. Although it never developed the level of urban democracy Athens did, Rome experienced a warping of a similar patron-client relationship, one which took political power away from the poor and accountability away from the rich, a consequence of self-sustaining wars. This is the urban political atmosphere that spawned the gratuitous destruction and enslavement of Carthage, leading to a burden on Rome's poor and an attempt by the Gracchi brothers to relieve it. Reforming the Republic Roman tombstones always list the state offices held by the deceased during their lives, and classical Athenian tombstones never do. The rich in the city of Rome aspired to the bureaucracy, to powerful official positions that emerged from centuries of military growth. A magistrate’s imperium, with its root sense of command, allowed him to place arbitrary punishments on the populace without appeal. This is a very long way from Athenian direct democracy. In Rome the Republic held assemblies, but there was little discussion of issues. The existence of the assembly merely maintained a fiction of popular power. Citizens could only vote on legislation and candidates presented to them through the senate. The assembly became just another arena for political maneuvering among a corrupt elite, of a kind we are very familiar with today. Senators were the senior members ofthe ruling class in Rome at the time of the Gracchi, whose rule came from centuries ofmilitary expansion. From the Altar-base of Domitius Ahenobarbus: taking the census, early 1st. c. B.C. Rain Winter/Spring 1992 Volume XIV, Number 2 Page 35
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz