View Content #12007
| Contentid | 12007 |
|---|---|
| Content Type | 1 |
| Title | A Second Look at Ancient Greece |
| Body | From http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/nov/07/ancient-world-greece Greece: Birthplace of the modern world? It had paid-up intellectuals and progressive politics, yet ancient Greece was less civil than we are inclined to remember, says Paul Cartledge November 7, 2010 Democracy, so far from being the ancient Greek norm, was at first a rare and rather fragile plant: only later did it become about as widely distributed as various forms of oligarchy. And only in a few cases – in Athens, above all – was it both deeply rooted and conspicuously radical. At all times and in all places it remained more or less controversial. And there was a good linguistic reason for this. Demokratia was a compound of demos and kratos. But whereas kratos unambiguously meant "grip" or "power", demos could be interpreted to mean either "people" (in a vague sense, as in Abraham Lincoln's famous words at Gettysburg: "government of the people, by the people, for the people") or very specifically "the masses": the poor majority of the enfranchised citizen body (which might range in size from as few as 500, as on the island-state of Melos in the Cyclades, to as many as the 50,000 citizens of democratic Athens). So if you liked demokratia, it could mean People Power, but if you hated it – if, say, you were a member of the wealthy elite – then it could stand for the ancient Greek equivalent of Lenin's dictatorship of the proletariat. Read the full article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/nov/07/ancient-world-greece |
| Source | Guardian |
| Inputdate | 2010-11-10 11:05:53 |
| Lastmodifieddate | 2010-11-10 11:05:53 |
| Expdate | Not set |
| Publishdate | 2010-11-15 00:00:00 |
| Displaydate | Not set |
| Active | 1 |
| Emailed | 1 |
| Isarchived | 1 |
