Abstract
This study begins a series of articles dealing with antidemocratic coups d’état in Athens in the end of the 5th century BC and their historical significance (after them and as their result, the very character of the Athenian democracy changed). The period in question became in the history of the Athenian polis a time of major instability in internal political life, and the article considers escalation of that instability in the context of the Peloponnesian war. It is usually said that the oligarchic movement in Athens suddenly gained force only after the Sicilian expedition (415–413 BC), which proved to be a full disaster. However, the article demonstrates that, as a matter of fact, oligarchic feelings grew gradually and latently already from the period of the Archidamian war, when for the first time there took shape a trend to the degeneration of Athenian radical democracy to ochlokratia led by demagogues. Unreasoned policies of that regime gave rise to the opposition, which had, in particular, Antiphon as one of its typical representatives.
Keywords
Classical Greece, Athens, oligarchy, democracy, coups d’état, Peloponnesian War, demagogues, Cleon, Thucydides, Antiphon, phoros.
Igor E. Surikov
Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia; Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia
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