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I.E. Surikov (Moscow) – From the History of Athenian Oligarchic Coups d’État of Late 5th Century BC. II. Demagogues and Their Antagonists in the 410s BC

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Abstract

This study continues a series of articles dealing with antidemocratic coups d’état in Athens in the end of the 5th century B.C. and their historical significance. It is well-known that the camp of Athenian oligarchs in the period of the Peloponnesian War was extremely heterogeneous, which does not further its cohesion. The article poses a question whether the opposite camp, represented by demagogues, was notable for its uniformity and makes a conclusion that the answer to this question should be rather negative. According to the popular opinion, all demagogues were like Cleon, who was in 420s B.C. the most vivid specimen of such a type of politician. However, already demagogues of 410s NC, as the article demonstrates on prosopographical data, had a number of diff erences from their predecessors (almost there were also features of similarity between them). The demagogue of the new type is not, as a rule, a nouveau riche parvenu; he belongs to more respectable circle and may be even connected with aristocracy, albeit not of the highest level. He, unlike a Cleon, almost never aims at being and general and distinguishing himself on the military field; his native milieu is the judicial sphere. Courts in the “era of the ochlokratia” frequently became a means of squaring of political accounts. It was demagogues who were initiators of such a development; but their opponents adopted the same methods, what is especially manifest on the example of Antiphon.

Keywords

Classical Greece, Athens, oligarchy, democracy, coups d’état, Peloponnesian War, demagogues, Antiphon, Philinus, court trials.

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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