The race for the Republican presidential nomination has provided pundits with ample opportunity to claim that we have reached an all-time low in terms of fractiousness, divisiveness and vulgarity.
Not so. A quick look to the Classical world lays to rest such a naive assumption.
Politics under any system of government is always a dirty business. But the Athenian political system is tied particularly closely to our own because it was – I’m tempted to say first and foremost – a spectator sport. Much of the time, meetings of the Athenian Assembly resembled an explosive televised debate, as politicians vied with each other in what was often the equivalent of a popularity contest.
We’re lucky to know so much about the workings of Athenian democracy in large part due to the writings of Athenian historian Thucydides. In the course of narrating the history of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides incorporated many pairs of speeches arguing opposing points of view that reveal how politicians sought to put down, outmaneuver and even humiliate their rivals.
Any student of Greek history, like me, cannot but admire the historian’s unparalleled understanding of the invisible web that every ambitious, skillful and ruthless politician must weave around his audience. Since there was no party system and no elected politicians either, every day in Athens was like being on the campaign trail. As a result, Athens provides a striking parallel to this year’s seemingly endless presidential primary season.
Just as the campaign trail ideally suits Trump, it was a world ideally suited to a young statesman named Alcibiades. Alcibiades was an Athenian billionaire with a larger-than-life personality to go with it. One of his biographers wrote:
Such was his charisma that even those who feared him or were jealous of him fell victim to his charms.
Like Trump, Alcibiades knew that the more he courted controversy, the more he would grab the limelight – and the more people would listen to him when he spoke up in the Athenian Assembly, where the important issues of the day were decided by majority vote.
