Ancient politics: the Agora

[airiefairie]

Comments

[underlankers]

And that's my point: the un-democratic Greek societies also had agorae as it was a part of the institution of the Polis working as intended. Obviously it did not have any direct connection to Athenian Democracy when Sparta and Macedon also had them and it did not lead either in any kind of democratic direction. If there is this direct connection between the Agora and the democracy of Athens, then no form of Greek autocracy could have co-existed with the Agora because it would have been directly influential on the society in question. As the Agora clearly co-existed nicely with slavery and autocratic hereditary monarchy, your premise is invalid and thus the entire post has problems for that reason.

Athenian Democracy to me seems to be derived more on the experience with tyranny, both internal and imposed, and wanting to forestall its recurrence than on a Pan-Hellenistic concept. If the same institution exists in two vastly different societies that go two different routes, attributing its influence to that taken in the one society has to be correlated with why it didn't lead to the same development in the other.

So.....yeah, I'm actually not making a strawman so much as asking why only one Polis went this route when they all had Agorae.

[airiefairie]

Modern dictatorships also have parliaments - doesn't mean the presence of a parliament leads to a dictatorship. And yet, the presence of a parliament is a prerequisite for democracy. That is my point.

It is a strawman, because I never said "Greece was democratic".