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— 127 — “What’s in a name?” Juliet asks. After the changes in nomenclature effected by modern revolutions, from the French Revolution to the feminist movement, it is very clear that the answer is “Plenty, that’s what!” Names do matter: they shape and sometimes distort perceptions. Ho-Chi-Minh City, for example, is not Saigon, Thermidor is not July, and Ms. is neither Mrs. nor Miss. With this in mind, let us approach the terms radical or extreme democracy, so often applied to the regime of fifth or fourth-century B.C. Athens. These terms are justified neither by ancient evidence nor modern scholarship, particularly in light of the modern ideological connotations of radical or extreme. I wish to argue, therefore, that scholars should avoid these terms, as well as the term moderate democracy, which is also misleading, though to a lesser extent. By way of introduction, consider the work of K.J. Beloch. Writing a century ago, Beloch expressed his clear condemnation of Athenian democracy. His despairing rhetorical question about the Athenian dikasteria, of which he writes in Die Attische Politik seit Perikles, indicates his opinion nicely: Would the long series of unjust verdicts, which stretches like a red thread throughout the whole history of Athenian democracy from Pericles to Phokion, have been sufficient to let us recognize what was to be expected from such a tribunal?1 In accordance with these convictions, Beloch writes of Athens’ “extreme, absolute” or “unbridled democracy,” both in the fifth and fourth centuries.2 More recent accounts of Athenian democracy are rarely as stringent in their criticisms, and many of them are laudatory. The terms radical or extreme democracy are, nevertheless, still in circulation. My far-from-complete survey of contemporary scholarship, beginning in the 1950s, finds Hignett devoting a chapter of his History of the Athenian Constitution (1952) to Radical Democracy.
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