An original feature of Athenian democracy was to give prominence to the poor in political life. I analyze here the place they had in representations of democracy, mainly on the basis of three texts : praise and criticism of that political system in Herodotus’ narrative (3.80-82), a speech to the glory of Athens made by Pericles in Thucydides’ history (2.37-41) and the antidemocratic pamphlet attributed to Xenophon (Constitution of the Athenians). What emerges is that the more one is hostile to democracy, the more one speaks of the poor. Pseudo-Xenophon begins a tradition which denounces democracy as a system which ensures the immoral domination of the rich by the poor. Although it has a well-attested filiation in the political philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, this view remained a marginal one in Athenian society. As for the official and popular democratic conception, it does not depict the system as exclusively favouring the poor. It avoids any idea of social antagonism, so as to depict the civic body as a harmonious unit, which helped strengthen its cohesion.
We undertake to study the development of the Persian decadence myth. The image of the decadent king was based upon a specific ruler, Artaxerxes II, who was said by his brother and rival Cyrus the Younger to be the opposite of the ideal Achaemenid king. The mercenaries who had served Cyrus played a part in conveying this image to the Greek world. It was at first used by Athenian rhetors and philosophers, who changed its meaning. Greek accounts on Persia played only a minor part at the beginning, but their interpretation was later influenced by Athenian views.
Ctésias has long been considered in his Persica as having alternatively plagiarized Herodotus and arbitrarily deformed this model without relying on any local sources. But, even if Herodotus was an important model and polemic played an undeniable role, Ctesias had oriental sources and often echoed local traditions which competed with those collected by Herodotus. So, the Cnidian historian gives evidence of the altering of history either by the Persian court or by the diverse local traditions within the Empire.
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