Euripides and the Demagogues

Abstract

In a famous passage from his second book, Thucydides sums up Pericles' policy for the conduct of the Peloponnesian War and adds that after his death (2.65.7): … … they [the Athenians] did the opposite of all these things, and did still other things which appeared irrelevant to the war. For the sake of private ambition and private profit they pursued policies which were bad for themselves and for the allies, from which the honour and advantage accrued rather to private individuals when they succeeded, but which when they failed brought damage to the city with regard to the war. (tr. P.J. Rhodes) Going on to say of Pericles' Athens that in what was in theory a democracy, power was in fact in the hands of the first man, Thucydides comments that 'the leaders who followed Pericles were more on a level with one another, and as each strove to become first they tended to abandon affairs to the whims of the people' (2.65.9-10). 2 This remained the familiar picture of the demagogue 3 until the 1960s. Yet as early as 1849 the Victorian banker-cum-historian George Grote, who referred to 'a new class of politicians-Eucratês, the rope-seller-Kleon, the leather-seller-Lysiklês, the sheep-seller-Hyperbolus, the lamp-maker', had mounted a strong defence of Cleon. 4 353 1 I am grateful to P.J. Rhodes for his helpful advice on the so-called demagogues. 2 3 The word is used by Thucydides only at 4.21.3 (of Cleon). He uses 'demagogy' at 8.65.2 (of Androcles). 'Demagogue' is used in what is certainly a derogatory sense by Xenophon at Hell. 5.2.7. Favourable uses are given by J. Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology and the Power of the People (Princeton, 1989), 106-7. For a short summary of the different uses of the word by different authors, see P.J. Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (Oxford, 1993), 323-4. Part of the problem discussed in this article is the exclusively pejorative use of 'demagogue' in English: John Milton referred to the 'affrightment of this Goblin word' in

Greek Tragedy on the Move

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