Athens

One rather hopes the assisted dying bill will be talked out in the House of Lords. We have no say on matters of government policy, sovereignty, international law (and much else). But this bill is far too controversial, and personally significant, for MPs alone to adjudge. We need a touch of democratic Athens, whose citizens determined all political and legal outcomes. Citizen arbitration was used to settle most cases. Take Neaira. Not an Athenian, she had been trafficked from birth, but saving what money she earned, she eventually bought her freedom, with help from a large sum donated by the Athenian Phrynion. But she tired of him touting her around

Since, in the absence of border posts, people in the ancient world could come and go at will, refugees and asylum seekers were as common as they are now. But then the notion of ‘citizenship’ came into play. Roman plebs were indeed proud to be citizens, but the ruling oligarchic elite, intent on expanding Rome’s control over land and people (the ancients’ sole resources, bestowing power and wealth), were reluctant to give them any political say. Democratic Athens, however, took citizenship very seriously. All males with Athenian parents, and aged 18 or above, met weekly in assembly to take all political decisions by majority vote. The idea that any Tom,

Riots are difficult enough for us to deal with, let alone for the ancients, who had neither police nor prisons; and only late on housed troops in cities. Since Athenian citizens – the poor – made all political decisions, and the state and the rich funded them, there was little for them to riot about. The two riots organised by oligarchs to destroy democracy failed. But in republican Rome, political tensions between the rich and the poor could produce serious rioting, often designed to disrupt the voting. Tiberius Gracchus’ Bill (132 bc) forbade anyone from owning more than 120 hectares of public land (50 soccer pitches), the excess being distributed

Arguments about the purpose or indeed very existence of anything resembling the House of Lords would have struck classical democratic Athenians as bizarre. But its Areopagus might prompt thought. This body had been in existence long before Cleisthenes invented radical democracy in 508 bc. It was made up of the wealthy aristocratic elite from whom alone the main state officials (archons) could be drawn. Their term of office completed, they joined the Areopagus for life. This body was the state’s legal guardian. The democratic reformer Solon (594 bc) slightly broadened its membership, and removed some of its political powers. Cleisthenes, whose reforms turned the Athenian people meeting in assembly into

The plague that struck Athens in the summer of 430 bc was a killer: it lasted for two years, returned after a year, and carried off a third of Athens’ manpower, including Pericles. From the historian Thucydides’ famous description, the plague — he caught it but recovered — bore certain resemblances to Covid-19 (allowing for differences in severity), but also invites reflection. He is the first Greek to mention two common illness-related phenomena: contagion — he says that, because of their exposure, there was a high death-rate among doctors and among those with the courage and sense of duty to try to care for the sick — and some immunity

An impeachment trial is overseen by Congress and Senate, who both make the law and (in this case) sit in judgment on it, ignoring the modern legal principle of the separation of powers. Athenians would have been shocked, not because they believed in the separation of powers (their citizens too made the law in assembly and sat in judgment in the law courts) but because in democratic Athens it was citizens that decided verdicts, and in randomly selected and therefore unpredictable juries. By contrast, two elected oligarchic cabals decide impeachment trials, usually making acquittal a foregone conclusion. Athenians would have been appalled: what was even remotely democratic about that? Statistics