Up to this point, my posts have focused on the relationship between governments and their citizens. However, it is important to note that one of the factors that strongly influenced the form of Athenian democracy was the fact that the economy ran on the labor of slaves. Athenian laws and social rules demanded high time investments in governing by the citizenry. This direct democracy would not have been able to function in a non-slaveholding society, as many of these men would have had to spend much of the day working. Later in Athenian democracy, men were paid about half a day's pay for their participation in the government, but on the whole, a direct democracy would prove too expensive without the availability of slave labor.
From a modern persepective, this is one of several reasons why we cannot simply copy the Ancient Greek system as our own system of government. While the largest problem with a direct democracy from an American perspective has more to do with the number of citizens in the country, the lack of institutionalized slavery also contributes to the infeasibility of this system.
Questions for further research:
-How could citizens become slaves or lose citizenship status?
-How could slaves become "free" and what was that freedom worth?
-Did slaves really revolt for the purpose of (re)gaining citizenship status or was it simply an emotional response to poor treatment without this clear and definite goal?
Hi Evan,
ReplyDeleteInteresting questions. Generally, people could not become slaves if they were Athenian citizens, after Solon eliminated debt bondage. However, there was a status of disenfranchisement from citizen rights. This could happen if, for example, one behaved poorly in battle; if one as a male citizen prostituted his own person; if one were married to a non-citizen and produced illegitimate offspring.
In a similar way, in Rome the status of infamia meant a loss of citizen rights.
Of course, there is also the idea of ostracism, temporary exile, and actual exile.
On the other hand, it was common especially in rome to escape from the slave system through manumission. A good question would be how former slaves stood with respect to citizenship in either Greece or Rome.