Thucydides and the Heroic Democracy

FAIN: FEL-273574-21

Mark Fisher
Georgetown University (Washington, DC 20057-0001)

Research and writing leading to a book on the ancient Greek historian Thucydides (c.460 BC - c.400 BC) and his understanding of Athenian democracy. 

This book project offers a fundamental reinterpretation of Thucydides’ analysis of Athenian democracy. Drawing upon literary, epigraphic, and visual evidence to contextualize Thucydides’ account, I show that he advanced an understanding of dêmokratia that was substantively different from later definitions of “democracy.” Paradoxical though it seems, he impressed upon his reader the need to analyze Athenian democracy as a form of autocratic rule, not as an inherently egalitarian regime. In doing so, I show, Thucydides reinvented the traditional ideology of heroic kingship, utilizing explanatory tools from Greek science to produce an account of a heroic democracy that was at once proto-social scientific and indebted to tragic myth. Recognition of this project redefines our understanding of Thucydidean thought and suggests an understanding of “democracy” that challenges present orthodoxy in both democratic theory and intellectual history.