Antiquity A Cultural History Of Democracy 1 1st Edition Paul Cartledge by Paul Cartledge, Carol Atack 9781350042728, 1350042722 instant download after payment.

The past is a foreign country. What follows is not or should not be read as a tale of triumph, let alone triumphalism. As a cultural history, this book examines the experience of living in democratic or proto-democratic communities in antiquity, from the early societies of the Middle East to the developed governmental structures of the Roman world, and of participation in democratic elements of societies with mixed forms of government, as well as limits to participation, exclusion of non-citizens, and negotiation of relationships beyond the democratic city. It focuses on the political experiences of cities in the Mediterranean during the period identified as classical antiquity, especially classical Athens with its highly developed democratic culture, although other and later democracies in the Greek and later Roman world play their parts. While the early Christian Church would inspire political reformers in later centuries, beyond the earliest self-organizing religious communities the church did not encourage a turn to democratic culture.
At some times in history, including the long period of over a millennium covered by this volume, democratic features were largely absent from the institutions of empires and even from the local governance of cities, but they still might be found in smaller private organizations such as the clubs, colleges, and societies in which groups arranged aspects of their collective existence. The burial clubs of the household staff of the Roman imperial household, for example, were clearly not part of a democracy at the highest level, but their participatory structures echo the form of democratic institutions familiar from many cities of the ancient Mediterranean. The same can be said for the assemblies of early Mesopotamian societies, long predating the development of democracy in its classical Greek form; we have little knowledge of the qualifications for participation or restrictions on participation in these societies…