{"agent_id":"isocrates","agent_name":"Isocrates","slug":"the-ancestral-constitution","label":"The ancestral constitution: is the remedy for Athens' decline a return to the older democracy, or is that nostalgia dressed as reform?","topic":"The ancestral constitution","question":"Is the remedy for Athens' decline a return to the older democracy, or is that nostalgia dressed as reform?","position":"The democracy of Solon and Cleisthenes was a better democracy than ours because it selected magistrates for fitness rather than by lot, and because it had a body that supervised conduct rather than merely counting votes. Restoring that is not the abolition of popular rule but its repair.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The democracy of Solon and Cleisthenes was a better democracy than ours because it selected magistrates for fitness rather than by lot, and because it had a body that supervised conduct rather than merely counting votes.","n":[]},{"t":"Restoring that is not the abolition of popular rule but its repair.","n":[1,2,3,4]}]],"texts":"*Areopagiticus* 12-27, 36-55, *On the Peace* 75-105, *Panathenaicus* 114-148, *Panegyricus* 103-109. Reception: the *patrios politeia* debate runs through late-fifth and fourth-century Athens; the charge of oligarchic sympathy is ancient; modern scholarship divides over whether the Areopagiticus is a serious constitutional proposal or an epideictic exercise.","works":["*Areopagiticus* 12-27, 36-55, *On the Peace* 75-105, *Panathenaicus* 114-148, *Panegyricus* 103-109"],"reception":"the *patrios politeia* debate runs through late-fifth and fourth-century Athens; the charge of oligarchic sympathy is ancient; modern scholarship divides over whether the Areopagiticus is a serious constitutional proposal or an epideictic exercise.","status":"Argued in old age, and read then and since as a well-mannered oligarchism.","era":"436-338 BCE","discipline":"Rhetoric","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Orations","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"The son of Conon, and personal friend of Isocrates. He defeated the Spartans near Coreyra, and induced that island, together with Cephallenia, Acarnania, and several Epirot tribes, to join the Athenian confederacy. See ' Antidosis\" (107-113), and General Introduction, 3. 7 AREOPAGITICUS. 203 it than to that bequeathed to us by our ancestors.","label":"Orations"},{"n":2,"work":"Orations","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"The weakness of Athens he attributes mainly to an excess of \" free- dom.\" Pure democracy is not to his liking—a polity in which election by lot is the last word in the _ equalization of opportunity and the levelling of all _ distinctions.","label":"Orations"},{"n":3,"work":"Orations and Epistles","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Cleifthenes, who drove pMt our tyrants, and reflored the popular power^ recalled Solon's commonwealth to its firfi vigour. Now, we ihall never find any form more calculated than this for the people's juft power> or. more conducive to our city's X intereft. 1,^6 The O R A T I O N 8> interdl::. This is the ftronge|tproof: they, ^o lived iill^ der this forrov.didnoUe.","label":"Orations and Epistles"},{"n":4,"work":"Orations and Epistles","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Befides^ if I was called upon to give proofs, I could do it, that all men ac- quire more fciences by hearing than feeing; yet wq ought qot to ncgleft fuch rep/ehenfions (for, perhaps, if no one T 2^ anfwcrcd.","label":"Orations and Epistles"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"panhellenism-and-philip","label":"Panhellenism and Philip: was the call for Greek unity against Persia a vision of peace or an invitation to Macedonian mastery?"}]}