Democracy: a life

Le rabat de la jacquette indique : "Democracy is either aspired to as a goal or cherished as a birthright by billions of people throughout the world today - and has been for over a century. But what does it mean? And how has its meaning changed since it was first coined in ancient Greece? Democracy: A Life is a biography of the concept, looking at its many different manifestations and showing how it has changed over its long life, from ancient times right through to the present. For instance, how did the 'people power' of the Athenians emerge in the first place? Once it had emerged, what enabled it to survive? And how did the Athenian version of democracy differ from the many other forms that developed among the myriad cities of the Greek world? Paul Cartledge answers all these questions and more, following the development of ancient political thinking about democracy from the sixth century BC onwards, not least the many arguments that were advanced against it over the centuries. As Cartledge shows, after a golden age in the fourth century BC, there was a long, slow degradation of the original Greek conception and practice of democracy, from the Hellenistic era, through late Republican and early Imperial Rome, down to early Byzantium in the sixth century CE. For many centuries after that, from late Antiquity, through the Middle Ages, to the Renaissance, democracy was effectively eclipsed by other forms of government, in both theory and practice. But as we know, this was by no means the end of the story. For democracy was eventually to enjoy a re-florescence, over two thousand years after its first flowering in the ancient world: initially revived in seventeenth century England, it was to undergo a further renaissance in the revolutionary climate of late eighteenth century North America and France - and has been constantly reconstituted and reinvented ever since."

Prologue: Lost in Translation? Modern and Contemporary Appropriations of Democracy I -- Sources, Ancient and Modern -- The Emergence of the Polis/Politics/the Political: Modern and Contemporary Appropriations of Democracy II -- The Emergence of Greek Democracy I: Archaic Greece -- The Emergence of Greek Democracy II: Athens 508/7 -- The Emergence of Greek Democracy III: Athens 507-451/0 -- Greek Democratic Theory? -- Athenian Democracy in Practice c. 450-335 -- Athenian Democracy: Culture and Society c. 450-335 -- Greek Democracy in Credit and Crisis I: The Fifth Century -- Athenian Democracy in Court: the Trials of Demos, Socrates, and Ctesiphon -- Greek Democracy in Credit and Crisis II: The Golden Age of Greek Democracy (c. 375-350) and Its Critics -- Athenian Democracy at Work in the 'Age of Lycurgus' -- The Strange Death of Classical Greek Democracy: a Retrospect -- Hellenistic Democracy? Democracy in Deficit c. 323-86 BCE -- The Roman Republic: a sort of Democracy? -- Democracy Denied: the Roman and Early Byzantine Empires -- Democracy Eclipsed: Late Antiquity, the European Middle Ages, and the Renaissance -- Democracy Revived: England in the Seventeenth Century and France i…