Fifth-Century Athens: Despotic, Democratic, or Both?
By Arthur Li

In the Greek tragedian Aeschylus’ 472 BC play The Persians, the Persian queen Atossa asks, “Who is set over [the Athenians] as shepherd and is master of their host?” The chorus resonates, “Of no man are they called the slaves or vassals” (Aeschylus, Persians, 241-42). Indeed, the Greeks’—and in particular, Athens’—victories over Persia at the battles of Plataea and Mykale seven years earlier had marked a paradigm shift in their conceptions of eleutheria—freedom. Prior to the Persian Wars, freedom referred merely to the status of people not enslaved; afterwards, to the status of entire city-states devoid of foreign influence and domination…