Periclean Democracy

Not to be overlooked, however, is that lurking in the shadows of this rosy image of Ancient Greece was a massive slave population, wholly devoid of citizenship in the city-state and therefore, lacking any political rights at all. It would be folly to suggest that Periclean democracy was not founded upon, or could have existed without slavery. Such a statement would be akin to the suggestion that modern American political society does not depend upon the existence of the dollar, or that the Native Americans could have done without the buffalo. As such, it is entirely accurate to observe that without slavery, Periclean democracy could simply not have been.

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ct, of course, was in many respects not to become a slave, as the constantly warring Greek city-states did nothing to procure a stable balance of power in the Aegean. As a result, it was not unheard of for an entire city-state to find itself in chains. In this, it was thought a better fate (for some) to be enslaved than to be butchered and left for dead. The point, however, is a simple one: slavery was a fact of life in Periclean Athens, and this enduring fact was instrumental in building a strong economy. But how instrumental? True, Periclean democracy utilized its slave population to achieve impressive economic ends, but to what extent were these slaves really necessary? According to most, the booming Athenian economy under Periclean democracy was near-fully dependent upon slave labor. As David Stockton writes in The Classical Athenian Democracy, the casual observer of Ancient Greece must be wary of becoming too "'starry eyed' about her democracy," for, it must be noted that: "It was onlyà [a] large servile work-force which made it possible for even the less well-off citizens to devote so much time to public business, or for the city itself to call on so many of those citizens to serve in the military and naval operati
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Approximate Word count = 2592
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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