by Ben Potter

July 02, 2025

from ClassicalWisdom Website

It's the old joke:

"politics" is derived from two Greek words. Polis, meaning "the people" and tics...  small creatures that burrow under the skin, suck your blood and make you sick.

I said it was an old joke, not a good joke...

Though we are all aware of the vast debt we owe to the Ancients, when it comes to politics, the ancient world's influence on the modern world is... well, not unacknowledged, but often slightly misdirected.

Instinctively, we tend to doff our collective caps to our Greek, specifically Athenian, forefathers.

This is not without reason:

The idea that ordinary people should have a say in steering the ship of state is front and center of the constitutions of every developed country today.

And it was the Athenians who popularized democracy in the ancient world.

This, combined with the fact that democratic Athens (roughly 508-322 BC) coincided with the golden age of Greek literature, architecture, sculpture and philosophy means that we tend to look upon this era and political system as particularly enlightened.

As for the rest, it's easy to write off,

• the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman divine

• the Spartan military state

• the Roman Republic,

...as exercises in statehood offering little to the modern political world.

But it is here that we make our mistake.

Athens was never really a democracy, at least in the manner any modern (small 'd') democrat would stand with.

One reason is because, from the time of the Macedonian subjugation of Greece (338 BC), Athens was a de facto democratic client-kingdom that could have had its powers stripped by the Macedonians at the drop of a hat.

There were also periods of oligarchic rule that interrupted the democratic idyll - a result of Athenian aggression and capitulation in the Peloponnesian Wars against Sparta.

The disastrous policies reinforce Winston Churchill's famous line:

"the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

Even when Athens was a fully-fledged democratic state with undisputed self-determination, it still only fully enfranchised a fraction of its adult population... notable exclusions being,

women, the young, the ostracized, those who hadn't completed their military service and, of course, millions of slaves...

If we chose to ignore the fact that only a fraction of Athenian homo sapiens could actually cast a vote, the democratic process would still be anathema to modern political thought, because the "one man, one vote" system meant that every piece of Athenian legislation was, effectively a referendum.

An appealing thought... except to those who have participated in a referendum...!

The reality is,

Greek and Roman slavery had a far more enduring legacy in the construction of the modern, political world than Athenian democracy ever had.

The idea that ownership of other human beings was "natural" was so ingrained that even the great, enlightened Plato had very few qualms... and Aristotle positively welcomed it!

But slavery was not, of course, the only political idea planted by the Ancients.

Plato may have been interested to see that some of the more radical ideas he posited in his Republic actually came very near to fruition during the 20^th century's flirtation with communism.

Though numerous communist states have experimented with curtails on property and possessions, it was in Mao's China that ideas similar to Plato's about social communism were actually lived out.

This period, though not quite going to Plato's extreme of dismantling the family unit altogether did,

introduce mass, communal meals, forced people to ask for permission from their work-unit before they could marry or conceive a child, regularly forced families to split up and move to different cities, and punished people for extramarital affairs with loss of jobs and housing.

Despite all this, much like ideas that Plato put forward, Mao's China also saw a simultaneous, relative emancipation of women.

It is reasonable to assume Athenian democracy inspired other modern democracies - even if that inspiration was along the lines of,

"yes, we like this, but it doesn't quite work - what can we do differently?"

It is very unlikely, however, that Greek and Roman slavery or Plato's communist ideas directly inspired their modern equivalents.

But isn't there anything from the ancient political world that has directly influenced the modern?

Well, certainly the Persian idea, adopted by Alexander the Great and in turn appropriated by Roman Emperors (among others) that,

a dictator or king rules by some sort of divine right or is, indeed, himself quasi-divine.

This idea dominated throughout the middle-ages and endures to this day in North Korea...

Additionally, Seneca's ideas in his On Clemency (De Clementia) about a more merciful, benevolent form of dictatorship could be said to have echoes in the premierships of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk of Turkey and Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore.

Then there is the government of the United States, whose formation drew from a number of historical influences.

​​As America's second president, John Adams, put it:

"I wish to assemble together the opinions and reasonings of philosophers, politicians, and historians, who have taken the most extensive views of men and societies, whose characters are deservedly revered, and whose writings were in the contemplation of those who framed the American constitutions.

 

It will not be contested that all these characters are united in Polybius."

This Greek-born, Roman resident, Polybius (200-118 BC) lauded the tripartite Roman system, claiming it was the key for the stability and success of the nation.

In Polybius' eyes, by combining,

the three theoretically sound, but easily corruptible systems of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy,

...Rome became much more than the sum of her parts as each of these acted as complimentary counterweights to the others.

But the ideas of checks and balances and a separation of powers is not all there is to this Roman/U.S. comparison; the direct influence goes much deeper.

It is easy to see the progression of ideas from Polybius' theory, to the institutions at Rome, to those of the United States:

• monarchy = the Roman consuls = the President

• aristocracy = the Roman and American Senates

• democracy = the Assembly = the House of Representatives

Obviously there are both major and minor tweaks to these systems:

Rome had two consuls, America has one president, the Roman Assembly evolved into a chamber specifically designed to cater to the lowest, enfranchised class.

 

The Roman Senate, meanwhile, was run by a bunch of privileged, out of touch elitists who were only interested in maintaining the status quo.

Though this is probably the best and most widely-understood example of connective tissue between ancient and modern politics, there's more.

For example,

and I've done my best to avoid him, but anyone familiar with the divisive, vitriolic, rabble-rousing, Athenian demagogue Cleon may see a parallel or two with talked-about political figures in US politics.

However, I shall leave you with a quote that probably - hopefully - does not make you think about your local mayor or governor or presidential candidate.

It is from Herodotus' Histories:

"The Ethiopians have laws and customs peculiar to themselves, and the strangest is the method they have of choosing as their king the man whom they judge to be tallest, and strong in proportion to his height."

Make the MVP in the NBA playoffs king?

Well...  it's one way to get kids interested in politics...!