The next day, the Athenians who were dissatisfied with the political status quo mobilized to overthrow the regime of the Four Hundred. They first held an assembly in the theater of Dionysos near Mounichia. There is no word on what they discussed there, yet they obviously articulated a consensus and formulated a battle plan. They then marched on the city. The regime members, quickly realizing that they had no chance to defeat such a large number of coordinated men, offered to surrender and turn over control of the city to the Five Thousand. The mobilized hoplites, concerned for the safety of the state (a Spartan fleet was set to sail), agreed to meet in the theater of Dionysos on the south slope of the Acropolis to discuss the restoration of concord (Thuc. 8.93.3). And in a latter assembly meeting, held in the Pnyx, the Four Hundred were formally deposed and the Five Thousand installed (Thuc. 8.97.1).25 Thus, wrote Thucydides (8.98.4), “the oligarchy and stasis came to an end.”
Kuran’s work helps to account for the remarkable series of events described by Thucydides. As noted above, the threshold sequence {1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10}—a sequence that I have suggested might apply (very roughly) to the population in Athens at the time of the coup of the Four Hundred—describes a stable status quo in spite of fairly widespread dissatisfaction with the ruling regime. Suppose, however, that the person represented on the far left of the threshold sequence with the revolutionary threshold of 1 lowered his revolutionary threshold to 0. The cause for that change could be virtually anything: he witnessed a gross injustice carried out by the regime, for example. The population’s threshold sequence would then look like this: {0, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10}. Now that person represented on the far left would not wait for somebody else to “go first” before he publicly displayed his opposition to the regime; he would, instead, act immediately. After he acts, the person represented second from the left will stop falsifying his preference and publicly express his opposition to the regime as well, because his revolutionary threshold has been met. The person represented third from the left will then act, and so on. Thus, using Kuran’s terminology, the first person’s action was a “spark” that ignited a “revolutionary bandwagon.”26
It is reasonable to conclude that the assassination of Phrynichos was the spark that ignited the revolutionary bandwagon that ultimately brought down the regime of the Four Hundred. Before that act, opponents of the Four Hundred, despite the fact that they constituted a majority of the citizen population then in Athens, were handicapped by pluralistic ignorance and thus unable to rise up en masse against their oppressors. But the assassination radically altered the underlying strategic dynamic. Once individual B (with revolutionary threshold of 1) became aware of what individual A (with a revolutionary threshold of 0) had done, and thus knew what he thought, he too aligned his public and private preferences and publicly opposed the regime. Then individual C (with a revolutionary threshold of 2), seeing what individuals A and B did “no longer stays quiet,” but instead joined in the uprising as well. Thus a “knowledge cascade” swept through the Piraeus: the greater the number of individuals who aligned their preferences and acted out publicly against the regime, the more the remaining individuals knew that, despite earlier appearances to the contrary, others opposed the regime and were willing to actively oppose it. In short, pluralistic ignorance was quickly replaced by common knowledge, and that knowledge allowed the supporters of democracy to coordinate their efforts to overthrow the Four Hundred.
This account of the collapse of the Four Hundred places great causal weight on the action of a single individual. The analysis is grounded in a seemingly plausible theory of collective action.27 Nevertheless, one might ask whether or not the Athenians also considered the assassination of Phrynichos to have been such a significant event in the history of their democracy. Two pieces of evidence demonstrate that they did. First, as attested by an extant inscription dated to 409 (ML 85), the dēmos, at the very first Dionysia after the restoration of the democracy, publically honored Phrynichos’s assassins and their accomplices.28 (Significantly, that particular Dionysia is explicitly associated with the oath of Demophantos, discussed below, in which all Athenians swore to kill tyrants and reward tyrant killers.) Second, as is made clear by Lykourgos (Leok. 112–14), the assassination of Phrynichos was still remembered as an important event eighty years after the fall of the Four Hundred.29
The Athenians must have considered themselves fortunate in that Phrynichos was assassinated before the conspirators surrendered the polis to the Spartans. It is impossible, of course, to know what would have happened if the Spartans had actually gained control of the polis in 411, but, according to Thucydides (8.76.7), the Athenian sailors stationed at Samos considered the possibility that they might be forced to abandon Athens and establish a new city. It is thus reasonable to suspect that Athenian democrats, after reclaiming control of the polis, sought to ensure that, if they should be overthrown again, history could be repeated: someone, that is, would “go first,” initiate a revolutionary bandwagon, and thereby enable democrats to coordinate a mobilized response in defense of their democracy. The mechanism by which they hoped to achieve this was the oath of Demophantos.
The Oath of Demophantos
The earliest known piece of legislation promulgated (perhaps in June of 410) by the Athenian dēmos after they regained control of their polis following the coup of the Four Hundred is the decree of Demophantos. Unfortunately, the stone upon which that decree was inscribed has not been found.30 An apparently verbatim quotation, however, is preserved in Andokides’s speech On the Mysteries, which the orator delivered in 399.31
Ἔδοξε τῇ βουλῇ καὶ τῷ δήμῳ· Αἰαντὶς ἐπρυτάνευε, Κλειγένης ἐγραμμάτευε, Βοηθὸς ἐπεστάτει. τάδε Δημόφαντος συνέγραψεν. ἄρχει χρόνος τοῦδε τοῦ ψηφίσματος ἡ βουλὴ οἱ πεντακόσιοι λαχόντες τῷ κυάμῳ, οἷς Κλειγένης πρῶτος ἐγραμμάτευεν. ἐάν τις δημοκρατίαν καταλύῃ τὴν Ἀθήνησιν, ἢ ἀρχήν τινα ἄρχῃ καταλελυμένης τῆς δημοκρατίας, πολέμιος ἔστω Ἀθηναίων καὶ νηποινεὶ τεθνάτω, καὶ τὰ χρήματα αὐτοῦ δημόσια ἔστω, καὶ τῆς θεοῦ τὸ ἐπιδέκατον· ὁ δὲ ἀποκτείνας τὸν ταῦτα ποιήσαντα καὶ ὁ συμβουλεύσας ὅσιος ἔστω καὶ εὐαγής. ὀμόσαι δ᾿Ἀθηναίους ἅπαντας καθ᾿ ἱερῶν τελείων κατὰ φυλὰς καὶ κατὰ δήμους, ἀποκτενεῖν τὸν ταῦτα ποιήσαντα. ὁ δὲ ὅρκος ἔστω ὅδε· “κτενῶ 〈καὶ λόγῳ καὶ ἔργῳ καὶ ψήφῳ καὶ〉 τῇ ἐμαυτοῦ χειρί, ἂν δυνατὸς ὦ, ὃς ἂν καταλύσῃ τὴν δημοκρατίαν τὴν Ἀθήνησι, καὶ ἐάν τις ἄρξῃ τιν᾿ ἀρχὴν καταλελυμένης τῆς δημοκρατίας τὸ λοιπόν, καὶ ἐάν τις τυραννεῖν ἐπαναστῇ ἢ τὸν τύραννον συγκαταστήσῃ. καὶ ἐάν τις ἄλλος ἀποκτείνῃ, ὅσιον αὐτὸν νομιῶ εἶναι καὶ πρὸς θεῶν καὶ δαιμόνων, ὡς πολέμιον κτείναντα τὸν Ἀθηναίων, καὶ τὰ κτήματα τοῦ ἀποθανόντος πάντα ἀποδόμενος ἀποδώσω τὰ ἡμίσεα τῷ ἀποκτείναντι [καὶ λόγῳ καὶ ἔργῳ καὶ ψήφῳ], καὶ οὐκ ἀποστερήσω οὐδέν. ἐὰν δέ τις κτείνων τινὰ τούτων ἀποθάνῃ ἢ ἐπιχειρῶν, εὖ ποιήσω αὐτόν τε καὶ τοὺς παῖδας τοὺς ἐκείνου, καθάπερ Ἁρμόδιόν τε καὶ Ἀριστογείτονα καὶ τοὺς ἀπογόνους αὐτῶν. ὁπόσοι δὲ ὅρκοι ὀμώμονται Ἀθήνησιν ἢ ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ ἢ ἄλλοθί που ἐναν�
�ίοι τῷ δήμῳ τῷ Ἀθηναίων, λύω καὶ ἀφίημι.” ταῦτα δὲ ὀμοσάντων Ἀθηναῖοι πάντες καθ᾿ ἱερῶν τελείων, τὸν νόμιμον ὅρκον, πρὸ Διονυσίων· καὶ ἐπεύχεσθαι εὐορκοῦντι μὲν εἶναι πολλὰ καὶ ἀγαθά, ἐπιορκοῦντι δ᾿ ἐξώλη αὐτὸν εἶναι καὶ γένος.
Resolution of the council and the dēmos. The Aiantis tribe were presidents, Kleigenes was secretary, Boethos was chairman. Demophantos drew up the following proposal. This decree dates from the council of five hundred appointed by lot, for whom Kleigenes was the first secretary. If anyone overthrows the democracy at Athens, or holds any office when the democracy has been overthrown, he shall be an enemy of the Athenians and shall be killed with impunity, and his property shall be confiscated and a tenth part of it devoted to the goddess; and he who kills or helps to plan the killing of such a man shall be pure and free from guilt. All Athenians shall swear over perfect victims by tribes and by demes to kill such a man. The oath shall be as follows: “I shall kill, by word and deed, by vote and by my own hand, if I can, anyone who overthrows the democracy at Athens, and anyone who, when the democracy has been overthrown, holds any office thereafter, and anyone who aims to rule tyrannically or helps to set up the tyrant. And if anyone else kills him, I shall consider that man to be pure in the sight of both gods and spirits, because he has killed an enemy of the Athenians, and I will sell all the property of the dead man and give half to the killer and not keep any back. And if anyone dies while killing or attempting to kill any such man, I shall care both for him and for his children, just as for Harmodios and Aristogeiton and their descendants. And all oaths that have been sworn against the people of Athens, at Athens or on campaigns or anywhere else, I declare null and void.” All Athenians shall swear this oath over perfect victims, in the customary manner, before the Dionysia, and they shall pray that he who keeps his oath may have many blessings, but that for him who breaks it destruction may befall himself and his family.32
There are two parts to this decree. The first part states that anyone who overthrows the democracy at Athens or holds any office while the democracy is overthrown shall be considered to be an enemy of the Athenians and thus may be killed with impunity. It further states that the assassinated person’s property is to be confiscated and that not only the assassin but also anyone who might assist in the assassination shall be deemed pure and guiltless. The second part of the decree contains the text of a loyalty oath that all Athenians were required to swear before the next Dionysia. The oath echoes and amplifies the content of the first part of the decree and concludes with an annulment of all other oaths that individuals may have sworn against the democracy.
Two features of the oath of Demophantos are particularly important to the arguments presented in this section and thus require some discussion. First, the oath taker pledged to kill tyrants and reward tyrant killers. Athenian democrats believed that Harmodios and Aristogeiton, their paradigmatic tyrannicides, had killed a tyrant (Hipparchos) in broad daylight at the Panathenaia and that that assassination, despite the fact that Harmodios and Aristogeiton died, was the founding act of the Athenian democracy.33 It is thus reasonable to suppose that, in the minds of those who swore the oath of Demophantos, an act of tyrannicide had two constituent elements. First, it must be a highly public first strike against a nondemocratic regime. Second, the act must be committed in order to usher in a democratic regime. Tyrannicide was the act of a committed democrat who was unwilling to wait for others to liberate his fellow citizens. A tyrant killer, on his own initiative, “goes first.”34
In recognition of the inherent danger involved in tyrannicide, the oath of Demophantos states that a would-be tyrant killer will be rewarded substantially for his act of individual bravery. Should he survive, he would receive one-half the sale price of the victim’s property. And since the “tyrant” would almost certainly be a member of the economic elite, the monetary reward could be considerable. Perhaps more importantly, he no doubt would be honored as a liberator in his lifetime, and if he should die, he and his children would be treated “just like Harmodios and Aristogeiton and their descendants.” It is not entirely clear what that would have entailed. But, based on what is known about late-fifth-century practice, two things seem likely: a statue of the slain tyrant killer would be erected in the agora and he would be the object of a hero cult,35 and his oldest living descendant would receive sitēsis in the Prytaneion in perpetuity.36 It is also quite likely that, if he had young children, they, like war orphans, would be provided for by the state.37 Whatever the exact contents of the “tyrannicide incentive package,” it clearly represents a serious attempt to alter an individual’s calculus of risk versus reward so as to benefit the democratic collective—in other words, to increase the likelihood that, should the democracy be overthrown, a brave individual would take the risk to go first and “kill a tyrant.”
Figure 1.1. Roman copy of the Kritios and Nesiotes statue group. Photo by permission of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut-Rom.
The second significant feature of the oath of Demophantos is the fact that “all Athenians” were required to swear it. It is well known that the Athenians relied heavily on oaths both in the performance of public, political acts (e.g., serving as archon, a council member, or jury member) and their private, personal interactions (e.g., contracts).38 Andokides (Myst. 9) even went so far as to assert that it was the oath that “alone holds the city together.” The only known possible precedent for all citizens swearing the same oath, however, took place in the early sixth century, when, according to Herodotos, “the Athenians” swore to follow Solon’s laws for ten years.39 But that was nearly two centuries prior to the promulgation of the decree of Demophantos; and it is not entirely clear who would have sworn that oath at such an early date; perhaps only men above a certain property class participated in the ceremony. For all practical purposes, then, the decree of Demophantos appears to have mandated an unprecedented act: that all Athenians, organized according to the Kleisthenic (and therefore democratic) system of tribes and demes, swear the very same oath. The oath would thus have been a significant and highly memorable moment in late-fifth-century Athens.
The discussion of the oath that follows has three parts. In the first, I attempt to reconstruct the oath ritual to the extent possible. The second part draws on the insights of Michael Chwe to demonstrate that, as a result of having sworn the oath, the Athenians generated common knowledge of widespread credible commitment to kill tyrants and reward tyrant killers. In the third part, I argue that the Athenians would have been better able to solve a revolutionary coordination problem and thus mobilize en masse against a nondemocratic regime if such a commitment were in fact common knowledge.
RECONSTRUCTION OF THE OATH RITUAL
The ritual requirements articulated in the decree of Demophantos provide the primary information upon which must rest any reconstruction of the oath ceremony. Two of those requirements are more or less straightforward. First, the decree explicitly states that “all Athenians” (Ἀθηναῖοι πάντες) must swear the oath. As fantastic as it might appear, this must be taken literally: it is stated twice in the decree, one time with the emphatic form of the adjective (ἅπαντας). Second, the oath had to be sworn “over perfect victims” (καθ᾿ ἱερῶν τελείων), that is, over fully grown sacrificial animals.40 The preposition κατά perhaps means that the participants performed some sort of downward motion during the ritual.41
Two other ritual requirements of the decree are ambiguous, but of considerable importance for the reconstruction of the oath ritual. The first is that the oath be taken “by tribes and by demes” (κατὰ φυλὰς καὶ κατὰ δήμους). This does not mean that all Athenians swore the oath twice, once with their tribe and once with their deme. Rather, the members of a given tribe were required to swear the oath together, deme by de
me.42 Thus, for example, when the members of tribe Pandionis swore the oath, it was sworn eleven times—once by the members of each of its eleven demes. The text of the decree does not make clear, however, whether or not the members of all ten tribes swore the oath together and at the same time.
The second ambiguous requirement is that the Athenians swear the oath “before the Dionysia” (πρὸ Διονυσίων). The City Dionysia was held annually in the month of Elaphebolion. The Athenian dēmos promulgated the decree of Demophantos in the month of Hekatombaion, eight months before the festival. The text does not make clear whether the oath had to be sworn more or less immediately before the festival or sometime within the eight-month period between the promulgation of the decree and the beginning of the festival.
It is tempting to suppose that all Athenians swore the oath at the same time, but that is very unlikely.43 It simply would take too much time to do so. There were 139 demes in Athens. If one assumes that it took ten minutes for the members of a deme to make their way to a specified location, organize themselves, and swear the oath, the whole oath ritual, if run without interruptions, would take nearly twenty-four hours to complete. Other objections might also be raised. Even if “all Athenians” could have congregated in one place, for example, the resulting crowd would surely have been chaotic and distracting, and this might have called into question the seriousness of the oath and Athenians’ commitment to it.
Death to Tyrants! Page 5
