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John P. Nordin The Bright Foundation of Liberty Chapter II Our Assembly secured our freedom, not our warriors, and freedom birthed greatness because it bred ideas not conquest, and since these ideas were not our possession but our discovery, it is therefore fitting and worthy for you to study how our Assembly accomplished this so that your city may accept this gift of ideas, a gift we have now rejected. In this day, when my city below Athena’s temple is surrounded by armies whose leaders claim we were only a brutal empire that took what it desired, this narrative will show you how we created democracy and sought truth in all things, teaching cities how they may be free and inspiring those who love wisdom to seek truths beyond our imagining. And now when those who always despised the rule of the people have convinced many that democracy is not the best way of defending a city from attack, this narrative will show you how it was that contentious debate proved our strongest weapon against the unified Persian host. And in future days, when much has been forgotten, then I pray this narrative, by one who lived these years from democracy’s birth through the flowering of great ideas to Hubris’ attack to final destruction, will inspire those who sacrifice at freedom’s temple to know the truth. And the truth is, that though our warriors have been justly celebrated for their honor and their great victories at Marathon and Salamis, it was not our citizens as warriors who won freedom from the Persians and their many allies, but our citizens in assembly near the Acropolis, because it was in these Assembly debates where all citizens could speak and preside and vote that freedom was practiced and experienced and the course set for all our city would dare. In these Assemblies, two divine ideas struggled to come into the world, the first of these is isonomia and the second isogoria. The first declares that laws should be the same for all and the second that all should have a right to speak and be heard. Together, these two, in friendship, grew strong and in time were able to call forth into this world for the first time a city’s most divine idea of all: democracy. This divine idea, that the people should rule, is the only idea that brings freedom to all, for a tyrant is free, but not the people ruled, a victorious army is free, but not the city destroyed. The Persians were thought free to conquer, but the soldiers in its immense army were not free, nor would we have been, had they succeeded. Our freedom enabled us to become great, but our greatness would not have been consistent with the manner of our freedom had it only consisted of power great enough to hurl more people, marble and gold across the world than others could. Even tyrants can claim this sort of greatness. The greatness of Athens lies not in early victories, won against heavy odds and victories later won in power, nor in achievement with wood, marble and words, nor in rare leaders or artisans who rose above the common level. Nor even is it that the great run of citizens approved those things, chose those leaders and nurtured those artisans. Our greatness lies in the great ideas that are embodied in our buildings, our art, our drama, our philosophy and in our politics, and even in the wars that secured our freedom. These ideas are a few words: truth and the pursuit of it, balance and proportion, democracy, the future, the citizen. Yet, what worth treasuring of being human does not flow from these? An idea is immortal to the extent it reflects the divine, and these ideas have nothing to overshadow them. For the great act of bringing these ideas into the daily life of a city we can justly claim immortality for our city, though a time will come when the memory of our lives and the incidents of our history are forgotten, our writings lost and the beautifully shaped marble decayed to dust. Some great things produce admiration or envy, some a feeling of unworthiness in comparison, but the achievements of Athens were not our possessions, but our discovery of what human life could be. Thus, they are your possessions as much as they were ours, and so it is worthy for all wise citizens to diligently make deep and penetrating inquiry into the truth of how this new thing arose, and what makes it strong and what threatens it. It is threatened by many false ideas. Many think this freedom came not from our disorderly debates but from all obediently following great men. And so many would say we should seek the origin of our greatness in the visionary and selfless act of Solon in turning away from power he could have held with the agreement of all, and how he thus set in motion all that followed. Solon should be remembered, remembered for his laws and for his refusal to be a tyrant, and for his refusal to be a tyrant of interpretation. Solon should be honored and Perisistratus and Cleisthenes and Themistocles and Pericles and others before and after. But they were men of skill and ability, and these often, but not always, rise to prominence. It is not a great and new thing for the wise to have a stage upon which to exercise their wisdom. No, it is not that a few gave us freedom or told us how to be free or ordered us to be free. It is not that war won freedom or defended freedom. The shield of our solders at narrow Thermopylae, the keel of our triremes shattering the Persian host at Salamis, the load bearing base of the Acropolis walls was this: we held our Assemblies, and not just in Athens but on the peninsula, ashore at Artemisium, before Salamis and every time a decision of consequence had to be made. And the force propelling the spears, pulling the oars and holding up the stones was that in those assemblies it would often happen that a citizen whose name we do not remember and who some in the assembly did not know, rose and spoke words and put forward an argument while Miltiades or Themistocles listened, and those men of ordinary greatness had to answer this unknown citizen with argument and persuasion and not with bribe and violence. That is divine, immortal, greatness. And that this happened not once, but often, and was thought not a special favor granted to the ordinary by the great, but normal and required: that is greatness upon greatness, for then the great ideas became real in the world and something had changed beyond all anyone could imagine. My words about these Assemblies and this greatness will be mocked, if they are read only in this year when our victories have ended, our prominent citizens display no greatness, our ordinary citizens sell their votes for amusement, the skills of playwrights and sculptures are used for crass things and our buildings lie defenseless to the invader and to the sky. And even our ideas may be mocked by those who point to those things that were part of our society in its time of power, those things mean, unjust, and in contradiction to our ideals. Even more will those mock who observe how we came to use our power not to create more greatness but in quest of more power, and not power to free others from tyranny but simply power for ourselves. But, they who mock only know of the distance between what we dreamed and what we were because we gave them the dream, they only know to discern the darkness that clouded our dazzling light because we opened their eyes, for without our greatness they would have never known we turned back from greatness. We are judged more harshly for lesser failings that others committed more energetically, and the judgment placed on us cannot be dismissed by enumerating the greatness we did achieve or the meanness others failed to rise above. For all our greatness, for all that we saw so clearly, it is nonetheless true that we failed to follow where our clear sight led us. Those who are blind may be forgiven if they do not attempt a journey into unknown territory as they may be justly admired for what small journeys they do accomplish. Those with clear sight, good clothes and ample leisure are not forgiven for turning their back on what they could so easily reach. Even those with such advantages, who journey farther than anyone else, may be reproved for not going still farther when they so easily could have done so. Still, there is the greatness, those ideas living forever, and those Assemblies. I, Philodemos, son of Phillamos, father of Iophon, husband of Corinna, lived these years from invasion to victory to greatness to decline to defeat, and have set this narrative down in order, beginning from the antecedents of these Assemblies and extending to the utter failures of which I spoke, that you, oh excellent reader, might see clearly what you owe to us and might treasure the immortal ideas that are now yours. Hear and judge, then, the greatness and the failure, the events and the people, the causes and the consequences. |