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After the beginning of the nineteenth century, English translations of Greek literature constituted a prototypical expression of the duality of the discourses of modem bourgeois

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societies, in the sense that they oscillated between authoritarian social ideals and the convictions o f an enlightened and liberal politics.

The first translation of Thucydides’ History during this period was written by S. T. Bloomfield in 1829. Unlike both Hobbes and Smith, the translator was not overtly hostile to democratic politics. He rather presented his work as an endorsement of the political mixture o f aristocracy and democracy achieved by the British constitution. His translation, as he stated, aimed

to illustrate the evils o f unbalanced democracy, and to show the necessity of that happily-

attempted mixture o f aristocracy and democracy, which however might float in the

imaginations of ancient theorists, was never actually embodied, but in the British

Constitution (1829: vi).

From this perspective, Bloomfield rewrote Pericles’ definition o f democracy as follows:

From the government being administered, not for the few , but for the many [our institution] is denominated a democracy (ibid. 366-7).

The rendering of the ‘many’ by the term ‘multitude’ (suggested by Hobbes) is missing from this translation and will not appear again in translations o f the passage. What is more, Bloomfield did not describe democracy as a government which has regard for the many as much as the few or makes political decisions in accordance with the interests of the society as a whole (as had been suggested by Smith’s translation). In his work, a democratic government is claimed to be administered not for the few, but for the many. That is to say, democracy is not only posited in a social context in which the aims of the few are opposed to those of the many, but also seeks to prioritise the latter over the former.

Bloomfield’s emphasis on this opposition, which played a less crucial role in translations written during the previous centuries, expresses a significant change in European conceptions of society and politics, which was crystallised in the British context after the French Revolution. Before 1789, British intellectuals and political theorists were able to perceive of and represent their immediate reality of social conflict (as Hobbes most evidently did in the Leviathan), but nevertheless believed that it would be possible to resolve this conflict by moderate reforms, which would establish a political alliance between the aristocracy and the middle classes without being threatening to the existing status quo. The outbreak of the revolution, the September massacres of 1792, the execution of Louis XVI in 1793 and the images of the Terror dispersed this idea.159 Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, conceptions of democracy indicated an understanding of Western societies as

159 For a further discussion of the impact o f the French revolution on British scholarly and literary circles see Dawson 1993: 50-53.

fragmented and divided; as structured on the basis of conflictual rather than harmonious and reconcilable interests. By that moment, it had become evident that the goals o f the many in modem bourgeois societies could not easily accord with the goals o f the few.

This realisation did not, however, entail an immediate endorsement o f democratic ideas. Quite the contrary; the more the ‘many’ seemed to claim social recognition and power, the stronger the negations of a fully developed democracy became.k,u Hence, Bloomfield’s translation o f Thucydides not only repeated the distinction between the government and the governed that was established by Hobbes’ and Smith’s works; it further denied that classical Athens was really a democratic polity. The translation of the passage in question was then further qualified by a footnote, which suggested that Pericles’ description “might be a good definition o f the Athenian government as far as it was supposed to be”. Yet the Athenian polity was only “a democracy in name”, Broomfield pointed out. “In fact” it was “a modification o f aristocracy called elective monarchy” (ibid.: 367).160 161

As the century progressed, the fear o f the people and of revolution became weaker. While this fear did not vanish before the end of the century, as Eric Hobsbawm has argued, it was recognised already before the 1850s that liberal democracy, whose political form would be a parliamentary constitution based on a wide suffrage, was “inevitable, but also that it would probably be a nuisance but politically harmless” (1975: 15). In this context, Bloomfield’s dispute of the Athenian polity was not repeated until the end o f the century. Instead, classical democracy became the central reference of liberal and utilitarian thinkers, in whose writings the Athenian society was transformed from an object of fear and denial into a model for imitation.

This turn was substantially advanced by a significant publication on the History o f Greece, written by George Grote over a period of ten years, from 1846 to 1856. Grote’s History had an unprecedented success in the British and European intellectual circles, and was quickly recognised as a major contribution to both classical scholarship and the fostering of democratic ideals (Cf. Momigliano 1952: 13; Turner 1981: 213-214).162 In this work, Grote not only presented extensive translated passages in order to sustain his appraisal of democratic Athens; he also employed translation in the formation of his historical vocabulary,

160 It is not a coincidence that this period witnesses the coinage of terms which indicate the fear o f the ‘mob’, such as mobocracy. Cf. OED s.v. ‘mobocracy’.

161 A similar idea is presented in T. Mitchell’s introduction to his translation o f the Comedies o f Aristophanes Mitchell presents his translations as a testimony o f the dangers of democratic politics, against which one should juxtapose, in his view, “a constitution so nicely balanced as our own”, which carefully avoids “any exclusive view of politics” and prevents social conflicts and divisions (1820: xii-xiii).

and described, for example, Pericles as the “prime minister” of the Athenian Assembly, and the Athenian politics as defined by the oppositions among the “conservative party” and the party o f “reformers” (1846-561; 1888: 4. 454). As a result, the Athenian democracy was perceived as a mirror-image of English society and politics, it lost previous connotations of anarchy and injustice, and provided, as Turner suggested, frequent occasion for political narcissism (1981: 234).

Grote’s History became so influential at the time that after the middle of the nineteenth century most portrayals of classical Athens were inclined to employ a vocabulary that assimilated the classical to the modem world and viewed Athens as the infant stage of nineteenth-century civil culture and liberal politics. As James Talboys Wheeler wrote in 1855, Athens represents the history of

a richly endowed people, learning the arts o f self-government and free inquiry with the rapidity o f an infant prodigy, and springing in a little more than a century from the depths of ignorance and political degradation to the loftiest heights o f intellectual greatness and constitutional freedom (1855, 1: 247-248)

John Stuart Mill wrote two eulogising reviews of Grote’s History, both of which fostered an association between the modem world and the Athenian democracy. In the first of these works, Mill stated that the roots of modem European nations do not lie with their natural ancestors, but with the Greeks: the “originators of political freedom and the grand exemplars and sources o f it to modem Europe”. The battle of Marathon, he argued, “even as an event in English history is more important than the battle of Hastings” (18461; 1978: 273).163 Athens came to be seen as both a cultural and political model for British society. What is more, these two aspects of the Athenian society, i.e. culture and politics, were for the first time understood as closely interrelated. Democracy was conceived o f as the basis of classical civilisation, while the latter was described as the natural outcome o f democratic politics: the progress o f Athens in the arts, sciences and philosophy, as Mill argued, had been shown by Grote to be the result of the Athenian democratic polity, which established “liberty” and “the unimpeded authority of law” (1 8 5 3 1 9 7 8 : 316).

But what did democracy mean for these writers? And how did translations of ancient Greek texts serve to sustain its meaning? Mill’s appraisal of Athens in the above reviews was justified by the quotation o f a further translation o f Thucydides (ibid.: 317-319), which had 162

162 Grote himself was actively involved in nineteenth-century politics and became a member of the House of Commons in 1833, as part o f the circle o f the philosophic radicals which included Jeremy Bentham, James and John Stuart Mill On this issue see Hamburger’s Intellectuals in Politics (1965) and Clarke 1962.

been made by Grote himself and had been included in his History o f Greece. This work defined democracy as follows:

It [our constitution] is called a democracy, since its (>ermanent aim tends towards the Many

and not towards the lew (1846-561; 1888:5. 67 my italics)

The translation transforms the original phrase “xal Svopa gev 6 ta to gr| ic. dkiyonc &X.X’ ¿c tiXeiovac; olxelv 6i]g o x eau a xixkt)Tai” into the rather vague assertion that democracy is a form of government whose “permanent aim tends towards the Many and not towards the Few”. This means that it differs from Hobbes’ work, since it recognises the majority as the "aim” of democratic government, while Hobbes restricted democratic processes to a government’s ‘consideration’ of the needs of the multitude. Yet it also follows its predecessors, by suggesting that this ‘aim ’ would not be sought by the ‘many’, but by an institution that is strictly separated from the social body of citizens, i.e. the government.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, Henry Dale wrote a similar translation of the source text:

In name, from its not being administered for the benefit o f the tew, but o f the many, it [our form o f government] is called a democracy (1848 112).

Dale’s work introduced into this definition the notion o f ‘benefit’, which had been more implied than said in all of the previous translations, and suggested that democracy’s aim must serve the benefit of the many. Still it continued to set up a distinction between the ‘many’, who do not actively pursue this benefit, and the government itself. In a partial translation of Pericles’ speech, Ernest Jones followed Dale’s rendering of the passage, without, however, acknowledging his source (1867*; 1885: 47). Subsequently, Richard Crawley’s translation defined the Athenian polity as founded on a government "whose administration ...favours the many instead o f the few” (1876:1.121).

Neither the source text nor the history of classical Athens could justify such a division between the few and the many The Athenian democracy was administered on the basis o f direct participation of citizens in the Assembly, which decided on all significant political issues, from legislation to finance and military matters. In the context of the Assembly, the Athenian citizens (i.e male and Athenian bom adults over the age o f 20) were considered as moral and political equals and were all responsible for the government of the city. It follows that in the source context the concept o f democracy conveyed the idea o f direct, free and equal participation of all citizens in the institution o f public affairs.IM This meaning was not

IM This point does not imply that classical democracy was not formed on the basis o f an exclusionist politics The many’ in classical Athens were still the ‘minority’ o f the population o f the city, since women and slaves were deprived of any political rights Slaves were not ‘citizens’, while Athenian free women were regarded as ‘citizens’ only in order to legitimate the recognition o f their citizen-sons, and had no right to participate in politics These

reproduced in the translations. From Hobbes’ to Crawley’s works, democracy was represented as a form of political organisation by which the majorities are governed in a way that takes into consideration or prioritises their interests, but do not themselves acquire political power

After the first decades of the nineteenth century this transformation did not, however, entail a negation of the value or existence of the Athenian democracy. It rather crystallised a significant change of the meaning of the concept, which brought about the identification o f classical democracy with the principles of liberal democratic politics. What this transformation implied was that democracy was dissociated at once from the idea of social equality and the notion of popular political power. The key concept that defined its meaning became individual liberty: the freedom to participate in elections and articulate political opinions publicly, as well as the liberty to pursue one’s goals and secure one’s rights in the context of civil society. These forms o f liberty were described by Crawley’s introduction to his translation as the main features of the Athenian democracy. As he stated, the reader of his work could find in the presentation of Athens “the political freedom which he glories in, and the social liberty which he sometimes sighs for” (1876: 1. xi, my italics). Equality became thereby understood as electoral equality (political freedom) and equality of opportunity (social liberty): the right of all people to compete over the attainment of social status, political power or economic growth, irrespective of their initial social position or rank. As Mill put it in theoretical terms in his “Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform”,

In a democracy there is no contended poverty. No one being forced to remain poor; many who were poor daily becoming rich, and the comforts of life being apparently within the reach o f all, the desire to appropriate them descends to the very lowest rank (18591, 1875:

53).

Democracy, in other words, was defined as the political system which secures the conditions for social mobility and imposes no apparent obstacles to people’s desire to appropriate goods, reach higher social positions or attain political power. This system was not incompatible with poverty itself and the existence of social and political divisions. Mill only opposes “forced” poverty: the restriction of the right to seek individual advancement and profit. The establishment o f this social and material freedom, as Arthur Partridge pointed out in his work

exclusions notwithstanding, the Athenian Assembly, to which Pericles refers in Thucydides’ text, was indeed the key political body o f Athens and was responsible for the government of the city. For a further discussion o f citizenship' and ‘participation’ in classical Athens see Sinclair 1988: 24-135 An historical approach to the Athenian democracy which focuses on the institutional and social conditions that enabled the establishment o f democratic polity can be found in Davies I9781; 1993: 87-116; Stockton 1990: 57-116; 165-188, and Glotz 1929: 117-263. For a social history of classical democracy see Croix 1981: 3-30; 205-326; Jones 1957: 3-20, and Anderson P 1974: 29-44 For a discussion o f the ideological aspects of ancient democratic thought see Boegehold and Scafuro 1994 For a discussion o f the social and political status o f women in classical Athens see

On Democracy (published one year before the Second Reform Act) stands as the foundation of democratic equality in modem societies:

Material freedom means also equality It means freedom to get, to spend and to save wealth In other words, freedom o f trade, direct taxation, and economical and honest government All three are inextricably bound together as a free system (1866: 349).

It was precisely this understanding o f democracy that enabled Grote to state in his translation that the Athenian city did not bestow political and constitutional power on the people, but enabled social advancement and chose only those citizens o f “real worth” as governors. As the source text reads:

... piTEOTi 6b x a ra pbv robe vopouc npdc

sb

t5ia bidqopa :uSoi t6 faov, x a t a 6e tqv cb; Exaatog £v rip Eiiboxipei oOx (mbpbpov; to xXbov ¿5 ta x o iv a f) (m'

dpETtl5 npotipfiTai (II. xxxvii).

Grote translated the passage as follows:

As to private matters and disputes, the laws deal equally with every man, while in regard to public affairs and to claims o f individual influence, every m an's chance o f advancement is determined not by party favour hut by real worth, according as his reputation stands in his own particular department (1846-561; 1888:5 67 my italics).165

The translation maintained the meaning o f the first phrase of the passage, which refers to the equality of citizens before the laws as regards private disputes. The rest o f the passage was substantially transformed by the employment of the concept of "individual influence”, which is absent from the source text, and the use o f the phrase “every man’s chance of advancement is determined ... by real worth ...”, which rewrote the source-text idea that every man’s chance of attaining a position of political responsibility is determined by his ability to perform the particular task. Both of these choices stem from an understanding of democracy that pertains more to nineteenth-century liberal convictions than to classical political institutions. For the Athenians, to be in positions of political responsibility was not equivalent to the idea of personal advancement or influence. The members of the Athenian Voule, a body o f five hundred citizens who were responsible for the administration o f issues that were not discussed in the Ecclessia, were elected by lot. Their position was considered as predominantly administrative, had a relatively low salary and did not entail the attainment of political power, since all important decisions on public matters had to be endorsed by the Ecclisia. Participation in the supreme court of justice, the Heliaia was open to every

Pomeroy 1975: 57-119, and Walker 1983 For the development o f democratic politics after the fifth century sec Hansen 1991, For a comparison between ancient and modem democracies see Finley 19731; 1985

165 Compare to: “When it is a question o f putting one person before another in positions o f public responsibility, what counts is not membership o f a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses” (Warner 1954'; 1972: 145)

Athenian citizen over the age of thirty. The Ecclesia had the absolute right to force citizens to leave public positions, i f they were deemed to be unfit for their responsibilities. What is more, no citizen had the right to attain a position in the public administration more than once or - in the case of participants in the Voule - twice in his lifetime. This law prohibited the

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