chapter 9
...................................................................................................................................................THE POLITICAL
THEORY OF
CLASSICAL GREECE
...................................................................................................................................................jill frank
The classical Greek world diVered greatly from our own. Athens may have
been the birthplace of Western democracy, but it was hospitable to practices
that democracy as we know it resolutely disavows, including the institution of
slavery and the systematic subordination and exclusion of women from
citizenship. Moreover, the classical Greeks expressed their views about dem-
ocracy, and about politics more generally, in poetry, narrative, speeches,
tragedies, comedies, and dialogues. The canon of modern and contemporary
Western political thought, by contrast, is primarily made up of discourses,
treatises, essays, and letters. Despite these and other signiWcant diVerences
and also because of them, contemporary political theorists remain as com-
mitted as ever to studying the classical world. This is in no small part because,
in the words of Bernard Williams, ‘‘our ethical ideas have more in common
with those of the Greeks than is usually believed’’ (Williams 1993 , 11 ). This is
- For their contributions to this chapter, my thanks go to Ryan Balot, Gerald Mara, Patchen
Markell, Allen Miller, and the editors ofThe Oxford Handbook of Political Theory.