the practice of other civic officials who actively and unnecessarily seek
their governor’s involvement, thereby forcing “the governors to be their
masters more than the governors wish” (814e-815a; translation by Oliver
1954, 163). Certainly there are other passages, in which Plutarch laments
the loss of total freedom by the polis,for instance, when he cautions Men-
emachos to beware of the “boots of Roman soldiers just above your head”
(813e). But, shortly thereafter, he advises Menemachos to foster friend-
ships with Roman officials in order to further the welfare of the polis(814d).
Plutarch evidently believed that the continued success of Roman rule was
a consequence of divine providence; to struggle against it was to challenge
the will of the gods. To categorize him as either anti- or pro-Roman, as
Simon Swain points out, is to oversimplify a far more complex picture
(1996, 135–86).
The second main point cited in support of a theory of decline, which
is in need of qualification, is the degree to which the typical polisof the Hel-
lenistic and Roman periods represents the degeneration of an earlier form
of democracy. I have already noted that many scholars uphold an ideal
vision of Athenian democracy, which is shaped by modern values and does
not accurately reflect the reality of the ancient situation. For example, it is
quite common for scholars to stress the increasing importance of the
wealthy in political life, and the emerging dominance of oligarchy in the Hel-
lenistic and Roman eras. Already in classical Athens, however, the wealthy,
rather than average citizens, seem to have been dominant in the important
political positions (Rhodes 1994, 566, 573; cf. A.H.M. Jones 1940, 166–69).
Scholars such as Hansen (cf. Ste. Croix 1981, 284) also question the degree
to which we can speak of ancient democracy in terms of the majority vote
of all citizens when, in fact, the evidence concerning the number of citizens
who could actually attend meetings of the assembly in classical Athens
suggests otherwise (e.g., the seating capacity of the Pnyx accommodated
only one-third to one-quarter of the citizen population in the fourth cen-
turyBCE; see Saxonhouse 1996, 5–6).
Even so, as Rhodes states in reference to Ste. Croix’s theories, “the
failure of democracy would not be the same thing as the failure of the polis,
and it is not obvious that either occurred” (Rhodes 1994, 189n.102). There
is evidence that the assembly of the people could continue to play a signif-
icant role, in the Hellenistic and Roman eras, despite the prominence of the
wealthy in civic affairs. Gruen points to the surviving attendance records
for the Hellenistic era in various cities of Asia Minor and states that, con-
trary to the clichés in scholarship, “popular participation in the Hellenis-
tic city-states did not consist merely in empty slogans, but rather involved
The Declining Polis? 27