Athens is famous for its direct democracy and its innovative culture. Not widely known is its contemporaneous military revolution. Athens invented or perfected new forms of combat, strategy and military organisation and was directly responsible for raising the scale of Greek warfare to a different order of magnitude. The timing of this revolution is striking: it followed directly the popular uprising of 508 BC and coincided with the flowering of Athenian culture, which was largely brought about by democracy. This raises the intriguing possibility that popular government was one of the major...
Athens is famous for its direct democracy and its innovative culture. Not widely known is its contemporaneous military revolution. Athens invented or ...
In his On the Glory of Athens, Plutarch complained that the Athenian people spent more on the production of dramatic festivals and "the misfortunes of Medeas and Electras than they did on maintaining their empire and fighting for their liberty against the Persians." This view of the Athenians' misplaced priorities became orthodoxy with the publication of August Bockh's 1817 book Die Staatshaushaltung der AthenerThe Public Economy of Athens], which criticized the classical Athenian dēmos for spending more on festivals than on wars and for levying...
In his On the Glory of Athens, Plutarch complained that the Athenian people spent more on the production of dramatic festivals and "the misf...
