The role of elites vis-a-vis the mass public in the construction and successful functioning of democracy has long been of central interest to political theorists. In Silence and Democracy, John Zumbrunnen explores this theme in Thucydides' famous history of the Peloponnesian War as a way of focusing our thoughts about this relationship in our own modern democracy.

In Periclean Athens, according to Thucydides, "what was in name a democracy became in actuality rule by the first man." This political transformation of Athenian political life raises the question of how to...