The DDmos in DDmokratia

Abstract

Demokratia is widely glossed ‘rule by the people’ where ‘people’ (demos) is defined as ‘entire citizenry’. Yet from Homer to Aeschylos, demos indicated not the entire citizenry but a part: those who wielded political power through their participation in a collective agent — in the first instance, an assembly — as opposed to those who enjoyed political influence as individuals. First and foremost, demokratia signalled that supreme power had passed to this group, away from the leading men who had previously held sway. The implications for our conceptualization of democracy are profound.