Pseudo-Xenophon: The Constitution of the Athenians
10 May 2018 [link youtube]
Melissa going solo on the microphone again. If you want to leave comments for the video, you might as well do it on her channel (instead of mine): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVLWpNJZtA-FHunSIRS5xtw
Youtube Automatic Transcription
so I want to start out this video by
expressing my appreciation for all the positive feedback I got from my first video I is really encouraging to see that so many people have subscribed to my channel and it means a lot that people want to hear what I have to say I realize I'm in a privileged position because I have appeared on my boyfriend's channel and I think most of those subscribers are from his channel but it's cool you know I it means a lot to me that people who watch his channel want to watch mine because those are the kind of people I want to interact with so cool I thought I would read a comment from the video that was posted to my boyfriend's channel that my video but it was posted to his channel so David asked me what's the overall arch of the channel going to be or should I say the theme are you going to adjust these works and then try to relate them to modern times or just looking at them from a historical perspective so I said good questions David the objective of the channel will probably evolve over time but I think the main point of the channel is to keep a record of what's important to me at the time of recording I think the video is discussing the ancient Greek works will entail a bit of both as he says relating them to modern times and also looking at them from a historical perspective I said I want to discuss my impressions of each of the works because I tend to forget a significant percentage of what I read however I do remember a topic butter if I gather my thoughts and explain it to someone else in this case to a general YouTube audience I think I'll still forget a lot of what I'm learning now though so the main reason I hit record is so that I can look back years from now and jog my memory also having it in a video format is easier to store and retrieve than written form easier to find so yeah that's what I said to him and I might make a video going into this in more detail but I hope I didn't give the impression that this channel is only gonna be about ancient Greek literature or about what I'm reading I think that is going to be a significant percentage of it talking about what I'm learning talking about my progression as an intellectual but I think I will have more informal videos I will have more personal videos too so that's that alright on to the first work that I want to discuss [Music] the first work I want to discuss is the constitution of the Athenians by pseudos on a fun it's called pseudos on a faun to disambiguate him from Xenophon the historian he is also called zeniff on the order and the old oligarch the reason for the last nickname the old Hildegard is because he is in favor of oligarchy he thinks it's the most excellent system of government as opposed to democracy which he is reviewing he is reviewing the democracy in Athens in this work so by the title the constitution of the Athenians I initially expected it to be a more government type document like the United States Constitution however it's not that it is a treatise it which is a formal work that deals with a subject systematically in this case the subjects that it discusses is the Athenian democracy but it doesn't just talk about the system of government it talks about everyday life there it talks about the festivals it talks about the social attitudes it talks about the military the Empire etc so the actual the actual text is only eleven pages long in the book that I'm reading but the surrounding section of the book is 45 pages long so most of what I read is like commentary introduction outline for the text itself but the text is only 11 pages long it's brief but it's dense there's a lot to reflect upon so that's what I'm hoping to talk about here to talk about my first impressions I'm not an expert so these are just what this is just what I'm thinking of when I first read it there are some topics in the constitution of the Athenians that I think I can only talk about from an historical standpoint such as the festivals and the military it is interesting to look at these topics in the lens of the general cultural deterioration that occurred afterwards in Europe it's interesting to reflect upon what aspects of Greek civilization made it so culturally vibrant compared to the centuries and centuries afterwards and the Dark Ages in Europe the author brushes off the festivals as being a waste of time being a waste of resources he complains that the festivals interfere with the running of the state I think that it must have been a huge part of why Athens was such a center of civilization why it was so culturally vibrant and why was more culturally vibrant than the Dark Ages a big part of it was the festivals I also think it must be noted that the Greek temples at the time were beautiful and when I saw the Acropolis I remember it being very beautiful I remember seeing the Parthenon at the top of the Athenian Acropolis I was 10 years old so I couldn't really appreciate the cultural the historical importance of the Acropolis but it's the only thing I remember from being in Athens for one day at 10 years old it's the only thing I remember and it must have made life more enjoyable for people in Athens it must have led to this flourishing of culture so the other topic that I can only talk about from an historical standpoint is the military so at the time the Athenians were the rulers of the sea and because of this they had many advantages in trade they had many advantages in warfare I say that I can only talk about this historically because trying to relate it to modern times is kind of tricky technology and industry has really revolutionized warfare since the introduction of gunpowder to Europe in the 13th century it's really you can't compete with gunpowder a fleet of rowers can't compete with gunpowder especially they can't compete with the later forms of warfare such as chemical warfare and nuclear warfare so from this from from that I can only relate to it historically but it is sad to look back on it and real that you know I just said that gunpowder was introduced to Europe in the 13th century well this is for 400 BC so for years and years I really you know I'm not an expert on military I'm not an expert on the subject but it is interesting to note that warfare didn't change that much for centuries for thousands of years and also horrifying is that Christopher Columbus actually use like geographical knowledge from ancient Greece can you imagine using maps from a thousand years ago to sail the ocean it's ridiculous I mean it really is ridiculous and makes you question what happened what made civilization deteriorate so so much compared to ancient Greece and also I thought it was interesting to learn about how piratical ancient Greece was in the ancient world in general really relied on piracy so people you know literally having their own private ships capturing enemy ships and then keeping the loot for themselves this was commonplace this was part of how the ancient world ran so it is quite a striking contrast reading these reading these philosophers talking about government talking about all different subjects and knowing that even though there was democracy in Athens many Athenians were pirates so hmm and also while I was reading this I really questioned like doesn't imperialism clash with democracy that the Athenian Empire had many people as its subjects because of their role to see they were able to have whole island nations under their subjugation they were able to have cities under their subjugation and suitors on a farm use it as pretty predatory and I agree I think it was predatory I'm I'm anti imperialist and it doesn't take much imagine a magic to think that if the subjects had to come to Athens for legal proceedings they wouldn't get a fair trial they'd be at the mercy of the Athenians and they'd have to act accordingly hum so to me that is a negative of the Athenian Empire and it makes me really question can democracy exist alongside Empire obviously it did at this time but yeah so it is a question and however I am conflicted to because the subject states many of them that the Athenians were in control of had oligarchy before the Athenians took power so they routed out oligarchy and replaced it with democracy in many of these subjects cities and also in any subject cities where there was civil strife going on where there was class warfare going on the Athenians supported the lower classes as an you know they didn't support the the oligarchs they didn't support the elite so I am conflicted because the Athenians seemed to bring about more democracy in ancient Greece but they also had many subjects city as many subjects States so that's my impression of the military and festivals so those aspects I can only look back on historically and I don't really know if I can relate them to modern times but still I think it's interesting to document my impressions document my reflections it only takes a bit of google searching to read about the athenian democracy but i thought i wouldn't record my impressions here of just how amazing it was to learn about it so certain offices were elected by lottery which was amazing when i first learned about it there was a council of over 500 citizens elected by lottery and these council members they would be elected and serve a term for only one year which that was also amazing to me because i come from america where congressman can stay in office for like basically for life Supreme Court justices can stay on the Supreme Court until they die you know like many positions in America are kept for years and years and so knowing that in ancient Greece people only kept their positions for 1 years pretty pretty interesting to reflect upon and it must have had a different dynamic and also as soon as I know fond talks about how there they were they were paid so each councilmen was paid but it was only because they would be taken away from whatever employment employment they had so it's not like there was an incentive to be a council member because you would get money from the state it was like because you were a council member you would get paid for the time that you weren't at your normal job so that is different the incentive was different and the incentive really just seemed to be involvement in civic life so anyway all right so there was a popular assembly which was open to all male citizens and in this assembly all male citizens could have their voices heard has to be pointed out that the assembly was only male citizens so no women no slaves and no people who weren't actually citizens of Athens which kind of makes sense to me but yeah so it's not really representative of everybody in Athens and so you know it was fairly representative but it has to be pointed out that minorities were not taken into account and the assembly was responsible for declaring war it's responsible for military strategy and electing military and other officials so yeah this this is true not all positions were elected by lottery there were some positions that they recognized you had to have some special expertise in so military officials were elected by this assembly but they were not chosen by lottery a typical meeting which was held one to four times a month would contain about 6000 people out of a population of 30 to 60 thousand so again I know it's not really representative of everybody but 6,000 out of 60,000 people is still a good amount of people and I really do you think that you couldn't get a representation of the city from that number of people I mean if you think about it now what if 6000 people in the city that you're living in showed up to City Council don't you think that people's voices would be heard don't you think that you'd get a general opinion of what the city thought from 6,000 people I mean I do so after having learned more about the details of Athenian democracy and being impressed with the system I wondered why don't more countries today imitate the Athenian form of government why aren't there any true democracies today today there are oligarchies there are thinly veiled dictatorships say they aren't dictatorships but really they are because they don't have free and open elections and then there are just straight-up dictatorships why don't more countries imitate Athenian democracy I was just in China and in China there has never been an election never been an election so they are not democratic whatsoever and right now today the Communist Party is in charge of all major policy decisions and I just recently visited Thailand where everybody is under the control of a military dictatorship now when I visited these places they were quite pleasant things weren't falling apart but obviously there was a shadow hanging over everything because I knew that the citizens don't really have Liberty and they don't really have justice and growing up in America I would I would recite the Pledge of Allegiance every morning I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all so in that I knew that what was the best way to go is to have liberty and justice for all but I wasn't paying attention to the most important part of that which is that I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic so I didn't actually grow up in a democracy even though I was told from a young the democracy is important I didn't really grow up in a democracy the founding fathers had high hopes for the country but they didn't want it to be a democracy they were critical of democracy they considered democracy to be mob rule so they set it up as a republic a republic where the people would elect citizens to represent them in government and these representatives were supposed to listen to the citizens and make laws under the the expectation that they would represent the people I know that the founders couldn't have foreseen the problems that came with the system of government and you know I I'm sympathetic but it must be pointed out there are many flaws in the American political system it's not a good system of government there are many issues that need to be resolved and it makes me wonder what if we were living in a democracy today would things be better I grew up in Detroit where the system of government was obviously a republic but it didn't help the city from crumbling it became riddled with crime it bankrupted itself and the system of government utterly failed its citizens the elected officials were corrupt even the school board officials were corrupt and I have to wonder if there had been a different system of government would people have been more accountable couldn't changes in this city have been dealt with in a better way so you know it is it is really important to think about it and it is you know fundamental to our future fundamental to the future of society what form of government is best what can we do to improve the form of government that is currently in effect so I do remote like I do wonder what countries could become I wonder about the future of Education I wonder about the future of health care about the future of war about the future of social services and I wonder if things could be better if we had an assembly if we had a Council of people that were elected that only served one year terms if we had an assembly where people could have their voices heard if people can make their arguments in front of a group of competent council members wouldn't we be better off so yeah I really do find this to be very important to talk about and I'm really glad that I read this because I'm really getting a lot of value out of this works but in particular like just thinking about the actual system of government and how can we improve our current systems of government I sympathize with suit of pseudos on a fun when he's critical of democracy he says that the Athenian system benefited the common people but he characterizes the common people as ignorant and bad he says that it's easier to get away with being wicked under a democracy than under an oligarchy and I totally sympathize with him and I do often wonder do people really have the ability to not devolve into mob rule if we were to give them tamaak recei I I care about the future of veganism in particular and I do wonder about whether having a different system of government if that would lead to more or less veganism because in the system of government currently in effect in America you don't need a majority of people to be in favor of a law for it to be passed and if we're ever going to be able to get the dairy and egg industry propaganda out of schools which system of government would be better to accomplish that democracy or a republic like is currently in effect in America I know it's a pipe dream but if we had a democracy and if everybody in the country had to vote should we close factory farms I think it's fairly obvious that the majority of people would vote no keep the factory farms so I mean maybe I'd be surprised but I don't think that's the case the majority of people continue to eat meat every day and I think even with a well informed opinion most people would vote no we should keep the factory farms in effect so I do sympathise with su design upon here and I am inclined to think that the masses really are wicked that the masses are ignorant and bad and that maybe a republic is a better form of government maybe this is a better way to make sure that the minority is representative sorry that the minority is representative in government so those are my impressions from the Constitution of the Athenians next I'm going to talk about Sena funds politi eight of the spartans and maybe contrast how the system of government in Sparta was different from the systemö government and in Athens so stay tuned [Applause]
expressing my appreciation for all the positive feedback I got from my first video I is really encouraging to see that so many people have subscribed to my channel and it means a lot that people want to hear what I have to say I realize I'm in a privileged position because I have appeared on my boyfriend's channel and I think most of those subscribers are from his channel but it's cool you know I it means a lot to me that people who watch his channel want to watch mine because those are the kind of people I want to interact with so cool I thought I would read a comment from the video that was posted to my boyfriend's channel that my video but it was posted to his channel so David asked me what's the overall arch of the channel going to be or should I say the theme are you going to adjust these works and then try to relate them to modern times or just looking at them from a historical perspective so I said good questions David the objective of the channel will probably evolve over time but I think the main point of the channel is to keep a record of what's important to me at the time of recording I think the video is discussing the ancient Greek works will entail a bit of both as he says relating them to modern times and also looking at them from a historical perspective I said I want to discuss my impressions of each of the works because I tend to forget a significant percentage of what I read however I do remember a topic butter if I gather my thoughts and explain it to someone else in this case to a general YouTube audience I think I'll still forget a lot of what I'm learning now though so the main reason I hit record is so that I can look back years from now and jog my memory also having it in a video format is easier to store and retrieve than written form easier to find so yeah that's what I said to him and I might make a video going into this in more detail but I hope I didn't give the impression that this channel is only gonna be about ancient Greek literature or about what I'm reading I think that is going to be a significant percentage of it talking about what I'm learning talking about my progression as an intellectual but I think I will have more informal videos I will have more personal videos too so that's that alright on to the first work that I want to discuss [Music] the first work I want to discuss is the constitution of the Athenians by pseudos on a fun it's called pseudos on a faun to disambiguate him from Xenophon the historian he is also called zeniff on the order and the old oligarch the reason for the last nickname the old Hildegard is because he is in favor of oligarchy he thinks it's the most excellent system of government as opposed to democracy which he is reviewing he is reviewing the democracy in Athens in this work so by the title the constitution of the Athenians I initially expected it to be a more government type document like the United States Constitution however it's not that it is a treatise it which is a formal work that deals with a subject systematically in this case the subjects that it discusses is the Athenian democracy but it doesn't just talk about the system of government it talks about everyday life there it talks about the festivals it talks about the social attitudes it talks about the military the Empire etc so the actual the actual text is only eleven pages long in the book that I'm reading but the surrounding section of the book is 45 pages long so most of what I read is like commentary introduction outline for the text itself but the text is only 11 pages long it's brief but it's dense there's a lot to reflect upon so that's what I'm hoping to talk about here to talk about my first impressions I'm not an expert so these are just what this is just what I'm thinking of when I first read it there are some topics in the constitution of the Athenians that I think I can only talk about from an historical standpoint such as the festivals and the military it is interesting to look at these topics in the lens of the general cultural deterioration that occurred afterwards in Europe it's interesting to reflect upon what aspects of Greek civilization made it so culturally vibrant compared to the centuries and centuries afterwards and the Dark Ages in Europe the author brushes off the festivals as being a waste of time being a waste of resources he complains that the festivals interfere with the running of the state I think that it must have been a huge part of why Athens was such a center of civilization why it was so culturally vibrant and why was more culturally vibrant than the Dark Ages a big part of it was the festivals I also think it must be noted that the Greek temples at the time were beautiful and when I saw the Acropolis I remember it being very beautiful I remember seeing the Parthenon at the top of the Athenian Acropolis I was 10 years old so I couldn't really appreciate the cultural the historical importance of the Acropolis but it's the only thing I remember from being in Athens for one day at 10 years old it's the only thing I remember and it must have made life more enjoyable for people in Athens it must have led to this flourishing of culture so the other topic that I can only talk about from an historical standpoint is the military so at the time the Athenians were the rulers of the sea and because of this they had many advantages in trade they had many advantages in warfare I say that I can only talk about this historically because trying to relate it to modern times is kind of tricky technology and industry has really revolutionized warfare since the introduction of gunpowder to Europe in the 13th century it's really you can't compete with gunpowder a fleet of rowers can't compete with gunpowder especially they can't compete with the later forms of warfare such as chemical warfare and nuclear warfare so from this from from that I can only relate to it historically but it is sad to look back on it and real that you know I just said that gunpowder was introduced to Europe in the 13th century well this is for 400 BC so for years and years I really you know I'm not an expert on military I'm not an expert on the subject but it is interesting to note that warfare didn't change that much for centuries for thousands of years and also horrifying is that Christopher Columbus actually use like geographical knowledge from ancient Greece can you imagine using maps from a thousand years ago to sail the ocean it's ridiculous I mean it really is ridiculous and makes you question what happened what made civilization deteriorate so so much compared to ancient Greece and also I thought it was interesting to learn about how piratical ancient Greece was in the ancient world in general really relied on piracy so people you know literally having their own private ships capturing enemy ships and then keeping the loot for themselves this was commonplace this was part of how the ancient world ran so it is quite a striking contrast reading these reading these philosophers talking about government talking about all different subjects and knowing that even though there was democracy in Athens many Athenians were pirates so hmm and also while I was reading this I really questioned like doesn't imperialism clash with democracy that the Athenian Empire had many people as its subjects because of their role to see they were able to have whole island nations under their subjugation they were able to have cities under their subjugation and suitors on a farm use it as pretty predatory and I agree I think it was predatory I'm I'm anti imperialist and it doesn't take much imagine a magic to think that if the subjects had to come to Athens for legal proceedings they wouldn't get a fair trial they'd be at the mercy of the Athenians and they'd have to act accordingly hum so to me that is a negative of the Athenian Empire and it makes me really question can democracy exist alongside Empire obviously it did at this time but yeah so it is a question and however I am conflicted to because the subject states many of them that the Athenians were in control of had oligarchy before the Athenians took power so they routed out oligarchy and replaced it with democracy in many of these subjects cities and also in any subject cities where there was civil strife going on where there was class warfare going on the Athenians supported the lower classes as an you know they didn't support the the oligarchs they didn't support the elite so I am conflicted because the Athenians seemed to bring about more democracy in ancient Greece but they also had many subjects city as many subjects States so that's my impression of the military and festivals so those aspects I can only look back on historically and I don't really know if I can relate them to modern times but still I think it's interesting to document my impressions document my reflections it only takes a bit of google searching to read about the athenian democracy but i thought i wouldn't record my impressions here of just how amazing it was to learn about it so certain offices were elected by lottery which was amazing when i first learned about it there was a council of over 500 citizens elected by lottery and these council members they would be elected and serve a term for only one year which that was also amazing to me because i come from america where congressman can stay in office for like basically for life Supreme Court justices can stay on the Supreme Court until they die you know like many positions in America are kept for years and years and so knowing that in ancient Greece people only kept their positions for 1 years pretty pretty interesting to reflect upon and it must have had a different dynamic and also as soon as I know fond talks about how there they were they were paid so each councilmen was paid but it was only because they would be taken away from whatever employment employment they had so it's not like there was an incentive to be a council member because you would get money from the state it was like because you were a council member you would get paid for the time that you weren't at your normal job so that is different the incentive was different and the incentive really just seemed to be involvement in civic life so anyway all right so there was a popular assembly which was open to all male citizens and in this assembly all male citizens could have their voices heard has to be pointed out that the assembly was only male citizens so no women no slaves and no people who weren't actually citizens of Athens which kind of makes sense to me but yeah so it's not really representative of everybody in Athens and so you know it was fairly representative but it has to be pointed out that minorities were not taken into account and the assembly was responsible for declaring war it's responsible for military strategy and electing military and other officials so yeah this this is true not all positions were elected by lottery there were some positions that they recognized you had to have some special expertise in so military officials were elected by this assembly but they were not chosen by lottery a typical meeting which was held one to four times a month would contain about 6000 people out of a population of 30 to 60 thousand so again I know it's not really representative of everybody but 6,000 out of 60,000 people is still a good amount of people and I really do you think that you couldn't get a representation of the city from that number of people I mean if you think about it now what if 6000 people in the city that you're living in showed up to City Council don't you think that people's voices would be heard don't you think that you'd get a general opinion of what the city thought from 6,000 people I mean I do so after having learned more about the details of Athenian democracy and being impressed with the system I wondered why don't more countries today imitate the Athenian form of government why aren't there any true democracies today today there are oligarchies there are thinly veiled dictatorships say they aren't dictatorships but really they are because they don't have free and open elections and then there are just straight-up dictatorships why don't more countries imitate Athenian democracy I was just in China and in China there has never been an election never been an election so they are not democratic whatsoever and right now today the Communist Party is in charge of all major policy decisions and I just recently visited Thailand where everybody is under the control of a military dictatorship now when I visited these places they were quite pleasant things weren't falling apart but obviously there was a shadow hanging over everything because I knew that the citizens don't really have Liberty and they don't really have justice and growing up in America I would I would recite the Pledge of Allegiance every morning I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all so in that I knew that what was the best way to go is to have liberty and justice for all but I wasn't paying attention to the most important part of that which is that I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic so I didn't actually grow up in a democracy even though I was told from a young the democracy is important I didn't really grow up in a democracy the founding fathers had high hopes for the country but they didn't want it to be a democracy they were critical of democracy they considered democracy to be mob rule so they set it up as a republic a republic where the people would elect citizens to represent them in government and these representatives were supposed to listen to the citizens and make laws under the the expectation that they would represent the people I know that the founders couldn't have foreseen the problems that came with the system of government and you know I I'm sympathetic but it must be pointed out there are many flaws in the American political system it's not a good system of government there are many issues that need to be resolved and it makes me wonder what if we were living in a democracy today would things be better I grew up in Detroit where the system of government was obviously a republic but it didn't help the city from crumbling it became riddled with crime it bankrupted itself and the system of government utterly failed its citizens the elected officials were corrupt even the school board officials were corrupt and I have to wonder if there had been a different system of government would people have been more accountable couldn't changes in this city have been dealt with in a better way so you know it is it is really important to think about it and it is you know fundamental to our future fundamental to the future of society what form of government is best what can we do to improve the form of government that is currently in effect so I do remote like I do wonder what countries could become I wonder about the future of Education I wonder about the future of health care about the future of war about the future of social services and I wonder if things could be better if we had an assembly if we had a Council of people that were elected that only served one year terms if we had an assembly where people could have their voices heard if people can make their arguments in front of a group of competent council members wouldn't we be better off so yeah I really do find this to be very important to talk about and I'm really glad that I read this because I'm really getting a lot of value out of this works but in particular like just thinking about the actual system of government and how can we improve our current systems of government I sympathize with suit of pseudos on a fun when he's critical of democracy he says that the Athenian system benefited the common people but he characterizes the common people as ignorant and bad he says that it's easier to get away with being wicked under a democracy than under an oligarchy and I totally sympathize with him and I do often wonder do people really have the ability to not devolve into mob rule if we were to give them tamaak recei I I care about the future of veganism in particular and I do wonder about whether having a different system of government if that would lead to more or less veganism because in the system of government currently in effect in America you don't need a majority of people to be in favor of a law for it to be passed and if we're ever going to be able to get the dairy and egg industry propaganda out of schools which system of government would be better to accomplish that democracy or a republic like is currently in effect in America I know it's a pipe dream but if we had a democracy and if everybody in the country had to vote should we close factory farms I think it's fairly obvious that the majority of people would vote no keep the factory farms so I mean maybe I'd be surprised but I don't think that's the case the majority of people continue to eat meat every day and I think even with a well informed opinion most people would vote no we should keep the factory farms in effect so I do sympathise with su design upon here and I am inclined to think that the masses really are wicked that the masses are ignorant and bad and that maybe a republic is a better form of government maybe this is a better way to make sure that the minority is representative sorry that the minority is representative in government so those are my impressions from the Constitution of the Athenians next I'm going to talk about Sena funds politi eight of the spartans and maybe contrast how the system of government in Sparta was different from the systemö government and in Athens so stay tuned [Applause]