Bad Citizens in a Democracy

The Athenian experiment gives us hope

It was wartime, and the assembly of citizens was scheduled to meet that day to discuss their city’s future. And so one citizen dutifully made the hours-long trek from his farm in the countryside into the city for the assembly. But when he arrived he was surprised to find himself the only one there on time. Bitterly he wondered if the only thing his fellow citizens cared about was entertainment—more people after all show up to see the latest play than to vote or discuss public business.

Speaking from the Athenian stage in 425 BCE six years into the Peloponnesian War, so bitterly divisive both at home and all over the Greek-speaking world, this farmer-turned-critic of the democracy was Dicaeopolis, the fictional protagonist of Aristophanes’ comedy The Acharnians. Frustrated with the incompetence of the democracy in making productive decisions that would swiftly conclude the war, Dicaeopolis arranged his own personal peace treaty with Sparta, effectively declaring his farm Switzerland. The play concludes with the contrast between the joyful celebrations at Dicaeopolis’ farm and the continued war for the rest of the Athenians. 

Strikingly, Dicaeopolis’ words and actions seemed to resonate with the Athenian democratic audiences, who awarded the play first prize in that year’s Lenaia festival. And this approval is one with which we can perhaps identify. Faced with internal divisions and political strife at home and abroad, it seems easier—at least at an emotional level—to try and ignore it all by creating a safe, personal bubble. A figurative secession from the democracy, if not a literal one, is easy to achieve. Just take a break from the news and the doom-scrolling. Or skip voting—no perfect candidate on the ballot anyway, and the government just seems so untrustworthy. But is this good for us? And more importantly what are the consequences for a democracy of having uninformed, utterly disengaged citizens? 

Almost a century later in 338 BCE Philip of Macedon defeated the combined Greek armies at the battle of Chaeronea, a decisive victory that ultimately resulted in the consolidation of the hitherto independent Greek city-states into a large kingdom under Philip’s hegemony. One regular Athenian citizen, alarmed over this outcome, decided to skip town—just as Athens was issuing an emergency decree enlisting all citizens to military service. He loaded his ships with essentials (including his mistress) and quietly absconded overnight for a leisurely tour of the Greek isles. 

Leocrates was by all accounts a nobody—albeit a reasonably wealthy nobody. And so he clearly thought that no one had been paying attention to his actions when in 331 BCE, once Athens seemed stable under new management, he returned to the city as though nothing happened. He miscalculated, however. The following year the prominent statesman and orator Lycurgus brought a lawsuit against him for treason in abandoning the Athenian democracy at its time of direst need. And in his powerful speech, one of the greatest classical Greek arguments for patriotism in a democracy, Lycurgus describes Leocrates’ decision to run away as follows:

“And so he disappeared, a deserter, untouched by pity for the city’s harbors from which he was putting out to sea, and unashamed in face of the walls which, for his own part, he left undefended. Looking back at the Acropolis and the temple of Zeus the Savior and Athena the Protectress, which he had betrayed, he had no fear . . . ” (Against Leocrates, 1.17). 

Lycurgus spared no argument in building his case against Leocrates. At the end, however, Leocrates narrowly escaped conviction—the jury of several hundred citizens voted in a tie, acquitting him. It appears that while some Athenians were outraged at Leocrates’ betrayal of his duties as a citizen, just as many could perhaps identify with his decision to put his own interests first at a time of crisis. And this tension should feel familiar.

Like us, the citizens of Greek city-states lived with an awareness of a tension of loyalties. On the one hand, the sheer survival of the state depended on each citizen’s willingness to place the well-being of the democracy first at least sometimes. On the other, each citizen really valued his own interests and especially his own life and that of his family. Few wanted to die for their state, except maybe the Spartans who reportedly marched into battle singing songs about how great and honorable such a death in the front line was. Gruesome refrains about gloriously pouring out one’s blood and guts gladly on behalf of the fatherland were commonplace. But the Spartans were the odd ducks of the Greek-speaking world. Living in a repressive and overly-regulated oligarchic state, they were hardly realistic role models of democratic citizenship. 

And so living with that tension of loyalties between self and state, the Athenians seem to have valued their democracy and felt proud of it. The historian Thucydides reports the Athenian statesman Pericles’ Funeral Oration, delivered at the funeral for the war-dead in the winter of 429 BCE after the first year of the Peloponnesian War. Pericles’ speech gives us a powerful picture of Athenian civic pride, emphasizing both the power of the laws in maintaining order and the importance of respecting individual freedoms: 

Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life.

This all sounds grand. But what then do we make of individuals like Dicaeopolis or Leocrates? Their stories are in fact part of a much larger pattern. Taken together they provide key glimpses of the sizeable underbelly of the Athenian democracy. Just how common were selfish citizens? 

Sixteen years ago in his intriguing book The Bad Citizen in Classical Athens, Matthew Christ made a compelling argument that such “bad citizens” were shockingly commonplace. The democracy of Pericles was filled with ordinary citizens who valued the city’s government but could not be bothered to vote or come to assemblies; citizens who appreciated having recourse to the law courts when wronged but who did everything they possibly could to get out of jury-duty; citizens who benefited from the protection that Athens’ military afforded but did their best to shirk the draft or deserted on campaign when drafted. It is no wonder that “shield-thrower” became a popular insult. Put simply, the evidence suggests that we are dealing with a democracy that was filled with citizens who were deeply selfish, corrupt, and uncaring. Sound familiar?

Our democracy has been under extreme threat over the past couple of years, as the unfolding investigation of the events of January 6, 2021 underscores. Such threats emphasize the importance of engaged citizens, ones who are willing to put the interests of others at least sometimes ahead of their own. Yes, our democracy is filled with terrible citizens—ones who are, as Tracy McKenzie has argued, deeply fallen! Nevertheless, the Athenian experiment gives us hope that even terrible citizens can keep a democracy alive and somewhat well for a long time. As the Athenians found, so long as we remain engaged there’s hope : the possibility of discovering ways to keep “going on together.”

Nadya Williams is Professor of Ancient History at the University of West Georgia. She is a Contributing Editor for Current.