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  • Polis and Revolution: Responding to Oligarchy in Classical Athens by Julia L. Shear
  • Harvey Yunis
Julia L. Shear . Polis and Revolution: Responding to Oligarchy in Classical Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xv, 368. $99.00. ISBN 978-0-521-76044-7.

This book concerns the aftermath of the two brief, violent periods of oligarchical rule and democratic restoration in Athens towards the end of the fifth century B.C.E. Unlike most books and articles on the subject, it is not primarily concerned with the political processes and legal adjustments that restored and to some extent reformed Athens' democratic government. For example, Shear adds little to existing scholarship on the practical, judicial import of the injunction "not to recall past wrongs" (if that is what μὴ μνησικακεῖν indeed means) that was included in the reconciliation agreement of 403. Rather, when the Athenian demos returned to power, how did they attempt to restore civic unity in the face of deep, violent divisions? How did they restore public belief in the inviolability of democracy and the unacceptability of all forms of oligarchy?

To answer these questions, Shear focuses mostly on two kinds of evidence. First, there are events—such as the oath of loyalty to the democracy included in Demophantus' decree of 410, and the assembly that immediately followed the sacrifice to Athena on 12 Boedromion 403 (marking the returning democrats' victory)—that would have fostered democratic unity and in addition created enduring public memories thereof. Shear emphasizes the solemnity of the mass oath-taking ceremony prescribed by Demophantus' decree, in which the entire citizen body, arrayed by tribe and deme, were to swear the oath in close proximity to sacrificial victims. She contends that the emotive effects on average citizens created by the original ceremony and its public memorialization in the erected decree, available to any citizen who saw and read the inscription, would have helped to stabilize the restored democratic regime.

Second, Shear examines the democracy's newly erected public monuments and buildings for symbols and ideology that would defuse enmity and foster unity on the basis of loyalty to democracy. Shear marshals an impressive level of detail in her examination of the new monuments and buildings of the Agora, especially the design of the new Bouleuterion and the manner in which the revised law code was erected and displayed in the Stoa Basileios. These objects were notable not only for their content (in the case of the law code) or their function (in the case of the Bouleuterion) but also for the public presentation of their content or function, which engaged citizen viewers with a striking, if idealized, presentation of democratic purpose, unity, and history. By means of their display the "new" laws, incorporating those attributed to Solon and Drakon, tied the current democracy to the ideologically important ancestral constitution (patrios politeia). The Bouleuterion offered citizens a clear sense of the civic duty of democratic citizens. Shear thus further substantiates the process, already discussed by historians and archaeologists, by which the Agora became a [End Page 528] crucial location for democratic activity and ideology in fourth-century Athens. Shear displays unusually deep and extensive knowledge of the preserved physical material. Although the highly imperfect state of preservation also means that Shear's arguments on these and other objects entail considerable speculation, her arguments are nonetheless intelligent and clearly worthy of serious consideration.

Yet ideology is often in the eye of the beholder. Occasionally Shear's argument suffers from the vagueness or special pleading that arises when one infers ideology from mute stones or building foundations, or from events whose original purpose is now obscure. It must be said that Shear attempts to demonstrate patterns of democratic response, especially between the two periods of democratic restoration, which mitigates the looseness of the ideological claims. Shear's prose is admirably clear, but it is also marred by excessive repetition of her main points, which is tedious for the reader.

Towards the end of the book it emerges that Shear's work also contributes to a question that is peripheral to her main concerns, but important in itself and intriguing for students of virtually any aspect of fourth-century Athens...

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