Ancient Greece first coined the concept of “democracy”, yet almost every major ancient Greek thinker-from Plato and Aristotle onwards- was ambivalent towards or even hostile to democracy in any form. The explanation for this is quite simple: the elite perceived majority power as tantamount to a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Paul Cartledge talks about the variety of democratic practices in the classical world as well as the similarities and dissimilarities to modern democratic forms, the American and French revolutions and the contemporary political thought.
Guest: Paul Cartledge is A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture Emeritus at the University of Cambridge. He is an honorary citizen of modern Sparta and holds the Gold Cross of the Order of Honor awarded by the President of Greece. He is the author of The Cambridge Illustrated History of Ancient Greece, The Spartans, Alexander the Great, among others and his latest Democracy: A Life.