The Oligarchic Ideology of Freedom in Fifth-Century Greece

Andrew Alwine (University of Florida)

Kurt Raaflaub (The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece, 2004) argues that aristocrats did not develop a response to the democratic concept of political freedom until the fourth-century, when the idea of the “fully free citizen” crystallized. In the treatise of the Old Oligarch from the late fifth-century we may, however, detect evidence for a counter-claim to democratic freedom even if it was not fully formed. The Old Oligarch’s pamphlet, which has been neglected as an important source for this ancient debate, can shed new light on this positive oligarchic ideology.

In Raaflaub’s typology, only internal freedom (that is, freedom of citizens within a state) became a concept appropriated by opposing political groups, first by democrats in the late fifth-century and later by oligarchs in the fourth-century. External freedom (that is, freedom of states from foreign control) was not a matter of contention between democrats and oligarchs, but rather between two states, Athens and Sparta. This typology, however, overlooks an oligarchic claim to freedom on the polis level which stood in opposition to the democratic claim of internal freedom.

The Old Oligarch provides evidence for this conception. This treatise sets up a contrast between the Athenian constitution and their treatment of their allies by showing that, while the demos takes great pains to ensure its own freedom, it endeavors with equal fervor to make the members of subject cities its slaves. Conversely, if aristocrats were in charge, “the empire of the Athenian demos would be very short-lived” (1.14). By advancing the notion that oligarchs would put an end to empire, the author implies that they would stop infringing on the freedom of Greek poleis. Oligarchs preserve the freedom of poleis, for “the upper class in Athens looks after the upper classes in allied cities” (1.14).