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Episode 27, Oligarchy, Part 2, Nemesis.

Welcome back to this second of two episodes on classical Greek oligarchy. In part one, we discussed several competing definitions of oligarchy

and traced the origin of the term back to the 5th century BC in Greece

when it was first coined to describe a new wave of authoritarian regimes that were

diametrically opposed to democracy.

In this episode, we're going to talk about the institutions through which oligarchs maintained

their grip on power, the ideological struggle between oligarchs and Democrats, and the

eventual fate of the ancient oligarchic polis.

Just a brief recap, last time our guest Matt Simonton dealt some blows to the standard

account historians give of oligarchy in the ancient world. The standard account, if you remember,

is that oligarchy was a stepping stone in the political evolution of city-states on the way to democracy.

The idea is that all the city-states of the ancient Mediterranean started off as kingdoms

in the 9th and 8th centuries BC.

Then in the 7th and 6th centuries BC, a bunch of them moved away from monarchical rule

and established what later thinkers would call aristocracies or oligarchies.

That is, they transitioned from one-man rule to the rule of a few.

And then in around 500 BC, you finally get the onslaught of democratic regimes, and this marks the beginning of the classical period.

That's the standard account.

Now, Simonton challenges this view by pointing out that the term oligarchy was not coined until after democracies already existed.

While Plato and Aristotle later used the term oligarchy to refer to elite regimes

that had existed centuries earlier, Simonton finds this to be misleading. The oligarchic regimes

...