Within sight of the Parthenon, sitting on the Acropolis hill a kilometer away from the hill we were climbing, Suzanne and I moved steadily in July upward through the bright Athenian sun. As we headed up, we asked for directions to the place that is the most sacred in all the world to the cause of democracy: the hill the Greeks call the Pnyx. There in about 500 BC the ancient Greeks cut into the limestone rockface a set of stairs and a speaker’s platform. It was there the Greeks started democracy. As we looked for it, a kind Greek man hearing us say “Pnyx,” pointed us to the right path up.
Suzanne and I could not have been more excited to find this place off the traditional tourist path in Athens. Dressed in the white linens we had purchased in the Greek Isles—which we had discovered provide the best way to deal with the heat and humidity of the Eastern Mediterranean—we at last came upon the stairs and speaker’s platform carved from the rock face. Below the speaker’s platform is a bowl-shaped area slanting downward to a retaining wall. The look foreshadowed all those Greek theatres that would come afterward. There the leaders of ancient Greece gathered the assemblies of the Ekklesia, the 6,000 free born men of Athens, to sit and hear their elected leaders present legislation for passage. The drafts of the legislation originated below the Pnyx hill at a meetinghouse of an Executive Committee in the Ancient Agora at the foot of the hill whose ruins are also there today (as we would later see).
From this very platform jutting from the rock face of the Pnyx hill, the Greek leaders took votes ten times a year on affairs of state and the decisions of war and peace. It was in the mid-400s BC, for example, that Pericles, “the first citizen of Athens,” appeared before the 6,000 to urge the Greek citizens to commit the wealth of the Athenian Empire to build the greatest assembly of temples the world had ever seen, the Parthenon and the other temples of the Acropolis Hill. The Acropolis still gives us our best sense of the Golden Age of Greece.
Greece’s democracy survived for nearly 500 years, albeit with some serious interruptions when war erupted between Greece and the authoritarian State of Sparta; emergencies led to some periods of strong man rule. However, Greek democracy survived those disruptions and resumed.
Later Greek democracy would provide the basis for a form of democracy in Venice, although within the limits of a defined set of aristocratic families.
Indeed, it was to the democracies of Greece and Venice that Jefferson, Franklin and Madison looked for their examples. It was the genius of our Founding Fathers that they saw that they could take the democratic systems started by Greece and Venice and apply them with representation to rule an entire continent—not just to the rule of City States. We owe our current democracy to the examples of Venice and Greece adapted in the US Constitution.
It is for that reason that Suzanne and I approached the hill of the Pnyx in the blinding sun with great emotion and reverence. We could not believe our fortune to be looking on the very stone platform where democratic life had begun over 2500 years ago—and it is still there! Indeed, the Pnyx hill is a national park of Greece today, but we practically had the entire place to ourselves. I climbed above the platform and pretended to exhort the ancient Athenians to protect democracy (no one was there). We felt privileged to be there and feel the weight of history. As I looked from the speaker’s platform, I could see the Parthenon facing back from its place atop the Acropolis Hill. Looking down I could see the hillside laid out where the 6,000 free men of Athens dressed in white linen togas sat. The thrill of looking with Suzanne upon that scene is something I will never forget.
I kept thinking throughout, of course, of the critical juncture we now face for our own democracy at home. In the aftermath of the loss of his election in 2020, Donald Trump without evidence falsely claimed the results were fraudulent. He tweeted: “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
One cannot remain true to the democracy we inherit from our Founding Fathers, the Venetians, and the ancient Greeks, and vote for Donald Trump. Donald Trump broke his oath. Once again, the cause of Democracy must truly be our own. For it is critical we face down the threat Donald Trump poses to the Constitution by defeating him soundly November 5, 2024.
Robert P. Wise is a Northsider.
