History Summarized: Athens (Accidentally) Invents Democracy
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- čas přidán 25. 04. 2024
- "TOP FIVE Athenian Tyrants - #2 will surprise you and #3 will get murdered in a polycule-gone-wrong!"
-Herodotus if he had a blog.
SOURCES & Further Reading:
“Revolution” & Tyranny” & “The Origins of Democracy” from “Ancient Greek Civilization" by Jeremy McInerney
“Athens: City of Wisdom” by Bruce Clark, 2022
“The Greeks: A Global History” by Roderick Beaton, 2021
“The Greeks: An Illustrated History” by Diane Cline, 2016
I also have a university degree in Classical Civilization.
Music:
"The Sacred Land of Artemis" "The Hills of Attika" & "Naxos Island" from Assassin's Creed Odyssey OST by The Flight
"Sneaky Snitch" by Kevin MacLeod (Incompetech.com) creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.
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Athens: i love democracy
Greece: what?
Athens: it’s a meme you wouldn’t get it
Greece: no what the fuck is democracy
And most of greece actually hated the idea of a democracy, as in it comes from deymos, demons xD But to be fair, they didn't think a cystem could be put in place to ensure leaders, instead of everyone deciding everything all the time...
A meme?
@@joshuaizly5502
It's a quote from Star Wars. Palpatine says he loves democracy when we know that's the farthest from the truth.
@@johnnygyro2295I think it's also a reference to the "what's a falcon" joke, so it's a double memetendre
well this hit me right in the thermal exhaust port
This episode was just Blue being incredibly frustrated at having no choice but to inflate Athens' Ego and incredibly irritated at his own admiration at their achievement, until the end where he surrendered to the inevitable and admired them without forced irony.
All according to plan
-B
keikaku doori
@@idolatrousspookyperson3383 Translator's Note: "keikaku" means "plan".
“Stupid sexy Athens” Blue from osp
@@OverlySarcasticProductions tell us about Thebes again that should improve your mood.
I never realized how many myths were Athens' fanfiction of shipping themselves with Athena till Blue pointed it out.
Red does it a few times as well. Athens origin story is a really good one.
I mean they named their damn city after her.
They go hard with their goddess ship
Athena was probably originally just Athens local deity (probably a personification of the City like Roma) until they became the center of Greek society and so other Greeks started identifying her with other deities.
🎶 "You are Athena!
Badass in the arena
Unmatched, witty, and queen of
The best strategies we've seen ah."🎶
"Democracy... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder..." --Plato.
"I never knew Plato had been to Philadelphia." --Benjamin Franklin.
I see your 1776 reference and smile.
"Augh man, we accidently invented a democracy!"
"A what?"
"You're a democracy, Harry!"
"I'm a what?"
"Did you put democracy in the goblet of fire?" Dumbledore asked calmly.
a democracy, the negative version of Politia.
@@imveryangryitsnotbutterDID YA PUT DEMOCRACRY INTO THE GOBLET OF FIRE!!!! - Dumbeldore in the movie
That wee mention of the Oracle advising a Spartan army to interfere with Athens and basically change history makes me want an ancient Greece pope fights.
Me wants to worship Delphos gods
Yeah, gotta say. The Oracle nailed that one.
Hmm... Has anyone actually tried to work out the various Ocacles' hit/miss ratio?
@@jasonblalock4429 Delphi had a runner network across most of greece. If you set out with a question, they knew what it was and had time to create an extremely vague answer before you arrive.
For some examples, if you go to war with Persia, you will destroy a great empire.
‘Far-seeing Zeus gives you … a wall of wood.
Only this will stand intact and help you and your children.’
Herodotus, The Histories, 7.141
Or how about when someone asked if they would survive a coming battle the oracle would say a phrase that depending on where you put the accent meant "you will come back with/on your sheild" without the accent needed to differenciate them
"Greeks never cease to amaze me. They are always inventing something. Why are they so clever?"
"If they're so clever, why are they a province of ours instead of vice versa."
*Emperor Augustus and his nephew Marcellus*
It's very simple. Because the Romans descended from the Greeks, they inherited their greatest strengths, especially their inventiveness, and skill at war. That's why they won the Punic Wars with Carthage before Agustus's time after all! (They're inventive enough to build a warfleet from scratch, and then come up with a special swinging, spiked gangway to dominate naval warfare, and beat the Carthaginians at their own game! That inventiveness came from their Greek origins, and so the Greeks became a Roman province because their greatest strengths were something the Romans had too.)
The Romans did not descend from the Greeks, they were their own PIE group (the latins/italic tribes)@@valjamin8456
@@valjamin8456 That's a bit much but they were definitely influenced by Greek culture
@@valjamin8456 The roman's strength was that they were VERY good at taking other peoples ideas and improving upon it. It made them unically versatiles on almost every fields. Meanwhile, as smart as the greeks were, each city/region was pretty one note (not just the greeks mind you. Nearly every people met by Rome were like that).
Greek Rome did outlive Roman Rome at least?
I love Blue going "On the one hand, coup was bad. On the other hand, HISTORICAL TEXTS"
Uuuuuuhhhhhhh… not quite? Less so Historical Texts as source documents and more “mythologized history in Epic verse.”
4:42 Ah yes, the *best* system of government: who can find the tallest lady and dress her up most impressively.
I welcome our giant armoured lady archons.
I mean, that's what the presidency today is: who can come up with the most impressive figurehead to put in front of the cameras?
Thank you Athens. Because of you my allegiance will always be to the Republic, TO DEMOCRACY!!!
if you're not with Hippias, then you are his enemy!
@@TeutonicEmperor1198only a tyrant speaks in absolutes
Primarch Kenobi. You are a bold one.
@@reca2489you will try…
@@reca2489 you will try *unseathes xiphos*
Frogs sitting around a pond.. chilling:
The greeks: YOOOOOOOO
Okay, SOMEONE needs to point this out, and it might as well be me... Blue sounds exactly like every single classical Athenian source talking about themselves.
"Athens is beautiful and wonderful, despite being a constant floating dumpster fire all throughout its history."
If I'm remembering correctly, at least part of Blue's family is from Athens, so that tracks.
Not coincidentally, also very similar to how Americans frequently talk about our history.
@@sabertoothkim Or the British. Or the French. Or the Italians. Or the Russians. Or the... shit, I feel like it would be easier to compile a list of nationalities that don't talk about their history this way. ;D
Eh, who gives a hoot? [ducks]
“He was a tyrannos but he was no tyrant.” A new quote to add to the list for Great Quotes from Blue.
After teasing it, you skipped over how Athens made that "goofy owl" their symbol.
Where is the owl!!
iirc its a direct symbol of Athena
@@sable7687 Checking wikipedia and they say no one is quite sure. Some say there are just a lot of owls in athens and thats why (and Athena gets the owl association because of her patronage of Athens) and others have conspiracy boarded a connection to a possible minoan goddess.
I love how Blue starts off frustrated at inflating Athen's ego, then begrudgingly admits how good their system was, only to unironicly admire them by the end. All according to the the glorious plan of DEMOCRACY!
Praising Athens is inevitable.
Democracy always wins.
Okay, so there's a plot point in my TTRPG campaign where a noble in a medieval-ish world essentially tries to invent democracy to circumvent the aristocracy, and all of this video is an outright platinum mine of ideas. XD
Something that needs to be noted: Athens had a large body of land-owning freemen, and only those land-owners had the right to vote. Athens still had a HUGE body of slaves and unlanded people who were shut out of the democratic process. The focus on equality within the ruling classes was certainly novel and commendable, but lets not pretend that this was any sort of People's Republic. It was closer to what we would now deem an "oligarchy".
Furthermore, that body of land-owning freemen was also where Athens got most of its military manpower. Which was why Athenian democracy could resist tyranny so well - any ruler would effectively have to negotiate with the state's army (read: the armed and trained citizenry) to get anything done. In medieval Europe, the independent small land-owners dwindled, and land-ownership became concentrated under military aristocrats. Said aristocrats were organized in a hierarchical system of vassalage, with overlords promising protection to their underlords, and underlords promising military service to their overlords.
Really, a medieval kingdom becoming an Athenian-style democracy would involve the aristocracy doing away with vassalage, and giving every land-owning aristocrat an equal say in the government. That would effectively be the same thing - a large body of armed land-owners deciding government policy collectively, instead of investing all political power in a single ruler. While the rest of the populace remains shut out of the political process.
@@tbotalpha8133 After Athens became a democracy there was no connection between land ownership and citizenship. Middle class citizens would serve as hoplites but lower class (mostly landless wage earners) citizens would serve as light infantry and, most importantly, rowers in warships (a well paid job at the time, for people of that social class). They had voting rights and made up a prominent voting bloc. That's one of the things that made Athens an actual democracy and set apart from surrounding oligarchies. Poor citizens could vote and be eligible for public office while rich permanent residents could do neither.
@@Hypernefelos My point is that, by any modern standards, Athenian democracy was still incredibly restricted and limited, with a political class that remained exclusive and elitist for almost the entire existence of the polity.
Slaves, who made up a sizable fraction of Athens' population (I've seen estimates as high as 2/5ths, or 40%, at Athens' height), were not citizens and could not vote. This included people born into slavery, and people enslaved in wars and raids. That's already a massive point against any claim of democracy. A slightly more open oligarchy is still an oligarchy (and recall, I am using that term in the modern sense, of "rule by the few").
Resident foreigners living in Athens or the surrounding Attica, were not citizens and could not vote. Even if they had been living in Attica for generations, *and even if they owned land in the region.* Only people descended from a group of family lineages based in Athens from the start of the democracy were considered citizens. And barring a few exceptional circumstances, there was no mechanism for resident foreigners to enter the citizenry (unlike the later Romans, who were vastly more liberal with citizenship). These resident foreigners were nonetheless expected to fight and die in Athens' armies and fleets, despite having no say in the state's political process. And there were a LOT of these residents in Attica (I've seen estimates of about 1/5th, or 20%).
Oh yes, and women could not vote. Though it's unclear if they could be citizens or not. While no contemporary source refers to the wives or mothers of citizen men as citizens explicitly, it seems that such women had to be descended from men with citizenship in order for their male children to be considered citizens. So, citizen-descended women could confer citizenship upon their male children, but otherwise lacked many citizen rights themselves.
So, 2/5ths slaves, 1/5th foreigners, and half the "citizens" are women, meaning only about 20% of Athens' population could actually engage with the political process. Which, yes, is still a larger fraction than almost any other pre-modern polity that we know of (except the Romans). But it's hardly the egalitarian paradise that Blue implies it is in this video.
And all of this is in response to AegixDrakan's comment, about them imagining a nobleman trying to "side-step the aristocracy" by establishing a democracy. Except the "side-stepping" that Athenian democracy pulled off wasn't so much a people's revolt, as it was a case of gaining the popular support of an existing elitist system. If you want to learn about true egalitarianism, and drawing on alternative sources of political power, you need to look to the Early Modern period and the influence of the nascent middle-classes of Europe. The people who *actually* pushed back against medieval aristocracy, and established our modern democracies.
@@tbotalpha8133
What you see as a flaw is infact a feature. Universal suffrage was and is and forever will be a mistake.
@@tbotalpha8133 Most of the stuff I'm thinking of borrowing from the video are the shenanigans of Peisistratos, plus people asking questions about who exactly should have a vote, not "let's actually fully solve the situation using the means with which it was resolved IRL".
That's the kind of thing my players will likely supply on their end as they navigate that mess. XD
Could u please do nubia.
"What's a Nubian?"
I misread it as "Hippies ~ Knights".
Had a good chuckle.
Ooh, now I want THAT! Blue, were there ever any hippie knights? Please o please?
Fascinating to know where the Anarchy comes from
Yeah I loved learning that here, I never connected to two before.
I love finding out where certain very specific words first came from! :P
Something something "democracy is the worst form of government - except for all the others that have been tried.”
- Winston Churchill, and also, begrudgingly, Blue
Funny thing is just how many of the safeguards against corruption the Greek system had.... that aren't used today. Modern takes make the entire system unfair by just/... not having controls on greed. Also: POLITICAL PARTIES ARE THE OPPOSITE OF DEMOCRACY!
I recently learned that that quote is taken out of context. Basically, Churchill said: "There are those who say _[famous quote]_ but I strongly believe Democracy is the Bee's Knees and something truly special."
@@GSBarlev presumably he meant the original not yet corrupted version though...
The corruption is those arristorcrats getting their power back. The new Guilded age.
Me when the aligothirm gave me a 13 second old video before I saw the notification, LMAO
EDIT: BTW, very cool video, demonstrates yet again Blue's expertise at presenting historical topics in this era in a concise manner.
Omfg, same
Cringe
I imagine you meant to write algorithm, but aligothirm sounds much cooler.😂
@@mattdarrock666 Even better (or worse if you are chronically fearful of bad spelling) is that they could have chosen to correct the word when they made the edit!
The description is the single funniest thing I ever read
"Oh I didn't actually read the description, I wonder what sort of joke Blue put there?" ... LMAO
that is in fact an incredibly funny description, thank you for pointing it out! I would have missed it otherwise
You're telling me I get to graduate high school and watch a new osp video on the same day??? Thank you, Blue!
Congrats on graduating!
Congrats!!
Congratulations 👏👏
My first essay for the Early Western Civ class was over the Athenian and Spartan Constitutions and which was better, and *oh boy,* was reading the Athenian *in its entirety* a chore.
Athens creating democracy gave us the Mr. Portokalos bit and that alone is worth it
A whole bunch of people with no idea at all happens to agree in something how to run things around; *accidentally*
i was JUST in the mood for some history!!!
perfect timing of boredom vs edutainment
Any chance you would do the south sea bubble? I think youd be very appropriately sarcastic about it
Blue might potentially be allergic and unwilling to do the topic since it is something that is more Early Modern than Ancient. But on the hand, it also has hilarious assorted bull that he might want to explore…
Blue, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Nashville but if you haven’t you should because they have a full scale replica of the Parthenon complete with a full scale replica of the statue of Athena. I think you’d love it
No joke, that was the Jeopardy final question last night and I had literally never heard of it until then.
If you have a democracy where less than a fifth of your population can vote, do you really have a democracy or is it just an aristocracy with extra steps?
A Congress populated by rich old white people is in the same boat
This is a very good point, and in general I agree with it, but I would also like to point out that they appointed people by lot, not by election. I don't think our society produces a high enough percentage of capable people to have any political position appointed by lot from the group of all citizens.
@@SocialDownclimber society back then was also exponentially less specialized
@@SocialDownclimber Would today selecting people by lot lead to capable people governing? No.
Would randomizing it today lead to _more_ capable people governing than currently?
Probably neither, but that's an argument worth buying popcorn for.
Well, democracy versus representative Republic are different things, and a democracy lives or dies based on the competency of the average voter, so if you raise the bar, you could disenfranchise people, but you might end up with better results overall.
Surprisingly, Greek students already should know all of these from 4th grade History (which covers from 1100 to 166 BC) but I didn't even remember the Herodotus story😂. Great vid as always, I'd love if you covered Ostracism (Εξοστρακισμός) also, even on a short❤
... After Helldivers 2, I cannot think of the word democracy unironically.
One cannot have *just* a taste of democracy after Helldivers 2. XD
I'm genuinely surprised there aren't more Helldivers comments on this video.
The fact that original democracy was made in such a way that you specifically couldn't become a career politician is frankly infuriating. We should bring that back
Blue struggling to bring himself to inflate Athens' ego gives me life.
The Gus Portokalos reference at the end made me unbelievably happy
Great content and the inclusion of music from AC Odyssey really adds to the atmosphere!
The Haudenosaunee people and the Hakka people who formed the Lanfang Republic also invented democracy - but we don’t talk about them >:(
Probably the 2000-ish year head start the Greeks had. Regardless of reason the Haudenosaunee and the Lanfang Republic are still very interesting to read up on. The different paths to democracy they took are fun to lay out next to each other, kind of like governmental parallel evolution.
@@felixrowan646 You mean convergent evolution?
@@StarshadowMelody That might be a more appropriate descriptor, though I'm not sure what the common predecessor would be.
In the Athenian case tyranny would be the prior system and the Haudenosaunee were individual tribes before becoming a confederacy, fairly similar to the three Athenian groups pre-restructure.
I'm not sure how you would classify what became the Lanfang Republic. Monarchy under the sultans of West Borneo? Part of the Qing Empire? I don't know enough to make a firm guess there.
@@felixrowan646 still though! This makes them, if not the oldest democracies, the oldest *still-standing* democracies, which is pretty rad! Not to mention, the Haudenosaunee were likely the predominant democratic system to inspire the US'.
It's okay, we don't talk about the Egyptian and Mesopotamian precursors to Athenian democracy, either. Athens wasn't really the first democracy. It's just the pedigree we use to claim that democracy is the foundation of Western Civilization.
I love this channel so much because it produces high quality easy to digest content about some of the coolest parts of history
Athens: Falling ass backward into democracy
Athena: ... all according to the keikaku?
*Author's note: keikaku means plan*
One of the best videos you've made this year, well dome!
"Look baby OSP dropped some Greek history videos"
2:31 wait the etymology of draconian doesn't have anything to do with dragons? Just a guy who had the name? Wild
I really love the OSP team! I learn so much from you guys on every topic imaginable, because your presentation is so unique and sensible as to defy all barriers! Thank you for your contributions!
You’re telling me the creation of a new form of government wasn’t the glamorous affair they said it was?! I’m not shocked but I’m all for Blue throwing the Athenians praise and shade. 💙😁
Could u please do nubia
The 25th dynasty
The baqt treaty
I second the motion!
Fantastic! Great way to start the weekend - thank you Blue! :)
Hell YES more OSP Greece content 🎉
Blue! You're amazing! Thanks For this ❤❤❤❤
I got exactly what I came for: an interesting and informative history video, and Blue praising Athens entirely against his will 😂😂
Also, etymology (always love learning where words originate from)
One more step towards Greek history summarised! No rush, we will wait.
Goddammit you're last greek accent pitch was spot on. Great video blue.
Love this channel ❤
Missed opportunity for a Helldivers 2 sponsorship. I don't even play, but I hear DEMOCRACY and that one viral bombastic orchestral soundbite goes of in my head
I JUST visited the Parthenon today and I’m staying in city Center Athens and I get this video notification.
When blue talks I crumble like a middle school girl whose crush just acknowledged their existence
I love how if you watch Red's "Dionysus" video you find out that when Peisistratos imported the Dionesia to Athens the people weren't keen on it too much so, absolute theatre kid that he was, Peisistratos told everyone that if they don't worship him Dionysus will be angry and unleash unspeakable cursed stuff on their dongs. And this freaked people out so much the Dionesia opened each year with "a parade of sculpted junk". Creative problems require creative solutions I guess.
I will never get tired of the bit at the end
2:35 liekly an error there blue!
(Blue wanting to do a Video on Venice, despise it potentially being the 5th Venice video in a row, so he’s forced to do a video about Ancient Greece) “It is with great reluctance that I have agreed to this calling. I love democracy. I love the city of Athens. Once the algorithm has been satisfied, I will stop making references to that iconic Shiba Inu meme!”
ngl I usually watch Red's videos just because... that's always what i've done, but I decided to try and give this one a shot and this was a pretty fun watch! Sorry i've been sleeping on your videos Blue 😭
blue quietly calling noted tyrant peisistratos 'big p' gives me life
Owl with laser EYES!!
"I KNOW BETTER THAN TO TRUST HERODOTUS" 😂😂😂
0:52 Nice Dovahhatty reference there
I LOVE THESE VIDEOS!❤❤
could you do the kingdsom of judea? I think it's an interestingg part of history that often gets overshadowed
This was super interesting!
The MBFGW bit will NEVER get old. Please keep doing it!
Can we please…get that ten year ban back into democracy 😢😢😢
Dunno if it's fair to say they invented it. Plenty of cultures had concepts similar to what Athens did, and if anthropologists are right, direct forms of democracy have been around for as long as humanity. The Greeks just had the means and sense to write their way down.
I will continue to recommend you play Talos Principle
In two weeks I’m gonna have my school leaving exam and this is a big help. Today the teacher was pissy no one was able to say anything about Athenian democracy so now I’m gonna re-listen to this on repeat because he can stuff it.
NEVER STOP THE MR PORTOKALOS BIT
I love those movies to bits.
That was an interesting story. I like the system they came up with, too! We could use something inspired by that...
This has NOT been an Overly Sarcastic Production!
(Barely sarcastic lol, still loved it)
We love the My Big Fat Greek Wedding bits, never stop doing them
Hey Blue, I was wondering if you've seen the youtube channel AMO Pankration? I just found it recently, and I really like it. It has a bunch of videos debunking common misconceptions regarding ancient Greek combat sports, and about the Tetras. I'd figure it might be right up your alley if you ever wanted to make a video about the Olympic games.
It seems fitting that democracy came into existence slowly and with lots of backsliding.
Do the Corcyrian Civil War next plz
Peisistratos sounds a bit like a proto-Vetinari. Took power to become a tyrant, turned out to be the best option to make the city work.
Two reminders:
- Aristoteles was of the opinion that the best working and most stable states are the ones where the middle class is as big as possible and where the middle class rules.
- Most Athenians (including Aristoteles, Plato, Herodotus, Pericles and many other philosophers and non-philosophers alike) considered election of leader undemocratic, but sortition (selection by lot) as democratic.
2:47 My memory of "Solon" from my Classics class in University goes something like this:
1. Don't give a damn who you piss off.
2. Do long-overdue reforms.
3. Craft those reforms in such a way that it would be _painful_ to reverse them.
4. Skedaddle outta town when your term of office is done.
"so that alone was worth throwing the coup. Not really, but...hmmm"
This might be my new favorite quip from Blue
I'd love to see videos on British colonies. Considering youve done Welsh, Irish, Scottish and English history.
Could you do Cowardly Villains for the next Trope Talk?
😂😂😂 thank you for the credits ending that got me lol
Blue's accent at the end sounded so much like Yanis Varoufakis I had to do a double take
Can you please make the bits where you appear drawn more eye friendly? I keep getting flashbanged by that super white background every once in a while. I'm sure your other night owl fans would appreciate it too 🙏
I like this. Thank you
The archaic period equivalent of picking Democracy in Civ VI specifically because of the buffs
We need to bring this back
So, the name of the protagonist of the God of War series, Kratos, means power? I never made that connection before, but that's really awesome!
Like to see coverage of the Thirty Tyrants
3:10 to be fair on the videogame esc definition of wealth, grain olives and grapes were the most important plants in ancient greece. The idea of defining wealth like this can also be seen in Ancient Egypt where people were taxed on the number of cows they owned.
I was not expecting learn that many origins of vocab words in this video
Fucking excellent video man, love your work.
Started the video watching it on my own and 3 minutes before the end my father joined in and watched all the way to the end with his mouth open( which meant he was really concentrating and liking the video.)
4:40 "Now listen here! Strange women riding around in chariots is no basis for a system of government!"
One thing I loved about Assassin's Creed Odyssey is that Herodotus follows you around, and compared to Aristotle, Alkibiades, and Barnabas he is the most down to earth one but is still someone that tells half truths and over exaggerates events in true Ancient Greek Philosopher form.
This was Great I^o^I👍