Rhetores and Strategoi in Fourth-Century Athens

Abstract

C POLITICAL LEADERSHIP in classical Athens historians have posed a number of interesting questions: Were the Athenian 'politicians' recruited from the propertied families? Did they become rich in consequence of their political careers? Did they belong to the city demes or to the inland and coastal demes? Did they often serve as archai selected by lot? How often were they put on trial? But as a basis for their arguments historians tend either to draw up a random list of so-called politicians or to adduce five, ten, or fifteen examples of named political leaders, from which to draw conclusions. 1 In the absence of a list of political leaders, this is of course the only possible method, and doubtless the answers offered are often along the right lines. Nevertheless, given the very good sources available on fourth-century Athens, it is worth while to delimit the concept 'political leader' and accordingly draw up a list of persons meeting the criteria, so as to have a more rigorous basis for addressing questions of the sort mentioned above. In an earlier article 2 I argued that in fourth-century Athens the phrase PT,TOpf.~ Kat (TTpaT'Y'TrYOL is the nearest equivalent of what we, with a much vaguer and less formal term, call 'politicians' or 'political leaders'. Accordingly, I present here the application of that principle, an inventory which is basically a list of rhetores and strategoi. First however it is necessary to discuss whom to include and why.