Are we giving Athens too much credit?

[Craig B]

Yet we were talking about the use of "res publica" about those same Barbarians.

Which simply indicates that, as we know, the expression had several meanings or connotations. All I am arguing is that the meaning I refer to exists in Tacitus' writings, and I have cited and commented on it. This doesn't exclude his use of the word in other ways in other contexts.

Cicero, moreover, implies such a usage in Book III of De Re Publica.

Can we call the state of Agrigentum a Commonwealth, where all men are oppressed by the cruelty of a single tyrant?—where there is no universal bond of right, nor social consent and fellowship, which should belong to every people, properly so named. It is the same in Syracuse,—... while Dionysus its tyrant reigned there, nothing of all its wealth belonged to the people, and the people were nothing better than the slaves of an impious despot. Thus wherever I behold a tyrant, I know that the social constitution must be, not merely vicious and corrupt, as I stated yesterday, but in strict truth, no social constitution at all.

In such circumstances neither city can be called a commonwealth.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

That's what I thought too.

Thinking about it, lots of ancient peopled had systems of government which allowed for limited popular influence. The Celts. The Carthaginians. Among others.

I would tend to think that those people where there was virtually no popular influence would be limited to autocratic societies with a powerful military under a single command structure, and a monarch considered highly legitimate by the army - such as by a state religion.

Otherwise, it's hard to get people to play along - could the king override the village elder unless the king was willing to slaughter large parts of the village?

Needless to say, those societies would be rare prior to modern times, because of the level of control required. I think popular councils holding significant local power, and general power in aggregate, would have been the norm.

This is not to be confused with modern democracy, of course, which is a very narrowly defined variety of such systems.