Name: 'Dogs, ticks, monsters, madmen: The role(s) of the demagogues in the Ancient Greek class struggle'
Start: 2025-03-11T17:00:00+00:00
End: 2025-03-11T18:30:00+00:00
Location: Adam House, Basement Cinema room, The University of Edinburgh

'Dogs, ticks, monsters, madmen: The role(s) of the demagogues in the Ancient Greek class struggle'

The first lecture of the new UKRI/ERC Class Struggle in Ancient Greek Democracy project, directed by Professor Mirko Canevaro, will be given by Professor Matt Simonton (Arizona State University).
Beginning with the earliest assessments of the Athenian democracy from antiquity, the figure of the “demagogue” has been successively vilified, rehabilitated, redefined, neutralized, or vindicated according to the political and ideological assumptions of the historian. This talk seeks to situate the figure of the dēmagōgos in his historical context as a participant in the ancient Greek class struggle. That means not denying the demagogues’ role in (occasionally) precipitating civil strife but at the same time not allowing modern categories to obscure the place of the “leader of the people” in the overall political system––as a (humble and precariously perched) agent of the sovereign people, only rarely its master.