On Liberty Ep72 | Dr James Kierstead | How Democratic Was Athenian Democracy?
This week as we talk to classicist Dr James Kierstead about the pasts and futures of ancient Athenian democracy. The Western world likes to trade its democratic institutions to ancient Greece, but the Greek model of citizenship was very different from our own, and Athens was far from the only democracy in the Greek world. We'll be asking Dr Kierstead about the Athenian constitution, how it operated in practice in the era of high democracy, the meaning of ancient Greek citizenship, and what it meant to be ostracised in a world without refugee conventions.