“What’s wrong with this one?“
Turkish pulls the door of the caravan off its hinges.
“Oh nothing, Tommy. It’s tip-top. It’s just I’m not sure about the color.“
by Michalis Trepas
In the dusty shelves of ancient Greek there resides a word about equality and the law. It had had its day, even phased into other languages, and then, apart from some sporadic mentions, faded to obscurity. It has now resurfaced as the name of a Journal. This has made a lot of people bewildered and been widely regarded as a weird move. And for good reasons. “Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent”, reads rule (v) in Orwell’s Politics and the English Language. Additionally, its original meaning poses a Schleswig-Holstein quality, since those who understand it are either dead, or haughty professors (some of them dead, too). We could have done better, right? Well yes! But also no. More broken rules and an unsound number of English quotes will be used to explain why.
Friedrich Hayek, an icon of the liberty creed, 50 years ago linked isonomia with the “rule of law” and referenced the two definite sources of the word, a drinking song from 500 BC and Herodotus, the “Father of History.” The merry song praised a tyrant’s assassination:
In a myrtle bough I’ll carry my sword
Like Harmodius and Aristogeiton
When they slew the tyrant
And made Athens isonomous
Other translations of the verse go like “to Athens gave equality” or “made the Athenians equal under the law.” Herodotus used isonomia in the so-called “constitutional debate,” a dialogue among three Persians in search of the best political order, at the face of continuous turmoil. If one looks up the relevant passage online, an authoritative translation from 1920 will most likely show up. The translator has chosen the word “equality.” In the words of the Persian Otanes:
But the rule of the multitude has in the first place the loveliest name of all, equality, and does in the second place none of the things that a monarch does. It determines offices by lot, and holds power accountable, and conducts all deliberating publicly. Therefore I give my opinion that we make an end of monarchy and exalt the multitude, for all things are possible for the majority.
Another version, more recently:
Contrast this with the rule of the people: first, it has the finest of all names to describe it – equality under law; and, secondly, the people in power do none of the things that monarchs do. Under a government of the people a magistrate is appointed by lot and is held responsible for his conduct in office, and all questions are put up for open debate. For these reasons I propose that we do away with monarchy, and raise the people to power; for the state and the people are synonymous terms.
The pattern should be clear by now. Isonomia is indeed about equality, since the Greek prefix ίσο– (iso-) means equal, even. Let’s leave it here for now and tiptoe our way into the second part. We assume it to come from νόμος (nomos), the Greek work for law. This line of interpretation, which has been the standard in traditional scholarly works, points to equality before the law, for officials and citizens, rich and poor, and equality through law, meaning equal rights and duties. Language does subtle, though. Another Greek word, the verb νέμω, has a few meanings, in the likes of to distribute, allocate, provide, wield, hold. If it is this verb we are dealing with, we come up with the somewhat elusive notion of equality of shares, which pivots to two paths: Equal claims to a pool of rights and privileges. Or, equal claims in sovereign power, alluding to the equal participation in shaping, administering, and enforcing the rules of governance.
The traditional approach dismisses the “distribution” undertones and reads isonomia as a close substitute of democracy. The first “equality of shares” path also points to this direction. But the second path proposes that isonomia is more than a sum of its superficial parts. Herodotus headed this way, too.
In 7th-6th centuries BC, each city-state had a hereditary class of noblemen, who also controlled most of land. This class run the city through a governance edifice that would remain almost stable for centuries to come: An assembly, where only some members of the community were eligible for. An even smaller, more elective body, with proto-legislative and judicial powers. And on the top the lords of the city, usually chosen from a closed group on a rotating basis. The exact powers (“regulatory perimeter,” you bureaucrats) of each body varied depending on time and place, but the voice of the many tended to be downplayed, if heard at all.
The many were not happy, and it showed. The higher-ups offered amends: They delegated sages, like Solon of Athens and Lycurgus of Sparta, as lawgivers, to sooth social tensions. Draco, from the other hand, was a bit to the harsh (you know, “draconian”) side. Νόμος, along with similar terms like θεσμός (institution, usage) and ρήτρα (clause), emerged at the time, to signify the transition from customary norms to written decisions, or agreements, on social relations. The new rules often bore the city’s validation and focused on daily issues like transactions and the dispatching of justice, while inequalities of kindred or class persisted. However, just the literal act of gathering and writing the stuff down, introduced a form of political consciousness.
Times posed new challenges and set the stage for evolution. Colonies needed organization afresh, presenting a clean slate to either replicate the structure of the homeland or break free from it. The burden of war shifted from highborn champions to the mundane rank-and-file, as peasants wealthy enough to buy and maintain their gear marched as equals in hardship and spoils. The newly minted hoplites naturally claimed a bigger say in their city’s dealings. Tyrants rose to topple aristocrats and occasionally appeal to the everyday man. Curiously, their own overthrow stimulated a demand to trade the imposed “equality before the tyrant” with “equality before law and the legality of authority.”
Voting upped community’s involvement in common affairs, with equality becoming a tenet and the majority a force to be reckoned with. Various stakes were raised, the related terms ever dodgy. Speech (meant as the right to address the city’s assembly without fear or prejudice), land possession and/or living conditions (the most precise concept here, in my view, would be fortune, to match wealth with fate), justice, voting, power, each of these themes got its iso- token (isegoria, isomoiria, isodikia, isopsifia, isokratia, respectively), featuring sometimes apart, sometimes in combinations, often with overlapping meanings. But isonomia nailed it. The details of how this came to be are somewhat blurry.
Herodotus, writing in mid-5th century BC, was around when νόμος assumed the notion of official binding regulation and the Athenian political order emerged as a democracy. Keen in his choice of words, speaking as Otanes he used isonomia, having in mind that democracy was not a thing circa 520 BC, yet. What’s more, he understood that νόμος used to loosely denote an expression of collective decision, so he opted to emphasize the “mass” character, versus the one-man or noble clique dicta ‘cuz reasons bruh. A step-by-step reading of the speech outlines this ideal of a polity: (a) The city’s administration is based on the principle of equality (b) the majority rules (c) the interests of the majority coincide with those of the city (d) officials are determined by lot and are held accountable (e) policy proposals are publicly debated. A scholar has summarized Otanes’ conception of political freedom as “neither rule, nor be ruled,” which compares to Arendt’s “no-rule” musings.
So, a rather powerful word with positive connotations. Worthy of a PR stunt. Cleisthenes and his allies had implemented a set of popular reforms in Athens (508-507 BC). Wary of oligarchic opposition, probably some cunning official from his PR department saw the song of tyrannicide as a handy tool for propaganda. It would serve a dual target: To mark the break from the tyrannical past, and to send a warning to rivals of the new, popular, isonomous character of the polity (“…while celebrating drinking, what’s not to like?”, I guess the proverbial official’s pitch concluded). Athens was among a few cities in modern Greece (among others, Argos, Mantineia and Eretria) and the extended ancient Greek world (Irakleia of Pontus and Erythres in Asia Minor, Cyrene in North Africa) in the period from 550 BC till c. 480 BC (the second Persian Invasion to Greece), which enacted policies that (in Margaret Thatcher’s voice) enfranchised the many in political life.
The change of tune altered the equilibrium within each city. Measures typically included reorganizing of the clans and their representation, the expansion of the number of citizens, by lifting some wealth and residence limits, and the rebalancing of powers among the institutional bodies of the city, in favor of the assembly. The participation of the many would be blunted on hello, if not accompanied by the opportunity to address fellow citizens in pondering and deciding on the city’s problems. Herodotus links the unleash of Athenian potential exactly to isonomia‘s sister, isegoria (the translator used “equality” in the place of isegoria, too. Maybe he decided that it is at this point that normal language gives up, and goes and has a drink):
So the Athenians grew in power and proved, not in one respect only but in all, that equality is a good thing. Evidence for this is the fact that while they were under tyrannical rulers, the Athenians were no better in war than any of their neighbors, yet once they got rid of their tyrants, they were by far the best of all. This, then, shows that while they were oppressed, they were, as men working for a master, cowardly, but when they were freed, each one was eager to achieve for himself.
Or, as another modern scholar put it, it was “equal voice” that effectively mobilized “individual efforts for the common weal.” The assembly’s clout grew, as did its demand for observance of adopted decisions and accountability.
Participation and voice did not blossom to fully equal political rights, however, as the path to the higher echelons remained blocked in most cases. Even election by lot simply meant to randomly choose from a shortlist of the city’s privileged – a procedure longed by critics of democracy later. Equality before the law may have brought impartiality but did not necessarily imply the same laws for everyone. Thucydides floats the concept of an isonomous oligarchy (“oligarchy with laws common to all” in the quote below), when reciting the Thebeans’ answer to accusations of cooperation with the invading Persians (Medes):
But take now into your consideration withal what form of government we were in both the one and the other when we did this. For then had we our city governed neither by an oligarchy with laws common to all nor by a democracy; but the state was managed by a few with authority absolute, than which there is nothing more contrary to laws and moderation nor more approaching unto tyranny. And these few, hoping yet further, if the Medes prevailed, to increase their own power, kept the people under and furthered the coming in of the barbarian. And so did the whole city, but it was not then master of itself nor doth it deserve to be upbraided with what it did when they had no laws [but were at the will of others].
They continued by saying that when the Medes left, the city became master again by reclaiming its very laws. On these grounds, another proposal describes isonomia as a quasi-constitutional order, popular or else, which sets the law proper as the measure of governance versus the whim of the one or the few. This angle drives hard isonomia right there in the rule of law scheme, though the two concepts do not necessarily go hand to hand, while the proposal itself has not gained real traction.
The ranked nature of achieved political equality mattered little against the emergent spirit of collectively grappling with the city’s problems. Simply put, people ceased to wait for top-down appointed, often Delphic seal bearing, overseers. Isonomia worked as a preparatory stage on the way to democracy in Athens, but that was city specific. The common theme of isonomous orders, apart from their brief lives and the changes outlined above, was that they reflected a step to freedom from tyrannical or aristocratic rules, not the foundation of a truly sovereign demos. The collective will to pursue this kind of freedom was not always a given, either.
In Ionia, there were some cases of false dawns in late 6th century BC. As the tyrant of Samos island was dead, his steward addressed the citizens’ assembly to offer an isonomous arrangement, in exchange of him bailing out with a portion of the tyrant’s treasure and a post in priesthood. An aristocrat challenged the steward’s authority on grounds of his lowly origin and shaky fiscal integrity, leading to the latter’s backtracking, while the crowd just stood silent. In Miletus, on the coast of Anatolia, the ruling tyrant did something along the same lines, only to effectively retain most of his power. In both Ionian cities, isonomia was tried as an underhanded populist gesture, not as a reform to balance social forces. In neither case did it fly. Herodotus, taking the Samian citizens’ passiveness as reluctance to assert a bigger share of political participation, wrote that “[t]hey had, it would seem, no desire to be free.”
A few of the iso- propositions, isonomia included, later became constituents of the democratic order. Theseus, as the legendary king of democratic Athens in Euripides’ The Suppliants, defended written laws common to all, equality of justice and isegoria, while bantering with a herald from monarchic Thebes:
This herald is a clever fellow, a dabbler in the art of talk. But since thou hast thus entered the lists with me, listen awhile, for ’twas thou didst challenge a discussion. Naught is more hostile to a city than a despot; where he is, there are first no laws common to all, but one man is tyrant, in whose keeping and in his alone the law resides, and in that case equality is at an end. But when the laws are written down, rich and poor alike have equal justice, and it is open to the weaker to use the same language to the prosperous when he is reviled by him, and the weaker prevails over the stronger if he have justice on his side. Freedom’s mark is also seen in this: “Who hath wholesome counsel to declare unto the state? ” And he who chooses to do so gains renown, while he, who hath no wish, remains silent. What greater equality can there be in a city?
The advent of the new century also brought new notions in. Isonomia in 4th century BC became part of a wider inquiry about equality, limits of power, law and freedom, detaching from its 6th – early 5th century BC meaning as a distinct type of polity.
And then there were those that did not make it to the final cut. Almost there, but not quite so. Case in point, the call for equal living standards, or equal fate, already mentioned in passim. Isomoiria (ισομοιρία) was a legit demand, one with a clear goal: economic equality, centered on the redivision of land, the main factor of production and the anchor of political power. Apart from Solon, who enacted a debt cancellation (or at least engineered an easier repayment via currency depreciation) and liberated those previously turned serfs due to debts, and the tyrant Peisistratus, who distributed the land of his rivals, Athenian leaders did not mess with property rights. The responsible popular platform dropped isomoiria in favor of isonomia, opting for the (still radical enough) diffusion of the power to shape the rules of the game.
As goddess Athena did her wise things, Aeolus shrugged and went equalitarian. In an island complex north of Sicily (Aeolian, or Lipari, islands), circa 580 BC, the merge of natives with newcomers begot something fresh. The case does not qualify as a typical case of isonomia, although it is sometimes included in the relevant studies. Diodorus Siculus, an author of Roman times, described how Greeks were welcomed in the largest of the islands:
But when they put in at Lipara and received a kindly reception, they were prevailed upon to make common cause with the inhabitants of Lipara in forming a single community there, since of the colony of Aeolus there remained only about five hundred men.
Over the next decades, the community reinvented itself:
At a later time, because they were being harassed by the Tyrrheni who were carrying on piracy on the sea, they fitted out a fleet, and divided themselves into two bodies, one of which took over the cultivation of the islands which they had made the common property of the community, whereas the other was to fight the pirates; their possessions also they made common property, and living according to the public mess system, they passed their lives in this communistic fashion for some time.
At a later time they apportioned among themselves the island of Lipara, where their city also lay, but cultivated the other islands in common. And in the final stage they divided all the islands among themselves for a period of twenty years, and then they cast lots for them again at every expiration of this period. After effecting this organization they defeated the Tyrrhenians in many sea-fights, and from their booty they often made notable dedications of a tenth part, which they sent to Delphi.
Quite some institutional ideas there: Deciding together in isonomous fashion. Only two designated professional classes, farmers and warriors. Common property of land. Common meals. Later they introduced private property, to be redistributed by lot every 20 years. The gradual turn to private property poses something of a riddle and a possible explanation attributes it to the warriors’ need of assurances, since they were frequently away on duty. The community successfully fended-off the Tyrrhenians (most likely another name for Etruscans) and even sent tributes to Delphi, but little more is known about this fascinating experiment.
Montagu Norman, the Englishman who served as Governor of Bank of England in the 1930s, was asked to explain the Bank’s actions during a parliamentary hearing. He retorted “I don’t have reasons, I have instincts.” In Politics and the English Language Orwell noted that “one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails.” The isonomous credo from 2,500 years ago had these things rearranged: Tap individuals’ instincts to craft governance rules, the more individuals, the better. If you exercise public power, stick to those rules and better fucking explain yourself in any case. Now, I will not say if this counsel be good or bad. Coupled with the “forget” part of Schleswig-Holstein question, it rests with the reader. It remains, however, alive and glowing and vibrant, with just the faintest tint of greenish pur neon pink and black.
Michalis Trepas is a contributing editor to Isonomia Quarterly and lives in Athens, Greece with his family. Send him mail.
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