Paulin Ismard – författare

What bound the invention of democracy to the practice of slavery in ancient Greece? In this bold book, Paulin Ismard explores that entanglement, offering a new analysis of Athenian slave law. He shows how slaves were defined as “human chattel,” how their labor was organized, and how their speech was weighed in the courts. More than a legal study, the book argues that slavery shaped the very fabric of the Greek city. Athens used slavery to define its own boundaries, and in the process brought into focus its relation to the body, to writing, and to representation itself. The political imagination of Athens—so often celebrated as the cradle of democracy—was itself forged through the experience of slavery.The City and Its Slaves also traces unexpected connections between antiquity and the present. If we are heirs of Greco-Roman civilization, how has slavery, the very condition of that civilization’s development, left its mark on our own history? Moving freely among labor law, cybernetics, and modern forms of political representation, and invoking figures from Herman Melville to Aimé Césaire, Ismard suggests that the Athenian model, in a certain sense, remains our own.

The ancient Greek statesman is a familiar figure in the Western political tradition. Less well known is the administrator who ran the state but who was himself a slave. Challenging the modern belief that democracy and bondage are incompatible, Paulin Ismard directs our attention to the cradle of Western democracy, ancient Athens, where the functioning of civic government depended crucially on highly skilled experts who were literally public servants—slaves owned by the city-state rather than by private citizens.Known as dēmosioi, these public slaves filled a variety of important roles in Athenian society. They were court clerks, archivists, administrators, accountants, and policemen. Many possessed knowledge and skills beyond the attainments of average citizens, and they enjoyed privileges, such as the right to own property, that were denied to private slaves. In effect, dēmosioi were Western civilization’s first civil servants—though they carried out their duties in a condition of bound servitude.Ismard detects a radical split between politics and administrative government at the heart of Athenian democracy. The city-state’s managerial caste freed citizens from the day-to-day responsibilities of running the state. By the same token, these public servants were unable to participate in the democratic process because they lacked the rights of full citizenship. By rendering the state’s administrators politically invisible, Athens warded off the specter of a government capable of turning against the citizens’ will. In a real sense, Ismard shows, Athenian citizens put the success of their democratic experiment in the hands of slaves.

At the end of the fifth century BC, the Peloponnesian War resulted in Athens' shattering defeat by Sparta. Taking advantage of the debacle, a commission of thirty Athenians abolished the democratic institutions that for a century had governed the political life of the city and precipitated a year-long civil war. By autumn 403 BC, democracy was restored. Inspired by the model of the ancient chorus, this strikingly innovative book interprets a crucial moment in classical history through the prism of ten remarkable individuals and the shifting groups which formed around them. The former include more familiar names like the multifaceted Sokrates, the oligarch Kritias and the rhetorician Lysias, but also lesser-known figures like the scribe Nikomachos, the former slave Gerys and the priestess Lysimakhe. What leads a community to tear itself apart, even disintegrate, then rebuild itself? This question, explored through profound reflection on the past, echoes our tormented present.