We don't owe our ideals of liberty and equality to Antiquity
Freedom and equality are quintessential in toleration. And the Greeks and Romans knew them too. But we hardly owe them this source of toleration. Read here why.
Suppose I want to start a transport company. I need a van, but I have no money. We are acquainted. You've got plenty of money, and you're willing to lend it to me. But on one condition: if I can't pay back, I have to work for you until I pay off my debt. That sounds reasonable, I agree.
The transport company is not successful. I make a few quid, but the van breaks down. The repair is very expensive, and I also have other debts. I knock at your door again. I can't pay off, I say, but I keep believing in the success of the company. Can I borrow some more? You agree, but under new conditions. This is the last loan. And if I still can't pay back after this, I become your property. Then I will become your slave forever, and you may also resell me as a slave. Reluctantly, I agree.
The situation in Athens around 600 BCE was reminiscent of this. Due to falling agricultural prices, allottees could no longer pay the rent. Large landowners took possession of numerous allottees, their wives or their children. They spent the rest of their lives in slavery, or they were sold abroad. It was a social disaster. A new administrator was appointed, Solon. He quickly did away with the system of debt slavery.
The system Solon got rid of was not fair. People are not free to sell their freedom. That people have freedom by nature had never been explicitly stated in Athens. But everyone understood that the life of such a allottee was not to be envied. It was not fair and it destabilised society.
For us, liberty and equality are self-evident features of a just society. Most of us even think we have a right. Freedom and equality are closely linked to toleration. Even when I do something stupid or say something that you don't agree with, I still have that right, because I have that freedom. Even if you look down on me, for example because of my origin, you should not discriminate against me. Because we all have the same rights and we all deserve the same opportunities. For us, these are the most important characteristics of justice. They are at the top of our constitution for a reason. They are the most important human rights.
Not only are liberty and equality connected with toleration, there is also a connection with individualism. With equality you compare individuals. With liberty you have the possibility to deviate individually from the group.
When we look at history, or at other cultures, that is not obvious. A degree of liberty and equality is available everywhere, but the cultural emphasis is not found everywhere, and they are not universally seen as a right that takes precedence over other moral ideals. Many societies are also much more collectivistic than ours: freedom or equality are more easily defeated when the interests of the group, family, company or country come into play.
How we think about freedom and equality largely came about in the Enlightenment, but of course it didn't come out of the blue then either. Various elements of liberty and equality as a moral ideal are reminiscent of the Greek and Roman civilisations. Is there perhaps a historical continuity? In this article, I explain that there may be a thin winding line, but that we owe the cluster of liberty, equality, individuality and rights mainly to Christianity and the Middle Ages.
But first we need to clarify the concepts of liberty and equality. Because they are more complex and less clear-cut than we might think.
Liberty and equality
Freedom is being able to do what you want. But we can't do that at all. We face physical limitations, and we fall short in many other respects as well. We also suffer from the consequences of previous choices we made. And we often need others as well. If you want to win a game of chess from me, we need a game of chess, I need to be in the mood for it, and you also need to be a decent chess player. In fact, our freedom is constantly hindered by others. Or people try to influence our will, or our options, or our interests.
Personally, I’m not acquainted with any enslaved people. It was different for the Greeks and Romans: many had or were one. They met them everywhere. As a slave you are not free, everybody knows that. So if you’re not a slave, then you must be free. That made sense. Initially, the concept of freedom was not really explored much further. Later, the idea of equal freedom was explored: if your neighbour may build a dormer window, so may you. But that idea was already complicated, because the concept of equality was not nearly the same as ours. Athens and Rome were clearly class societies. It would never enter anyone's mind to compare the privileges of those classes.
The concept of liberty can also be expanded. Can you be free if you don't know your options? Do you have the freedom to swim if no one has ever taught or shown you the concept of swimming? And what if you know your options, and are not influenced by others, but you can't use them because you can't make ends meet? What good is your freedom of movement if you’re starving? These were ideas that would never occur to a Greek or a Roman.
The concept of equality is also a difficult one. First of all, because we are not equal at all. Even identical twins are never exactly alike. Equality stands for several principles:
The government should treat cases alike, not discriminate on factors that don't matter. To some extent, this idea was commonplace in Rome and Athens. In Rome there was legislation that applied to everyone. In Athens every (male, adult) citizen had the right to vote.
Even the biggest bastard is still entitled to a humane treatment. Because people have equal value, they say. Some Romans thought so too, but it was hardly put into practice.
Equality is also redistribution. When we are part of a group, we tend to show solidarity. Within the family or among friends this was practised by the Greeks and Romans, but redistribution out of solidarity among other, anonimous citizens was rare. Care for the poor mainly got off the ground when the Christians started calling the shots.
Many people believe that everyone in a society has the right to equal opportunities. Rich or poor, everyone has the right to a good education, for example. If you said this to a Greek or a Roman, he would think you were out of your mind.
In the separate series to follow on liberty and equality, I will develop these terms as moral ideals of justice, which we may strive for, but which can never be fully realised.
We will now look successively at Athens and Rome. I must start by stating that freedom and equality were important values in antiquity, but they were by no means the only ones. In Rome, for example, virtus, pietas and fides counted heavily: loyalty, dignity, self-control, patriotism and family first. The latter two also counted heavily in Athens, but also, for example, retribution. And do not forget the due respect for the gods. If you think Rome and Athens were all about freedom and equality, you're wrong.
Greek ideals
Democracy was not invented in Athens. On the island of Chios and elsewhere they were a little earlier. But those were small states, and democracy did not last long. History in Athens was also erratic. There was no long, steady line from despotism to democracy, from tyranny to freedom. But some events were remembered; they lingered and were used again and again. We already talked about Solon, who ended debt slavery.
A rudimentary understanding of liberty is the absence of slavery. Those who are not slaves are at least not bound in everything by what another dictates to them. What Solon actually stipulated is that citizens should not enslave each other. A form of equal minimal liberty.
Another of Solon’s measures is less well known. He decreed that the city-state would pay for the education of children of fallen soldiers. The community had to provide that degree of solidarity for the soldiers' children. Previously, the death of a soldier was mainly seen as caused by the gods, possibly even as punishment. It did not befit the community to restore divine interventions. Solon started to build an urban community where citizens were not left to fend for themselves and their families alone.
The next episode in Athens took place after the expulsion of the tyrant Hippias in 510 BCE. There was absolutely no equality before the law. It was a class society. Four clans ruled Athens for generations, and it was not peaches and cream at all. There was a lot of rivalry and infighting. Alternately, the clans pushed each other out of power and established their own tyranny. Once he came to power, Kleisthenes (570-508 BCE), the head of one of the four clans, decided to do things differently.
Power came to lie more broadly than with the one clan that was in charge at the time, or with the mere high-born. There was a popular assembly and a constitutional structure, following the principle of isonomia: balanced government, or equal political civil rights. The concept of citizenship gained meaning. Citizens regardless of their origin had isegoria: equal expression, which meant that everyone's opinion had equal weight. Later on, an even more far-reaching virtue developed: parrhesia, showing the back of your tongue. Parrhesia (we read about it earlier) was not a right to free speech. It was a virtue or a moral duty, but not a right. Whoever voiced an unwelcome opinion had better hope that he got away with it. But in general you were allowed to say a lot.
We should not idealise the reforms of Solon and Kleisthenes. The Athenians did not have the freedom and equality as we now experience it. There was a class society, there wasn’t a lot of redistribution, and resistance against the will of the city council was pointless. For example, the Athenians would have thought it a ridiculous idea that constitutional civil rights should apply to everyone. Women, children, foreigners and slaves, of course, had no such rights anyway. There was a public assembly where, in principle, all citizens could have their say. In practice, however, only wealthy Athenians had the time to concern themselves with city administration. The rest were simply too busy for it: bread had to be put on the table. Only when it really mattered and the work allowed, did the working class show up.
Nevertheless, many Athenians were quite proud of their polity. They actually experienced collective autonomy. In their wars with the Persians, in the first half of the fifth century, they saw how unfree the Persians were. The Athenians counted their blessings: they felt that their victory over the Persians was due to their liberty. The Athenians were more motivated to fight, they felt: they had more to lose, namely their democratic gains, their civic autonomy.
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 neighbours, 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.
— Herodotos, Historiai (ca. 430 BCE)
At that time, the general and statesman Perikles (c. 495-429 BCE) was in charge. Perikles gave a memorial speech Epitafios logos in 430 BCE. I wrote about it before. In that speech he made a rhetorical combination of the concepts of open society, democracy, freedom and equality. Athens was at the peak of its power, having won all the wars. Like Herodotos, Perikles linked those successes to the new form of government.
Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighbouring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favours the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book, or belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace.
If we turn to our military policy, there also we differ from our antagonists. We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality; trusting less in system and policy than to the native spirit of our citizens; while in education, where our rivals from their very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness, at Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger.
We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for, unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and, instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all. Again, in our enterprises we present the singular spectacle of daring and deliberation, each carried to its highest point, and both united in the same persons; although usually decision is the fruit of ignorance, hesitation of reflection. But the palm of courage will surely be adjudged most justly to those, who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger. In generosity we are equally singular, acquiring our friends by conferring, not by receiving, favours. Yet, of course, the doer of the favour is the firmer friend of the two, in order by continued kindness to keep the recipient in his debt; while the debtor feels less keenly from the very consciousness that the return he makes will be a payment, not a free gift. And it is only the Athenians, who, fearless of consequences, confer their benefits not from calculations of expediency, but in the confidence of liberality.
In short, I say that as a city we are the school of Hellas, while I doubt if the world can produce a man who, where he has only himself to depend upon, is equal to so many emergencies, and graced by so happy a versatility, as the Athenian.
— Perikles, Epitafios logos (ca. 430 BCE), as noted by Thoukydides, Istoria tou Peloponnisiakou polemo (5th century BCE)
The Athenians will have experienced it as a feel-good speech. But the opinions were mixed. Oligarchy still had many supporters, who made themselves heard especially at setbacks. Not all battles were won, and direct democracy was at times disconcertingly messy.
Hence, fifty years later, Plato did not care much for democracy, freedom and equality. Freedom he identified with lawlessness and debauchery; equality stood for disorder. People are not equal, he argued; it is better if people know their place and do what they are best suited to do. Regimes should not be judged by the degree of freedom citizens enjoy, but by reason, virtue, wisdom, temperance, and bravery.
It is not that Plato saw freedom as an inferior value per se, but people cannot handle liberty: they start to misbehave. Government is not strong enough and abuses its position. Democracy degenerates into disorder.
Because of the liberty which reigns there - they have a complete assortment of constitutions; and he who has a mind to establish a state, as we have been doing, must go to a democracy as he would to a bazaar at which they sell them, and pick out the one that suits him; then, when he has made his choice, he may found his state.
And there being no necessity, I said, for you to govern in this state, even if you have the capacity, or to be governed, unless you like, or go to war when the rest go to war, or to be at peace when others are at peace, unless you are so disposed - there being no necessity also, because some law forbids you to hold office or be a juror, that you should not hold office or be a juror, if you have a fancy - is not this a way of life which for the moment is supremely delightful
And is not their humanity to the condemned in some cases quite charming? Have you not observed how, in a democracy, many persons, although they have been sentenced to death or exile, just stay where they are and walk about the world - the gentleman parades like a hero, and nobody sees or cares?
See too, I said, the forgiving spirit of democracy, and the 'don't care' about trifles, and the disregard which she shows of all the fine principles which we solemnly laid down at the foundation of the city - as when we said that, except in the case of some rarely gifted nature, there never will be a good man who has not from his childhood been used to play amid things of beauty and make of them a joy and a study - how grandly does she trample all these fine notions of ours under her feet, never giving a thought to the pursuits which make a statesman, and promoting to honour any one who professes to be the people's friend.
These and other kindred characteristics are proper to democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.
— Plato, Politeia (ca. 381 or 360 BCE)
Plato mainly thought in terms of central control. Everyone fulfils their social role, order must be enforced.
How order could emerge by itself by letting things take their course would not be described until 2,000 years later by Adam Smith and Charles Darwin. But Aristoteles (384-322 BCE) already had his suspicions in that direction. He saw that nature took its course in freedom. An enormous diversity of species could coexist. Individuals can experiment; there are different ways to adapt to the circumstances. Just watch how it turns out. People could learn from each other, also from each other's mistakes. It might lead to disorder, but order can also arise by itself.
In his book Politika (350 BCE), Aristoteles pointed out that democratic liberty does not only consist of political liberty and equality (isonomia). Free people should also be able to live as they please, as he saw in Athens. Athenians in his time could trade, choose their own profession, choose their own temple. Even foreigners and slaves enjoyed more freedom than was usual at the time.
Roman rights
The Romans often spoke of liberty. They even had a special goddess for it, Libertas. (The Greeks had one too, by the way: Eleutheria.) But what did freedom mean to a Roman?
In the Roman Empire, freedom mainly meant being a free man, not a slave. You were free if your choices were not determined by someone else. This freedom was not self-evident for a Roman. The Romans believed that such freedom was only possible in a system of legal rules and a republican constitution. Cicero believed that freedom was only possible when people lived according to the principle of liberalitas: a noble and generous attitude to life. For Cicero and Seneca, liberalitas stood against egoism, which was considered servility. An egoist is a slave to his self-interest, while a liberalist thought bigger. Freedom was only yours if you used it responsibly. But one also had to be able to afford freedom. In practice, only Roman patricians could handle it: only they behaved like gentlemen.
Not every Roman patrician were equally responsible with their privileges. Titus Livius, in his history work Ab urbe condita (1st century BCE), accused young nobles of openly preferring their own licentia to everyone else's libertas. Licentia stood for abuse of their privileged origin. Not that one should be ashamed of one’s privileges, but the Romans were well aware of the tension of a class society with equal freedom for all.
For the Romans, liberty also meant: the absence of tyranny. That was not about individual liberty, but about the Roman people as a whole. Rhetorically, this contradiction had great power. You could win over the people by warning against the tyrannic enemy and by advocating liberty. But who the tyrant was, and what freedom, that's could be in dispute. When Cicero, a relatively liberal thinker in his day, fell into disgrace, he was banished. His villa was destroyed, and a temple was built on its spot by his political rival. A temple, so that Cicero could not reclaim his piece of land in the unlikely event of his return. That temple was - oh irony - dedicated to the goddess Libertas.
Political opponents accused each other of tyrannical ambitions. But everyone agreed on one thing: foreign domination was tyranny or slavery anyway. In that sense, an independent, republican Rome was equivalent to liberty.
The average Roman was sceptical of a democracy as it had prevailed in Athens:
If the people have the greatest power, and everything is decided according to their authority, then this is called liberty ('libertas'), but in reality it is the absence of self-control ('licentia').
Cicero, De re publica (54-51 BC)
According to the leading elite, the best form of government was a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy:
Enough power in the magistrates, enough authority with the advice of the leading citizens, and enough freedom for the people.
Cicero, De re publica (54-51 BC)
One of the great innovations of the Roman Empire was its extensive legal system. The development of a legal system is not only an economic and administrative achievement, it also ensures that equal cases are treated equally. In Rome this was really only the case in private law: as long as the government remained out of the picture, Romans had equal rights among themselves. At least, in theory. In practice, there was constant friction between the plebs and the patriciate. A legal ban on marriages between plebeians and patricians caused a stir, but it was enacted anyway. Where the citizen had to deal with state power, Roman law made unashamed distinctions. In practice, as a Roman citizen you could forget about high offices or privileges if you were of humble origin.
Poverty in Rome was common, but largely ignored. Prosperity was the highest attainable, and was connected with a virtuous life. Poverty, then, was the reverse, and a Roman's greatest fear. The poet Martialis described the poor as dogs, Cicero described the poor as "the filth and scum of the city". There was therefore no special attention for poverty: the poor were part of the plebs, and for an average author they were all alike. Charity did occur, but was mainly aimed at members of one's own (higher) class, or for buying political influence. The only substantial redistribution came about in the first century CE: the cura annonae: free grain, and later bread, for the poor. It was mainly intended to prevent revolt in times of famine.
Occasionally, we read about a moral duty to help the less fortunate among Stoics such as Seneca and Gaius Musonius Rufus. It is yet another element of correspondence between the Stoa and early Christianity. The New Testament is loaded with exhortations to help the poor. Roman charity only really got going after the emperors embraced Christianity: the bishops were charged, among other things, with caring for the sick.
A Roman citizen still had more rights than a resident without Roman citizenship. And slaves, of course, had hardly any rights anyway. That all people are categorically equal would surprise a Roman. But a germ of transcending equivalence thinking was present. With regard to slaves, you saw this with Seneca, for example:
Will you remember that that man you call your slave was born of the same seed as you and enjoys the same heaven, breathes the same, lives the same life and dies the same death! You can regard him as freeborn as much as he considers you as a slave.
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistulae morales ad Lucilium (47 CE)
Laws protect against arbitrariness and against the law of the strongest. Cicero in particular also viewed the legal system in natural law terms. Certain rights are inherent in human nature, he thought, and that human nature naturally applied to everyone.
Romans believed in natural law. Some rules of law transcend jurisdiction.
The law which, according to natural reason, applies to all mankind, is followed equally by all peoples, and is called "ius gentium" as the law which is observed by all mankind. Thus the Roman people observe partly their own particular law and partly the general law of all mankind.
— Gaius, Institutiones (ca. 161 CE)
This ius gentium, the law of the peoples, was primarily a theoretical concept. That it existed was not disputed, but what it entailed was not certain. Theoretically, a foreigner could invoke ius gentium, but this did not actually lead to concrete claims.
To sum up: freedom and equality had mainly rhetorical value in the Roman Empire. You had to be able to afford liberty, or it was a concept with a nationalistic political overtone. Rome was fundamentally a class society. Equality gave rise to philosophical musings for the Stoics, but it did not become much more concrete until the Christians took over.
The influence of the Greeks and Romans
Did the Greek and Roman concepts of liberty and equality influence the way we see them today? Insofar as a line can be discovered, it does not run directly.
In any case, our democracy does not originate from Athens. Our democracy is the result of a long development that began in the Middle Ages when monarchs began to consult noblemen, clergy and the bourgeoisie in a fixed composition. The seed of the idea of separation of powers stems from Marsilio da Padova (ca. 1275 – ca. 1342), who also advocated the importance of a separation of church and state and of a States-General. Our democracy has always been indirect, never direct as in Athens. It was only when democracy as we still know it emerged in the 19th century that the myth arose that we had emulated it from the Greeks.
The idea that citizens have inalienable rights that they can invoke against those in power has also gradually emerged, and its origins also date back to the Middle Ages. The idea of a natural right has been assumed continuously since the Romans, but not that people can also derive claims from it.
The idea that citizens should be treated equally in equal cases originates mainly from mediaeval canon law. But that canon law was established with knowledge of Roman law. We owe the idea that all people are of equal value primarily to the Christian tradition.
And finally, the idea that people have the liberty to make their own choices in life, where does that come from? There, too, a line with Antiquity is hardly discernible. We owe it chiefly to the doctrine of free will, which came to fruition in the Middle Ages.
Thus, Athenian and Roman citizens had certain ideals of liberty, and in some respects were entitled to equal treatment. But the characteristic Western emphasis on liberty and equality rights as crucial elements of social justice can hardly be traced back to it. The seed of this aspect of our toleration lies mainly in the Christian, European Middle Ages.
Further reading
Perikles, Epitafios logos (ca. 430 BCE), as noted by Thoukydides, Istoria tou Peloponnisiakou polemo (5th century BCE)
Aristoteles, Politika (350 BCE)
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistulae morales ad Lucilium (47 CE)
Gaius, Institutiones (ca. 161 CE)
Benjamin Constant, De la liberté des Anciens comparée à celle des Modernes (1819)
Kurt Raaflaub, The discovery of freedom in ancient Greece (2004)
Valentina Arena, Libertas and the practice of politics in the late Roman Republic (2012)
Johann Arnason c.s. (ed.), The Greek polis and the invention of democracy (2013)
Malcolm Schofield, Liberty, equality, and authority: a political discourse in the later Roman Republic, in: Dean Hammer (ed.), A companion to Greek democracy and the Roman Republic (2015)
Paul Vallely, Philanthropy, from Aristotle to Zuckerberg (2020)
Jona Lendering, Spijkers op laag water. 50 misvattingen over de Oudheid (2020)
This was the sixth episode in the series about the ancient sources of toleration. Here are the other episodes in this series:
Why we really can't know anything for sure
Classical sources of toleration, part one: epistemology and skepticism. About the doubts of Xenofanes, Plato, Sokrates, Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus, Cicero. And their rediscovery in the Renaissance.
Why we need opposing views
Dialectics and free speech in classical Athens and Rome
Are our moral beliefs just illusions
Moral skepticism between classical Greece and the Enlightenment
Don't let it get to you
How our thinking about toleration is influenced by classical stoicism
Humanitas and forgiveness
Clemency and humanity as a source of toleration. About the biological tendency to forgiveness, the humanity of Cicero, the source of Jesus' forgiveness, and about repentance and retribution.
We don't owe our ideals of liberty and equality to Antiquity
Freedom and equality are quintessential in toleration. And the Greeks and Romans knew them too. But we hardly owe them this source of toleration.
On pragmatic rulers and subjugated nations
Pre-modern despots could be quite tolerant towards conquered peoples. About idols taken hostage, Roman exceptionalism, and the tolerance of Genghis Khan.
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