La dÃ(c)mocratie contre les experts

426 PHOENIX Xenophon (Anab. 7.1.27). Both round numbers are taken from speeches in works of history. In view of the number of estimates, ancient and modern, that underlie Pritchard’s calculations, the exactness of his answers is illusory. Whilst it would have been tedious to emphasize repeatedly how difficult it is to calculate costs precisely or to include every possible item of expenditure, he often gives the impression of knowing what was spent down to the last drachma. The claim, for example, that “the entire program of polissponsored festivals cost 100 t. 3,231 dr.” (49) cannot be literally true. It would be more realistic here and elsewhere to offer rounded estimates. One final question is whether campaigns in the fourth century were fully funded. Pritchard assumes that pay for naval service in the 370s can be calculated at a standard daily rate. But this was a period when finances were stretched, and some of the cost may have been borne, willingly or not, by Athens’ allies and others, rather than the Athenians themselves. Pritchard has written an important book on Athenian public finances. More interesting than the debates he claims to have settled, however, are the new debates that it can be expected to open, not only about how much the Athenians actually spent, but also about the principles and processes which shaped their financial decision-making. York University Jeremy Trevett La d emocratie contre les experts : Les esclaves publics en GrÁ ece ancienne. By Paulin Ismard. Paris: Seuil (L’univers historique). 2015. Pp. 274. In this remarkable book, Ismard uses Greek public slaves as a means for rethinking slavery, the repertoire of social and legal statuses of ancient Greece, and the nature of Greek politics and the state. Ancient historians are fond of Orlando Patterson’s definition of slavery as the violent domination of dishonoured persons. The link between slavery and dishonour is evident, but public slaves raise some very difficult problems for this ahistorical generalisation. Slaves of the Athenian boule, for example, were honoured with first seats (prohedria) in the theatre of Dionysus, assembly decrees honoured long-serving public slaves, and public slaves served as priests. While public slaves were unthinkable in many New World slave societies, Ismard’s is the first study of ancient slavery to take account of comparative evidence beyond the Americas, and the result is highly profitable. The book is written in a vivid manner that joins together highly disparate pieces of evidence, from the practically unique use of a single public slave in Athens, Georgia, through the bogeyman expression “man of Tenedos” for a public slave bearing an axe, to the Ethiopian royal slave who was the first pagan to be baptised. The book begins with an archaeology of Greek public servants in the archaic period, exploring the status of Homeric demiourgoi, archaic hired specialists, and the emergence of public slavery. Ismard discusses in detail the multiplicity of roles played by Greek public slaves: bureaucrats and scribes, coin-testers, policemen and guards, artisans and unskilled labourers. Analysis of the roles of public slaves is effectively used as a means of re-examining how ancient Greeks conceived politics. Ismard’s approach is inspired by the anthropologist Pierre Clastres, who explored how non-state societies develop a range of practices in order to avoid the development of the state as an independent power apparatus. While the function of every complex community requires certain kinds of knowledge, democracies like Athens conceived of politics as the exchange of information BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 427 among equal citizens and refused to accord to experts a separate prominent position in their political institutions. The decision to turn over the administration of public affairs to public slaves had a double effect: on the one hand, it made administration invisible in Greek conceptions of politics, and on the other, by entrusting administration to slaves, it guarded against the emergence of a state apparatus with its own interests and agendas. While judges, policemen, and top-class civil servants are entrenched interest groups in modern societies, the slave status of their ancient equivalents placed serious limits on their ability to act independently. Nevertheless, independent action was a possibility, as Ismard

Political science · Politics · Publics · Sociology · Classical Antiquity Studies · History · Law