(in italiano: substack.com/@mimmo3/no…)

In Ancient Greece, as long as the landowners elite was perceived as essential both to the prosperity of the polis (its economy was basically agricultural) and to its defense (only landowners could afford the weapons and the training to duel in battle), the Law of the strongest prevailed, that is, of the anax, the richest, strongest and most charismatic of its warriors, with the démos (this is how I name in my essays those who are not part of the elite) in a subordinate position from a legal, social and cultural point of view.

Everything changed with the foundation of the colonies and the invention of the phalanx:

1) the colonies saw their poleis flourish thanks to craftmanship and trade and soon the most capable of the démos rivalled in wealth (and therefore competed in influence and power) with the old landowners elite, marginalising it;

2) the phalanx (which requires more discipline than training as well as simple and relatively inexpensive weapons) opened up the possibility for the wealthy of the démos to contribute to the defence of their polis, making the duel obsolete and then marginalizing the role of warriors.

The growing contribution to the prosperity and to the defense of the polis, pushed the demos to demand more and more rights.

For example, from the judicial point of view, from the Law of the strongest exercised by the anax, the polis first moved to a collegial management of justice (judging according to custom and therefore with wide margins of discretion) and then it charged super partes personalities with drafting a legislative corpus of guarantee, establishing the certainty of the law (the definition of what is a crime and the related punishments). So, it is no coincidence that its first legislator was Zaleucus (VII BC) in the polis of Epizephyrian Locris, a colony in Magna Graecia, of course.

This is more or less the content of my last post in short:

If "Historia est magista vitae", what does this story teach us?

To me, that to keep the demos subdued, since always the elite use fear to be perceived key for the community, starting from its defense. At the time especially against the political-economic-military threats of the raids of warriors from landowners elites of other poleis hunting for slaves (the main workforce of that era). Textbook example are Helots subjugated by the Spartans to make them their workers and servants so that they could dedicate themselves full time to military training.

Now let's ask ourselves: when (the elite of) Athens freed Helots, did it for some form of justice or just to force the Spartans to pick up the hoe again, no longer have them as competitors, and be free to promote their own commercial interests?

And, therefore, consequently let us ask ourselves: when today our elite periodically declare (direct or indirect) wars to the bad guy of the moment, do it for some form of justice or just to promote their own commercial interests?

And finally let's ask ourselves: did the ancient Greeks really need champions (rich and ambitious people among them) to emancipate themselves? And what about us today?

N.B. The post is in Italian, but it is taken from a book I later summarized in another one also in English, from which I take some of my posts I publish every first day of the month (e.g., ilmondochevorrei.substa… where I speak about logic, ideologies and propaganda). Therefore, in the next future I will cover the topic in a complete (although synthetic) way in English, too. Meanwhile, if you know someone who speaks my language and might be interested in the subject, feel free to forward him my new post. Thanks.