Jonathan Wright - The Ambassadors - From Ancient Greece to the Nation State

Athenian hegemony was offensive to her rivals. One of the sacred tasks of Greek diplomacy had always been to prevent any one city from becoming unduly powerful. While the comparison may be clumsy and anachronistic, the situation bore some resemblance to that of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Europe, when nations began to strive for a balance of power. Just as the great European states would frown at the pugnacity of Louis XIV’s France so, centuries earlier, the Greeks had acted upon their resentment of Athens and, led by the Spartans, inaugurated the great Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC). By its end, Athens’ dominance had been shattered and her empire all but dismantled. The city states of Greece embarked upon yet more decades of destructive feuding, marked by periods of Spartan and then Theban dominance, but most of all by political chaos.

To the north, in 359 BC, Philip II ascended to the throne of Macedon. With consummate timing (peppered with bribery and assassination) he set about spreading Macedonian influence across a confused, divided Greece, conquering lands and amassing tributaries (many of them former Athenian allies). It was now the turn of Athens to grumble at the rise of an overambitious rival, and it fell to Demosthenes, the greatest orator of antiquity, to articulate his city’s mounting trepidation.

In a speech before the senate in 351 BC, Demosthenes lambasted the arrogance of Philip II, and the indolence of the Athenians who sat inactive as Philip was ‘casting his net around us’. He was now ‘drunk with the magnitude of his achievements and dreams of further triumphs when, elated by his success, he sees that there is none to bar his way’.

Demosthenes had a simple solution: Athens should recall its glorious past, cast off the marks of infamy and cowardice and raise new and mightier armies to fend off the Macedonian assault. 4 Many of his fellow Athenians were less hawkish. They thought it wiser to negotiate with Philip, and so it was that Demosthenes found himself a reluctant member of an embassy to Macedonia in 346 BC.

Athenian diplomacy was remarkably transparent. Tactics were debated in political assemblies before embassies actually set out, and negotiations (usually a series of set speeches and replies) were generally conducted in public meetings, although, as so often in the history of diplomacy, it was common for more private discussions between ambassadors and ministers to carry on behind the scenes. If agreement was reached there would be a formal exchange of oaths, and terms would be engraved on stone tablets. If the news was especially important, copies of such tablets would be displayed beyond the territories of the states most directly involved. After Athens and Sparta reached an accord in 421 BC, copies of the treaty were set up at both Olympia and Delphi.

Given its importance, Greek diplomacy was astonishingly extemporaneous. There was no notion of a distinct arm of government dedicated to foreign affairs, nor of a permanent diplomatic establishment. Men were simply chosen for ambassadorial errands – usually bearing the title of angelos (messenger) or presbeis (envoy or elder) – as and when the need arose. There was scant financial reward, and envoys – typically drawn (as in many cultures) from the political classes – were obliged to bear all the expenses of their retinues, although service as an ambassador did tend to enhance a politician’s reputation. There were few successful Athenian statesmen who had not, at one time or another, carried out diplomatic missions. Demosthenes, by the end of his career, would be a veteran of missions to Thebes and the Peloponnese as well as to Macedon.

Greek diplomacy was also riddled with dissent. Unwilling to trust important errands to individuals, Athens generally favoured the larger embassy, of three, five or ten men. Although envoys were furnished with specific, detailed instructions, the potential for bickering between them was a perennial danger. Within the embassy of 346 BC, Demosthenes was predictably hostile to Philip, insisting that any agreement with Macedon would have to be in the Athenians’ best interests; stringent conditions would have to be met before any treaty could be ratified. Some of his colleagues, notably the orator Aeschines, were more sympathetic to the Macedonian cause, and Demosthenes believed they were willing to give way on too many important points of negotiation. Some sources report that the rival factions even refused to sleep under the same roof during their journey. Upon returning to Athens, a furious Demosthenes charged some of his fellow ambassadors with receiving bribes from the Macedonian king.

One of the accused, Aeschines, sought to counter this threat by launching his own attack on the man expected to lead the prosecution: the politician Timarchus. If he could damage Timarchus’s reputation sufficiently, then Aeschines’ own trial would, at the very least, be postponed. Aeschines opted for a spectacular strategy, accusing Timarchus of having been a gay prostitute. One of the most sensational jury trials in the ancient world would reveal, all at once, how seriously the Greeks took the business of embassy, and just how vulnerable their diplomacy was to the selfish machinations of individual ambassadors. Beyond all that, it furnished an extraordinarily intimate example of an ancient ambassador desperately struggling for political survival.

The workings of Athenian justice, if we are to believe the comic playwright Aristophanes, were dangerously addictive. His scurrilous play The Wasps tells the story of Philocleon, who spends all his days serving on juries. He revels in the authority this bestows, enjoying the pathetic spectacle of defendants pleading for mercy ‘Is there any creature on earth more blessed, more feared and petted from day to day, or that leads a happier, pleasanter life’ than a juror, he asks? Some defendants ‘vow they are needy…and over their poverty wail and whine, some tell us a legend of days gone by, or a joke from Aesop…to make me laugh, that so I may doff my terrible rage.’ And when the ‘piteous bleating’ is over, he can return home ‘with my fee in my wallet’, to be greeted by his doting daughter and ‘my dear little wife [who] sets on the board nice manchets of bread in a tempting array’.

His son Bdelycleon fears for Philocleon’s sanity and locks him in the family home. His fellow jurors, dressed as a chorus of wasps, stage a rescue attempt and, although Bdelycleon manages to rout them in a debate, Philocleon’s addiction is not so easy defeated. To ease his father’s discomfort, Bdelycleon sets up a makeshift court and, for want of any human reprobates, the family dog is brought to trial for stealing a piece of Sicilian cheese. The creature is only saved by some trickery on Bdelycleon’s part, whereby Philocleon unwittingly votes for acquittal. Devastated – he had never previously found a defendant not guilty – Philocleon ends the play by getting hopelessly drunk. 5

The reality of Greek jurisprudence was rather more decorous, but Aristophanes had one thing exactly right: Athenian juries were gloriously powerful. In an attempt to check bribery, they were made up of hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of members, drawn by lot. Even the wealthiest citizen, so it was supposed, lacked the resources to corrupt that many individuals. At trial, a water-clock was set in motion, and defendants and plaintiffs – who habitually represented themselves – would both make lengthy speeches, cite the relevant laws, and call their witnesses. There was no judge (as we would understand the term) to coordinate proceedings, monitor objections, or offer summations. Success rested solely on whether or not a speaker had been persuasive; eloquence was everything.