The expression ?????????????????????? is used by Thucydides (III. 62. 3) to denote a political system, which differs from both the democracy and the tyrannical rule of a small group of people (????????????????????????????).The notion of isonomia in Athenian sources has an indissoluble connection with the institutions of radical democracy. Nevertheless, in the speech of Theban envoys (427 B.C.) the equality before the law is a characteristic of some kind of oligarchy. It doesn’t mean that Thucydides himself believed that an oligarchy based on equal rights could exist. It seems that the historian wanted to demonstrate that in Boeotia the concept of isonomia had a different meaning than in Athens. In this agrarian region only the well-to-do owners of land were endowed with full and equal political rights.
|
