Abstract

This article reviews George Grote on Plato and Athenian Democracy: A Study in Classical Reception, , by Kyriacos Demetriou. Demetriou's book examines the strong influence of the nineteenth-century English Radical historian George Grote on political and philosophical thought. The review contributes some further points that pertain to the significance of Grote as the foremost and most influential early scholar of Athenian democracy. Before Grote, every Greek history had portrayed the Athenian democracy to a greater or lesser extent as turbulent, factionalised, irrationally swayed by orators, and inconsistent in respect of public policy and justice. It was essential to the liberal project of the early nineteenth century that the only tolerably well documented historical democracy be shown at least not to have been as negative as it was universally represented. Moreover, the city that had condemned Socrates to death scarcely provided a model of enlightened tolerance. It was also essential that the Athenian condemnation of Socrates should be understood, if not forgiven, as an act of reasoned self-defence