| Preface | xiii |
| Abbreviations | xv |
| Introduction: Why Dissent? Why Athens? | 3 |
Chapter 1 | The Problem of Dissent: Criticism as Contest | 14 |
A. | Beginning at a Dead End: Ps.-Xenophon Political Regime of the Athenians | 14 |
1. | Democracy as Demotic Self-Interest | 16 |
2. | Public Pleasures and Private Perversity | 20 |
3. | What Is to Be Done? Ps.-Xenophon's aporia | 23 |
B. | Dissident Texts and Their Democratic Contexts | 27 |
1. | Critical versus Democratic Discourse | 28 |
2. | Democratic Knowledge | 33 |
3. | J. L. Austin and Performative Political Speech | 36 |
4. | Why Democracy Begets Dissent | 39 |
C. | The Company of Athenian Critics | 41 |
1. | A Competitive Community of Interpretation | 43 |
2. | Immanent versus Rejectionist Critics? | 48 |
Chapter 2 | Public Speech and Brute Fact: Thucydides | 52 |
A. | Subject and Author | 52 |
1. | Historical Knowledge: erga versus logoi | 53 |
2. | Three Models of State Power: The "Archaeology" | 63 |
3. | Human Nature: Individual and Collective Interests | 67 |
4. | Stasis at Epidamnus | 70 |
B. | Justice and Interest I: The Corcyra/Corinth Debate | 72 |
C. | Leadership in Democratic Athens | 79 |
1. | Themistocles and the Value of Foresight | 79 |
2. | Pericles' First Assembly Speech | 81 |
3. | The Fragility of Greatness: Funeral Oration of Pericles | 83 |
4. | The Last Days of Pericles | 89 |
D. | Justice and Interest II: The Mytilenean Debate | 94 |
E. | Disastrous Consensus: The Sicilian Debate | 104 |
1. | Speeches of Nicias and Alcibiades | 107 |
2. | Aftermath and Assessment | 113 |
Chapter 3 | Essence and Enactment: Aristophanes Ecclesiazusae | 122 |
A. | Comic Theater as Political Criticism | 122 |
1. | The Comic Poet and His Critical Genre | 123 |
2. | A Retreat from Politics? | 126 |
B. | Plot and Structure | 128 |
C. | Persuasion and Enactment | 134 |
1. | Nature versus Political Culture | 135 |
2. | Persuasion versus Perception | 140 |
3. | Violence and the Law | 142 |
4. | Nomos and psephisma: Old and New | 145 |
D. | Equality and Exclusivity | 147 |
Chapter 4 | Justice, Knowledge, Power: Plato Apology, Crito, Gorgias, Republic | 156 |
A. | Plato and Socrates in Athens | 156 |
1. | Modern Contextualist Readings | 156 |
2. | Toward Political Philosophy: The Seventh Letter | 162 |
B. | Gadfly Ethics | 165 |
1. | Doing Good: Apology | 166 |
2. | Not Doing Harm: Crito | 179 |
3. | A Socratic Code of Ethical Criticism | 184 |
C. | In Dubious Battle: Gorgias | 190 |
1. | Gorgias versus Apology and Crito | 191 |
2. | Citizen Socrates | 193 |
3. | Callicles and Erotic Proportions | 197 |
4. | Socrates' Political techne | 206 |
D. | A Polis Founded in Speech: Republic | 214 |
1. | Setting the Stage | 215 |
2. | Founding "Logopolis" | 218 |
3. | Obedience Training: The Education of the Guards | 223 |
4. | From logos to ergon: Philosopher-Rulers | 232 |
5. | Republic versus Apology and Crito | 240 |
Chapter 5 | Eloquence, Leadership, Memory: Isocrates Antidosis and Areopagiticus | 248 |
A. | A Rhetorician among the Critics | 248 |
B. | Isocrates' Verbal Monument to Himself: Antidosis | 256 |
1. | A Novel Oration and Its Imagined Audience | 257 |
2. | Isocrates' Mimesis of Socrates | 260 |
3. | Great Men in the Democratic Polis | 264 |
4. | Timotheus and the Impossible Priority of praxis | 268 |
5. | The Corruption of Language | 273 |
C. | Restoring the politeia: Areopagiticus | 277 |
1. | Demokratia Redefined | 278 |
2. | Dodging the Oligarchic Tarbrush | 280 |
3. | Hierarchy, Patronage, and Oversight | 282 |
D. | The Rhetorician and the Democracy | 286 |
Chapter 6 | Political Animals, Actual Citizens, and the Best Possible Polis: Aristotle Politics | 290 |
A. | Aristotle in and out of Athens | 290 |
1. | The Politics in Its Fourth-Century Context | 291 |
2. | Final Democracy | 293 |
B. | The Natural Polis: Political Animals and Others | 295 |
1. | Problems of Exclusion | 301 |
2. | Regimes and Citizens | 310 |
C. | Who Should Rule the Polis? | 316 |
1. | Oligarchy versus Democracy (Politics 3.8-10) | 316 |
2. | Aristocracy versus Democracy (Politics 3.11-13) | 319 |
3. | Democracy/Aristocracy versus Monarchy (Politics 3.15) | 324 |
D. | Political Sociology and Its Limits | 328 |
1. | Economic Class as an Analytic Category | 330 |
2. | Types of Democracy | 332 |
E. | The Best Possible Polis | 339 |
1. | Potential Citizens = Actual Citizens | 340 |
2. | National Character and the Role of Kingship | 342 |
3. | Slave Laborers and the Economics of eudaimonia | 344 |
4. | The Macedonian Solution | 347 |
Chapter 7 | The Dialectics of Dissent: Criticism as Dialogue | 352 |
A. | An Arbitrator among the Critics: Ps.-Aristotle Political Regime of the Athenians | 352 |
1. | Correct and Final Democracy? | 352 |
2. | Seizing the Middle Ground | 356 |
3. | The Duty of the Good Citizen | 360 |
B. | Theophrastus' "Oligarchic Man" and the Paradox of Intellectualism | 364 |
C. | The Power of Ideas? Toward a Critical Democratic Discourse | 369 |
| Bibliography | 375 |
| Index Locorum | 403 |
| General Index | 409 |