Freedom has long been associated with democratic Athens as an ideology that led to specific practices. As one metric of comparing political systems, this has proved fruitful for evaluating, praising, and critiquing ancient democracy. In Athens, the citizen was the locus of freedom. As freedom to do “whatever one wishes” is linked to power, the latter should also be found at the level of the individual citizen.Footnote ¹ The central concern of positive freedom is, after all, “what, or who, is the source of control?” or, in other words, “who or what is in power?”Footnote ² The study of power provides a related view of what underpins Athenian citizenship. In this chapter, I propose that just as democratic freedom began with free individuals, so, too, was the power structure of the city connected to the power of individuals. I intend to use this basic premise to unpack the way Athenians thought about power in both the private and public spheres. Athenian democracy’s radical conception of freedom entailed a redefinition of power by sharing it among individuals.

In examining Athenian power, I am largely interested in the evaluative context for the concept of power.Footnote ³ Do citizens have power, and in what spheres, in classical Athens? How was power ideologically distributed among the individual, the group, and the law at Athens? Since a central tension of Athenian democracy is between individual authority and collective action, a study of individual and collective power is useful for understanding the reconciliation between the two.

Exploring the terminology of power and drawing on theories of power, this chapter clarifies the conception and role of power in democratic citizenship. What does power mean in Athens and how is it deployed? First, I argue that the word kurios (κύριος) is a significant power term, and employ it as a fruitful philological starting point. Using the terminology of power from the theorists Morriss and Lukes, I sketch out general features of kurios in opposition to other terms (Section 4.1). The uses of the term kurios in practical and moral contexts indicate its broader association with ideas about power for Athenians. Focusing on kurios in order to analyze how the power engendered by positive freedom was expressed at the individual level, I argue that power inhered within Athenian citizenship in both the institutional and the ideological sense (Section 4.2). The role of the household ho kurios (ὁ κύριος) functioned as a conceptual metaphor that structured notions of power throughout the city. Rather than a top-down power of absolute domination, empowerment was represented as a potentially unstable quality shared among many kurioi (Section 4.3). In the public realm, individual citizens, the demos as a whole, and the laws could all be considered kurioi (Section 4.4). The precarity of the balance of power between the various entities is most obviously manifest in the courtroom, where conflicts become accentuated and institutionalized. Examining legal disputes through the lens of power, I elucidate the imagined threat that lawbreakers presented to the city and to citizens’ own empowerment (Section 4.5). The careful orchestration of conflicts illuminates how all the powerful entities in Athens ideally functioned as a complementary whole through a shared concept of power (Section 4.6).

4.1 Searching for Power: Kurios

“Power” is not a monolithic concept. The range of power, the relationship between potential powerholders, and the use of power are not necessarily transparent when we say someone “has power” or “is in power.” Rather than begin with a particular conception of power and set out to discover it in the ancient evidence, I aim to investigate the contours of power appropriate for a citizen in a democratic polis as understood by the Athenians. There may be multiple ancient conceptions of power, both competing and complementary, just as moderns may point to both the power of a dictator and the power of the judge and make different normative and positive judgments about what “power” indicates in each context.

The best data we have for defining power for the Athenians is language. By identifying the vocabulary of power, we can get at the underlying concept of power and the Athenians’ experience thereof.Footnote ⁴ In Greek, the closest term for a broad notion of power that crosses public-private and individual-corporate distinctions is the adjective kurios and its related family of words, which provide the philological basis for my inquiry into the notion of power for Athenians. Other contenders, one may argue, are δύναμαι/δυνατός and κρατέω/κράτος. First, δύναμαι and its family of words: these words do in fact often refer to power that may be applicable to citizens but just as often denote natural or basic abilities, such as the power of the senses, the ability to walk, physical strength, or the “power” to be acted upon, such as of oil to be flammable (s.v. δύναμαι LSJ Ι.1, δυνατός LSJ I.1; Arist. Metaph. IX. 1046a). Its opposite, ἀδύνατος, is, accordingly, used for the physically disabled. While δύναμις and the like can indicate the power to accomplish a certain action, and δύνατος may be used for the upper, ruling class (s.v. LSJ I.3), they do not typically refer to power exerted over others. The family of κρατέω/κράτος likewise begins at the physical (“to be strong” s.v. κρατέω) and, inversely, is extrapolated mostly to a domination over others (s.v. LSJ I–II). These two families of words tend toward physical domination or abilities and are only occasionally used in political applications.

One great exception to the absence of political applications, of course, is the word dēmokratia itself.Footnote ⁵ Ober has argued that the suffix -kratia indicates power in the sense of a “demos’ collective capacity to do things in the public realm, to make things happen” as opposed to a monopoly of office.Footnote ⁶ In this way, democracy differs from monarchy or oligarchy where the regime is defined by the number of people who hold office or who “rule,” designated by the suffix -archia. Ober’s reading emphasizes that while kratos as “power” can include “domination” or “rule,” as a suffix for a regime type it “becomes power in the sense of strength, enablement, or ‘capacity to do things.’”Footnote ⁷ Cammack has recently challenged his reading.Footnote ⁸ Finding physical domination at the core of kratos, she interprets it as a quality that “inhered in the dominant agent at a particular moment in time. In that respect it exactly resembled physical superiority, as revealed in battle or other such moment of trial.”Footnote ⁹ The dēmos, in her view, gained kratos power by their physical superiority, but developed their power into legitimate authority or kuros power (the abstract noun she uses for kurios).Footnote ¹⁰ Although contradictory to some degree, both Ober’s and Cammack’s views have much to recommend them.Footnote ¹¹ While I am ultimately persuaded by Ober’s “capacity to do things” interpretation, the commonly used physical and dominating aspects of kratos present a problem for deciphering the “people’s power” with the word demokratia alone.Footnote ¹² As Ober himself notes, he cannot unequivocally eliminate the counterargument, like Cammack’s, that the terms that bear the -kratia suffix indicate domination.Footnote ¹³ Certainly, kratos as “capacity” lies at the edges of the word’s usual meanings. The limitation of kratos for understanding power at Athens is not only these competing aspects of kratos, but the lack of regular use of kratos for features of the polis more broadly. Neither the institutions nor the citizens of Athens are routinely described as having kratos.Footnote ¹⁴

The word kurios, by contrast, is applied to several areas, entities, and structures within Athens, such as people, laws, and the courts.Footnote ¹⁵ The very range of its uses and meanings increases its interest as an object of inquiry. As with kratos, the abstract noun (κυριεία or the shortened κυρία) does not appear often. In uses of kurios, power is thus most naturally a quality of an agent, or a disposition, rather than an abstract concept that someone possesses. This quality indicates that one can purposely accomplish certain outcomes, explicit in its construction with a complementary infinitive or participle.Footnote ¹⁶ For instance, while in the field during the Peloponnesian War, the Spartan King Agis is described by Thucydides as “kurios to send troops to wherever he pleased” (κύριος ἦν καὶ ἀποστέλλειν εἴ ποί τινα ἐβούλετο στρατιὰν, Thuc. 8.5.3). At this point in the war, Agis is stationed in Dekeleia and has been approached by both Lesbos and Euboia for aid in their revolts from Athens. Agis chooses to send help to Lesbos. The explicit inclusion of “wherever he wishes” underscores the aspect of choice in being kurios; in this case, his decision is unbounded. The sense of power as achieving an outcome is particularly well illustrated when the result is an altogether external effect. When the infinitive has a different subject than the person that is kurios, this particular use necessitates an understanding of the person who is kurios as having ability to cause a certain outcome. For example, in Book IV of Plato’s Republic, when discussing where all the virtues are located in the city, Socrates says we would find courage in the soldiers, not others, since “I don’t think that its other citizens being cowardly or brave would be kurioi to cause the city itself to be either one quality or the other” (Οὐ γὰρ οἶμαι, εἶπον, οἵ γε ἄλλοι ἐν αὐτῇ ἢ δειλοὶ ἢ ἀνδρεῖοι ὄντες κύριοι ἂν εἶεν ἢ τοίαν αὐτὴν εἶναι ἢ τοίαν, 429b). The sense of causation is located in the adjective itself. These uses point to the condition of successfully accomplishing a desired outcome as associated with the quality kurios.

Kurios, however, is quite often found with an objective genitive appearing to mean having power over something.Footnote ¹⁷ The LSJ cites Zeus paradigmatically as “kurios of all” (ὁ πάντων κύριος, Pind. Isthm. 5.53). What might the analysis of power be in these cases? The genitive objects of kurios may be people, abstract nouns, or objects. Overall, the use of kurios with a genitive has been analyzed as “dominating power over,” but it also permits a more basic analysis of power as “power to.” Power over people is itself a subset of power to act. That is, the outcome achieved in these formulations is restricting another person’s behavior by circumscribing their options or directly motivating their actions. With abstract nouns or physical objects, the genitive effectively defines the sphere in which one may effect outcomes. For Zeus, it is “all,” but for mortals it may be one domain.Footnote ¹⁸ Since some of its uses can be analyzed by both power over and power to act, kurios allows an open inquiry into what features of power are found among the different empowered entities, not limiting us to dominating power or physical power.

A few uses of kurios further distinguish it from other power terms and situate it as a useful hermeneutic for deciphering the conception of citizen power. As a substantive, ho kurios denoted the head of an oikos (household) and referred to his abilities in the private and public spheres as its representative. As we shall see, this institutional role is important in both private and public contexts and can thus help shape the account of Athenian power. Furthermore, kurios is used explicitly in political and legal contexts. It is applied to aspects of the political machinery in general. For instance, it describes the position of the laws and decrees over the whole constitution (e.g., “the verdict is determined by the laws and by those who voted, who together are kurioi over the whole constitution,” ὑπὸ τε τοῦ νόμου κατακέκριται ὑπὸ τε τῶν ψηφισαμένων, οἳ κύριοι πάσης τῆς πολιτείας εἰσιν, Antiph. 3.1.1). It defines the power of various arms of government to effect certain kinds of actions in certain spheres.Footnote ¹⁹ The dēmos itself is also understood as properly kurios in a democracy; indeed, for the people to be kurios is the most basic definition of democracy. Aristotle claims “now in every case the citizen-body of a state is kurios; the citizen-body is the constitution. Thus in democracies the people are kurios” (κύριον μὲν γὰρ πανταχοῦ τὸ πολίτευμα τῆς πόλεως, πολίτευμα δ᾽ ἐστὶν ἡ πολιτεία. λέγω δ᾽ οἷον ἐν μὲν ταῖς δημοκρατίαις κύριος ὁ δῆμος, Pol. 1278b10–2).Footnote ²⁰ His view is not idiosyncratic; the dēmos as kurios is often referred to as a key feature of democracy.Footnote ²¹ For instance, Demosthenes deploys the pairing in a self-referential analysis of Athenian democracy as a place where the people are emphatically kurios, in contrast to Sparta, where a man may become a master (δεσπότης) when he joins the Gerousia and vies to be kurios over the rest (20.107). In fact, the term kurios as of late has received some special interest because of its ubiquity in describing the dēmos and institutional bodies in Athens. As Lane has convincingly demonstrated, the “idea of the popular dēmos as kurios, and of a specifically democratic political sense of kurios, arises in fourth-century Greek discourse.”Footnote ²² Thus, the political species of power is specifically expressed through kurios alongside its other uses.

There are also formal, legal uses of kurios that include its application to documents and processes.Footnote ²³ When modifying legal entities, as well as wills, adoptions, and other legal arrangements, there is a tendency to translate the word as “competent,” “supreme,” or “valid.”Footnote ²⁴ But these translations misrepresent the underlying notion of power in the term. While a document cannot have intention and thus cannot be “empowered” in the sense that a human can, some element of similarity is present in the use of the same term. These uses, referring to objects, may be seen as metaphorical or as expressing the volition of the agent of its production. A will, for example, if it is kurios, brings about certain outcomes as willed by its testator. More than a trite descriptor of governmental function (i.e., a particular law being simply “valid” or a governing body being “competent”), these applications show that power as expressed by kurios is a central organizational feature of the political and legal sphere in Athens.

Several uses of kurios when applied to laws exploit its denotation as “powerful,” indicating that it is not a dead signifier or simply a colorless, technical term. The use of the comparative form of kurios supports the idea that it is a marker of power. For example, by the fourth century Demosthenes claims that his opponent knows that:

As an example of the usual translations, Harris has chosen here to render the comparative (kuriōteron) as “to prevail over.”Footnote ²⁵ Although he often uses “valid,” “in force,” or “in effect” for kurios, the comparative of those would be awkward and border on the nonsensical. With “to prevail over,” he instead gives a more particular flavor than his default translation. However, the passage illustrates that decrees and laws may both share the designation kurios, albeit with a hierarchy.Footnote ²⁶ Other terms that applied to laws, namely ὑπάρχων (“existing”) and κείμενος (“established”), could signify simply “being current.”Footnote ²⁷ Kurios, then, had a distinct connotation, as can be seen from the way it is coupled with these participles in order to underscore the laws’ power rather than their simple existence. Not every instance of kurios needs to be translated identically or have the same exact connotations for the argument to hold. Combined with the broad political uses, these examples show that a sense of power was a central feature of kurios.

What kind of power does kurios designate? In the realm of contemporary social science, many power theories have restricted the conversation about power to the “power over” aspect. Generally, this view formulates power as A’s ability to get B to do something B would not otherwise do.Footnote ²⁸ Variations on this definition include changing the requirement that it be against B’s will, considering B’s interest, de/emphasizing whether the exercise of power was successful, or softening the directness of A’s control. The sliding scale of power may vary from a sense of “domination” to “influence.”Footnote ²⁹ At the core, “power over” signifies one entity’s capacity to control another. In thinking about political or social systems and potential oppression, this view of power as covert or overt domination certainly makes sense, but it limits our appreciation of the power spectrum. Both Morriss and Lukes have in fact given logical priority to the conception of the power to act and have argued that power is a dispositional property.Footnote ³⁰ In their understanding, power is the ability to effect a significant outcome which would not otherwise occur. The broader notion of power to act may effectively encompass power over others but is not limited to defining power solely as power over others, or domination.

This approach aligns with the range of meanings found in kurios and provides a theoretical framework for analyzing competing claims to power. The uses with the infinitive and the manifold applications of the term kurios resist interpretation solely as domination. Turning to uses of kurios requires us to look to a conception of power that includes a productive aspect. As opposed to coercion-based definitions of power, power in this light has the benefit of uncovering the productive aspect of power in individuals, which may be otherwise hidden, and aligns with uses of the vocabulary applied to private and public life in Athens. It may also expose lack of power in situations where individuals do not appear to be impinged upon by the rule of others, and yet are still prohibited from effecting their desires.Footnote ³¹ Rather than only looking for instances where there is domination of another, analyzing the kurios vocabulary deployed to describe individuals, state bodies, and the laws, and then parsing out what central notion drives them, underscores a productive idea of power within the polis. Kurios thus allows us to approach Athenian thought via an underutilized avenue.Footnote ³²

Power as a disposition likewise provides analytic opportunities. As a disposition, power need not be exercised to be effective, and covert uses of power may be just as effective as overt ones. Within this framework, Lukes has drawn a distinction between operative and effective power.Footnote ³³ Someone’s power is operative if it is sufficient to bring about an outcome but cannot be shown in the end to have made a difference. When a deployment of power is effective, it alone can be determined to have altered the otherwise natural course of events. The ability to construct a counterfactual may be taken as evidence that power was effective: if person A had not done X, result Y would not have occurred. These counterfactuals are easier to perceive when conflict erupts and, thus, power becomes overt. While this scheme was developed as a means primarily to analyze political power, it can still be useful to think with in describing events in Athens, where the public and private spheres are less readily and cleanly divided.

Kurios will act as the focal point in my excavation of power in Athenian democracy. The language of contemporary power theories will be used not to limit our perception of the ancient conception but to help describe phenomena as evidenced by Athenian terminology. Next, I shall trace the link between being kurios and being a citizen, both to show how the notion is as central to citizenship as freedom and to provide a framework from which to identify the qualities of power.

4.2 The Link to Citizenship

The importance of being kurios in Athens has mostly been relegated to the question of what state entities are empowered over which others.Footnote ³⁴ In other words, the question of who is kurios or how something is kurios has been used as a means to divide the government into branches and decide which is sovereign. In his accustomed approach of asking specific constitutional questions, Hansen queries,

From the opening question, his replies assume that the word kurios would immediately conjure up institutional connotations, ultimately leading to the Assembly or courts as sovereign in the city, even when the pragmatic subject would more naturally be a person. However, if asked simply “Who is kurios?” an ordinary adult male citizen would likely reply, “I am.” As an adult male citizen, he was kurios of his household and himself. By starting our investigation with the individual citizen as kurios, instead of state entities, we can interrogate what being kurios, or empowered, indicates before applying it to the political structure of the city. In this model, the citizen as ho kurios of his household retains his primacy and reconnects the structure of the oikos to that of the polis.

The connection between empowerment (kurios) and citizenship is emphasized as early as Solon’s pre-democratic reforms. The immutable distinction between free and slave is the fundamental division in the democratic state, which separates citizens from noncitizens and establishes equality among citizens. The indignity of not controlling one’s own person and the consequent importance of a citizen’s right to do so is expressed from the elemental beginnings of Athenian citizenship: Solon’s law forbidding the sale of citizens into slavery codifies the autonomy and sanctity of the citizen’s body.Footnote ³⁶ As discussed in Chapter 2, this partially expresses a negative freedom, since it places a limit on the powers over one’s body, but it also establishes a citizen’s inherent mastery over himself rather than having a master.Footnote ³⁷ Being one’s own master is a form of positive freedom, on one side of the coin, and is a form of power on the other. The ban on citizen enslavement in this way assigns the attribute “empowered over self” to citizenship as part and parcel of “free.” The convergence of these ideas underlies the meaning of democratic freedom and power and, consequently, the navigation of membership in the dēmos.

Furthermore, Solon’s reforms defining the oikos strengthened the position of the head of household, or ho kurios, and concomitantly institutionalized the position of those citizens as hoi kurioi of households. The laws governing illegitimate children, or nothoi (νόθοι), illustrate the connection between citizens as kurioi at home and in the city. After Solon’s reforms, a nothos lost his standing in the oikos and polis. He was no longer considered part of a citizen’s kin within the right of succession (ἡ ἀγχιστεία) and accordingly did not maintain full membership in the oikos, inherit, nor continue as the kurios of a citizen household.Footnote ³⁸ The illegitimate child was no longer a citizen.Footnote ³⁹ In contrast to citizens, who were kurioi in both spheres, nothoi could not entirely share in the private sphere of their familial oikos nor in the public sphere of the polis. For instance, Solon gave the head of the household the right to devolve his property to anyone he wished if he lacked legitimate heirs or to adopt an heir. Footnote ⁴⁰ Nothoi, however, were not eligible for adoption by any citizen.Footnote ⁴¹ While these regulations established state control in new ways over the household, it also underscored the connection between oikos and polis and ho kurios’ role in both. The same citizenship that guaranteed one’s position as kurios in the household made one kurios in the public sphere. The exclusion of illegitimate children from both the private and public realms epitomizes the correlation of statuses in each. After the democratic reforms changed the political landscape further, citizen empowerment only grew in the public sphere while remaining linked to individual status. Linguistically, this was expressed by the application of kurios beyond citizens to the dēmos, laws, and institutional bodies. The institutional and legal uses are already found in the fifth century, and the practice becomes widespread in the fourth.Footnote ⁴²

As a simple adjective, kurios did not exclusively apply to citizens. The adjective “free” (eleutheros), a multivalent word dependent on context, provides a useful parallel. While there were plenty of free resident foreigners in Athens, they were excluded from citizenship.Footnote ⁴³ Although these metics could not convert their free status into political capital or citizen identity because they did not share descent, the perception of democratic citizenship as united by free status, versus aristocratic lineage or a wealth class, was still paramount. As free status became a protected feature of citizenship, along with the development of citizen identity and civic freedom, a narrow meaning of eleutheros specifically denoting citizens existed alongside the wider sense of personal status.Footnote ⁴⁴ The Athenian ideology of freedom as a necessary condition for equality and political power was not incompatible with free metics’ limited status.Footnote ⁴⁵ Likewise, I propose kurios had a wider meaning associated with general empowerment, in which metics and nothoi could participate (such as ownership of moveable property), and a narrower meaning which signaled citizen identity: the citizen as kurios in the oikos and in the public sphere.Footnote ⁴⁶ Being kurios in a particular circumstance did not automatically transfer to a set of political rights for metics, just as they were technically of free status and that did not translate into political rights. For citizens, however, one’s status as kurios was as integral a part of citizenship dignity as freedom or equality.Footnote ⁴⁷

The default status of a citizen as kurios is best seen by comparison to his opposite, the slave. Slave status is typically contrasted by scholars to free status. While this is a valid contrast, a slave is also diametrically opposed to someone who is kurios; the concept of being kurios is already logically entailed as part of the free-slave division.Footnote ⁴⁸ An adult male citizen, as a free person, would be kurios over himself. A free minor would have an adult as kurios over him. This separates the free person from a slave, who, antithetically, has a master (δεσπότης) and is not kurios, even over himself.Footnote ⁴⁹ Thus, emancipation can be expressed as becoming kurios over oneself.Footnote ⁵⁰ Embodiment, when it comes to a slave, does not provide a legitimate claim to exercise power even in regards to one’s own self. As Olson has shown, the slave in the ideal household is an extension of the will of his master.Footnote ⁵¹ Likewise, Aristotle’s discussion of slavery corroborates this view at the theoretical level. In his opinion, slaves are a possession and a “living tool” (Pol. 1254a14–7, b32).Footnote ⁵² Instruments, like things, do not have ends of their own.Footnote ⁵³ A kurios, then, is not a slave; he does not have a master, and is instead kurios over himself.Footnote ⁵⁴ Ideologically, the slave and the kurios represent opposing ends on the spectrum of the ability to accomplish one’s desires.

The double valence of kurios, both as a status term in contrast to slavery and as a politically charged term, is encapsulated in Aristotle’s Politics. In his review of Athenian lawgivers, Aristotle identifies Solon as giving the dēmos the minimal amount of power required for their freedom by granting them the election and review of magistrates. Without the people being kurios over these privileges, Aristotle claims, they would be enslaved to the ruling class (μηδὲ γὰρ τούτου κύριος ὢν ὁ δῆμος δοῦλος ἂν εἴη, Pol. 1274a17–8).Footnote ⁵⁵ Here, being kurios is contrasted to metaphorical enslavement in the political sphere. At the minimum, then, a citizen insofar as he is free must be, and always is, his own kurios, which assumes a private and public significance. His power attends upon his ability to accomplish “whatever he wishes.” The evolution of “free” as more than a personal status into political freedom accorded exclusively to citizens is accompanied by an elevation of being kurios along with it.

The connection between empowerment and citizenship is taken for granted by the fourth-century orators. In a passage from Demosthenes’ Against Meidias (21), Demosthenes uses the relationship between being a citizen and being kurios in the service of his defamation of Meidias. Demosthenes alleges that Meidias was not truly a citizen but a foreigner purchased as a child who had surreptitiously gained citizenship. He claims that Meidias “has become kurios over goods to which he has no claim,” and abuses those privileges (τῶν οὐ προσηκόντων ἀγαθῶν κύριος γεγονώς, 21.150). Meidias, by pretending to be a citizen in Athens, has gained power (κύριος γεγονώς) over what does not pertain to him (οὐ προσηκόντων) as a non-Athenian, namely participation in the polis. Whether he actually is a covert foreigner or not is beside the point. Demosthenes deploys the connection between becoming a citizen and becoming kurios over a certain set of things, indicating that the status comes with power across a set of spheres.

In practical respects, a citizen is assumed to be kurios in a host of ways. He can become akuros, disempowered, but only in unusual situations. In effect, these circumstances are the exceptions which prove the rule that citizens, just as they were free, were normally considered kurios. In a description of a man imprisoned on the grounds that he was caught in the act of seduction, he is said to become kurios over himself again (αὐτὸς αὑτοῦ κύριος, [Dem.] 59.66) once he is released from imprisonment.Footnote ⁵⁶ A free man should be his own kurios, but he is not so while imprisoned. In a more technical sense, the ability to make a will, first granted to citizens by Solon as part of strengthening the position of the household kurios, is part of being kurios. The substance of the law is found in the speech Against Stephanos II, after the speaker reiterates that a citizen is able to contract a will under normal circumstances. Yet when he is under duress, whether from a woman, illness, insanity, or another cause, “the laws command that he be akuros” (ἄκυρον κελεύουσιν εἶναι οἱ νόμοι, [Dem.] 46.16). This is clearly meant to be the atypical situation.Footnote ⁵⁷ In other words, a citizen should be kurios, in this case to bequeath property, but when his autonomy is questionable, he is disempowered (akuros). The speaker does not need to explain the specific circumstances of when he is allowed to do so, since that is the routine state of affairs.

The principle of power is further expressed in the concept of legal responsibility and the age of majority. In the charged prosecution speech Against Timarchos (1), Aeschines refers to social and legal assumptions about age and responsibility. The speech treats a scrutiny of rhetors (δοκιμασία τῶν ῥητόρων) and revolves around Timarchos’ alleged prostitution, which if true would render him ineligible to exercise certain citizen rights. In a section regarding laws protecting citizen boys, he cites the statute that makes the kurios who prostitutes an underage boy legally liable to indictment rather than the boy himself (1.13, 18). Only once the boy is enrolled as an adult in the citizen list does the law regarding prostitution apply to him (18).Footnote ⁵⁸ Likewise, in a later exposition of the various laws related to the relationships between lovers and beloved, Aeschines maintains that the pursuit of boys in general is not illegal nor socially unacceptable, although “so long as the boy is not his own kurios and incapable of judging who is really well-disposed to him and who is not, [the lawgiver] makes the lover be self-controlled” (ἀκύρου … καὶ ἀδυνάτου ἔτι ὄντος κρῖναι τὸν ὄντως εὔνουν καὶ μή, τὸν ἐρῶντα σωφρονίζει, 139). Akuros, translated here as technically “not his own kurios,” also has the sense of disempowerment, since he is unable to make his own decisions. As a minor, the boy is not yet his own master, but has an external kurios. Before that point, he is neither ho kurios of a household nor even kurios of himself.Footnote ⁵⁹ In this way, minors do not have the necessary power to take action nor to be responsible in the private and public spaces of the city. Thus, power is attached to citizens differently depending on age. In creating this distinction, Athenians are considering power in a moral context, that is, to determine responsibility.Footnote ⁶⁰ Power to act is what makes one accountable and is the default state for the adult male citizen expressed by kurios.

Citizens were identified in practical and ideological ways as kurios with effects in the private and public arenas. This identification began to take shape with the pre-democratic Solonian protection of freedom for citizens. Freedom entailed being one’s own master, initially as a personal status (whereby a free man has no master) and extended by the democracy to a political status (whereby citizens are not ruled by others). For a citizen, to be kurios comprises both the state of self-rule and the power to act. The various uses of the adjective kurios in political and legal contexts points to an overlapping concept of power connected linguistically under the term kurios. Athenian ideas about power, then, can usefully be examined by attending to the uses of kurios. Investigating how Athenians conceived of power as expressed by the word kurios will lead us to a fuller understanding of the individual citizen’s role in the polis and his place in overarching power relations.

4.3 Qualities of Power

What does it mean to be powerful in a practical sense to an Athenian citizen? That is, if power is the ability to effect significant outcomes, what counts as significant? Is his power in the public sphere and private sphere distinct? How was power typically and regularly experienced by Athenian citizens? In what ways was power secured and how was it challenged? The citizen’s role as ho kurios of the household can provide a framework for assessing the definition of power and for making progress on answering these questions. Each adult male citizen was not only kurios over himself by default, but also in the specific substantivized form: he was ho kurios of a household. This was an institutionalized and shared experience among adult male citizens. A useful approach for unpacking the complexities of his role comes from field theory, whereby, in our case, a citizen is understood as an actor in various fields comprising the public and private areas of Athenian life.Footnote ⁶¹ The institution of the kurios likewise crossed several fields. The rules of this institution can indicate what the general parameters, rules, and normative beliefs were concerning who could be in power and how they could use it. Just as freedom in the democratic context can be extrapolated from personal status to political status, so, too, can the idea of having authority or power at the personal, household level be brought to bear on the level of the polis.

The head of an oikos not only controlled the incentive structures of his household dependents but was also able to act in the oikos and in the polis as a function of his status. That very capacity is underscored by his title as ho kurios, but it was not unlimited in scope. The two spheres are formally linked by the fact that ho kurios was also the legal representative of the oikos. This legal responsibility institutionally bridges the gap of any private-public divide. Moreover, the kurios would have been acknowledged as such in the eyes of other kurioi, which ideologically validated his power in both spheres.

The division between public and private was not deeply cleaved, and the two were in fact considered connected in many ways, including regarding one’s status as kurios. Aeschines, in the speech Against Timarchos (1), connects the dual aspect of the power designated by kurios to attack both Timarchos’ character and his fitness to participate as a citizen in Athens. Timarchos’ mismanagement of his inheritance, a prosecutable offense in itself, is among the allegations.Footnote ⁶² Aeschines summarizes his version of the events: Timarchos’ father died while he was underage, and so he and his estate had guardians (τῶν ἐπιτρόπων, 1.103), but once he came of age and was a full citizen, he became kurios of his property and promptly depleted it (κύριος ἐγένετο τῆς οὐσίας … τήν τε οὐσίαν ἠφάνισε, 1.103). Having established Timarchos as kurios, the proper status for a citizen, Aeschines can count Timarchos as responsible for his actions. Aeschines then relates his misuse of his status as kurios in his oikos to his role in the public sphere:

Just as he had power over his patrimony (τῆς οὐσίας in the objective genitive, 103), so, too, does he have power over the things of the state (ὅσων again in the genitive, 106).Footnote ⁶⁴ What parts of the state has he become kurios over? The list includes offices by lot,Footnote ⁶⁵ offices by election,Footnote ⁶⁶ and juridical activity.Footnote ⁶⁷ Aeschines also implies that acquitting Timarchos will allow him to continue his activities in the Assembly (112), indicating that participation in the Assembly was logically included under the rubric of the common possessions (κοινά) one might be kurios over. From this list, one can see that regular citizen activity in various arms of the civic and legal systems is the sort of thing in which citizens can exercise power. Individual citizens are kurios over various public activities just as they are kurios over their household and patrimony.

Theoretical writings in the fourth century also linked the structure of the oikos to that of the polis.Footnote ⁶⁸ In Xenophon’s Oikonomikos, Ischomachos reports telling his wife that she must run the household like a city, in particular considering herself a guardian of the laws in the household, and so act like a commander, the Council, and a queen.Footnote ⁶⁹ More theoretically, in Plato’s Statesman, the stranger reduces the skills of the statesman, master, and householder to the same type of knowledge (ἐπιστήμη, 258e–259c). Although Aristotle suggests that the difference between household rule and political rule is one of kind and not degree (Pol. 1252a7–16), even he grants that household and public realms inform each other. He famously describes the oikos as the fundamental building block of the polis (Pol. 1252b9–31). Each oikos is in turn constituted by the relationships between people. The most basic partnerships that create a household are male-female and master-slave. As envisioned by Aristotle, these are fundamentally power relationships between the adult male citizen and the others in his oikos. While master-slave is clearly a despotic power relation, the connection between husband and wife is described as statesman-like (πολιτικῶς) rule over the female, and the interaction of the father with children is described as kingly (βασιλικῶς) rule (1259a39–b1). Since the oikos is the foundation of the city, and relationships form the oikos, these power relationships, then, constitute the city to some degree. The fact that these types of conversations were current in classical Athens attests to a popular analogy between the household and the city.Footnote ⁷⁰ While the power of the kurios initially appears bound up with the oikos, then, his public role and the terms’ transferability to other contexts indicate that the technical role of head of household spanned both spheres. The tight parallelism between political activity and household management suggests that power and its exercise were understood as analogous in each sphere. Thus, the power of ho kurios of an oikos gives insight into the deployment of power in both realms.

The overarching relationship between the kurios’ role in the public and private domains may be understood as a conceptual metaphor. As Lakoff and Johnson have shown, people tend to comprehend more abstract concepts metaphorically through more easily delineated concepts.Footnote ⁷¹ That is, the more concrete, experiential “Gestalt” is what structures the more abstract concept; in our case, the position of the citizen as kurios over himself and his oikos gives structure to his role as kurios in the overall polis.Footnote ⁷² The metaphor is alive in the sense that is lived: how people experience a defined concept is determined in part through the defining metaphor. Each application of the metaphor, however, need not activate the full structure of the defining concept. Only some parts of the defining concept may be used to define the other domain, while other parts may be left unused.Footnote ⁷³ That is, the structuring need only be partial. Adumbrating the overall features of the household ho kurios provides a basis from which to investigate what features were brought to bear on the public domain.

The various translations proposed for the household kurios, such as “lord,” “master,” and “guardian,” testify to the type of power most scholars have ascribed to the role.Footnote ⁷⁴ The common thread that binds the translations together is the fundamental idea of “having power over,” albeit in different degrees.Footnote ⁷⁵ The kurios certainly had power over his household. His power extended over the people, both free and unfree, and the property in it. As discussed in Section 4.1, however, this social analysis of power can be complemented by an outcome-based analysis. Taking into account the power to act, rather than only power over, provides a more holistic view of power that corresponds more closely with the institution of kurieia. Let us consider each of the kurios’ household relationships in turn.

The relationship between the kurios and the free children of his household is one power relation. Minors, including males, had restrictions in their exercise of citizenship.Footnote ⁷⁶ Unlike adult males, they were not yet their own kurioi. Accordingly, they could not represent themselves in court, participate in an Assembly meeting, draw up legal contracts larger than a certain amount, or be legally responsible for certain infractions. Aristotle pinpoints the undeveloped deliberative faculty as the essentially deficient element in a minor (τὸ βουλευτικόν … ἀτελές, Pol. 1260a12–4), and thus considers them “incomplete” (ἀτελεῖς) citizens who are more suited to being ruled rather than ruling (1275a14–9, 1278a4–6). While a minor’s father would technically be his kurios, indicated by the specific substantive use of the adjective with the article (ho kurios), other adult males could also be referred to as kurios over the boy, such as older brothers, uncles, and teachers.Footnote ⁷⁷ The presence of “teachers” on the list points to a feature of the concept of power. The others, as male relatives, could be replacements for a deceased father as ho kurios, but the inclusion of a nonfamilial adult signifies that the term also carried a general power-connotation outside of the formal kurios-system. The power so indicated admits of being shared between several kurioi.

The other free member of the household was the man’s wife. An Athenian woman was notoriously required to have a kurios for her entire life. Women reveal the complications in using the head of household as a theoretical model for citizen power. Some scholars have argued that women were not truly citizens, since they could not participate in any aspect of the political or legal sphere in Athens and since the feminine form of the Greek word for citizen (ἡ πολῖτις) is scantily attested.Footnote ⁷⁸ In defense of female citizenship, other scholars have argued for a broader understanding of sharing in the ancient polis beyond what moderns consider direct political activity.Footnote ⁷⁹ They variously point to women’s key role in producing citizens, owning real estate, participation in religious cults, legal protections, and the use of different terms for female citizen (such as ἀστή or Ἀττική), as evidence of their citizenship. Additionally, after 451/0, a child’s citizenship depended on the lineage of both parents, clearly further institutionalizing the importance of women as citizens.Footnote ⁸⁰ If ho kurios represents various aspects of the natural power associated with citizenship, how far can a citizen woman be said to be powerful, kuria, since she can never be ho kurios? While the household kurios serves as our paradigm for power, it does not exhaust the possibility of power. Instead, it is our basis for understanding other forms of power, particularly as indicated by the adjective kurios.

Furthermore, since women were identified with this particular privileged group, that is, citizens, they were mutatis mutandis associated with group ideology. While no woman could be kuria to act in the Assembly, for example, it does not follow that women were considered powerless. Their status as citizens granted them a measure of power in contrast to comparable groups, such as metic women. Although it is not common, we do occasionally see citizen women directly called kuria in the context of property ownership and inheritance.Footnote ⁸¹ The ability to own and alienate property, especially real estate, though limited, is an important feature of citizenship that women share with male citizens. Since the term is directly associated with the household kurios, it seems unsurprising that we seldom find the adjective kuria used to describe a woman. Otherwise, it would seem to imply that she was her own kurios, a legal impossibility. Women additionally appear as de facto heads of households when their husbands have died or are away at war.Footnote ⁸² This is not to claim that women were on equal footing with men or that they were not marginalized, but rather to acknowledge the power they did have.

While the authority of the kurios over women has otherwise been treated in great detail, I am interested here in seeing what the kurios’ power over a woman can tell us about power structures in general.Footnote ⁸³ Her natal kurios was her father or next closest adult male agnate. Once she married, she was under the kurieia of her husband, but she was not entirely severed from the power of her natal kurios. While the former was responsible for daily upkeep, such as management of her dowry and representation in court, the latter seems to have retained some amount of power. The husband could not, for example, give her in marriage to another man while he was still alive, a privilege reserved for the natal kurios.Footnote ⁸⁴ The natal kurios could even sue for divorce, a process called ἀφαίρεσις, possibly even without the woman’s consent.Footnote ⁸⁵ This shows that a kurios’ power was not absolute, but that he was part of potentially overlapping spheres of power.Footnote ⁸⁶

There was the possibility of conflict between the different kurioi, yet there is no indication that in the normal course of things this made the husband or father conceptually less kurios.Footnote ⁸⁷ Leaving aside for the moment the question of compatibility of ends for each kurios, we can at minimum infer from this that being kurios was not in all cases absolute, and yet there was not a sense of diminished power or dignity for either kurios. In the language of Lukes, we might imagine these as overlapping spheres of operative power. Parsing out whether and when each was effective may be an unusual issue, and ideally not intended to arise. To ask whether each man’s power was deficient or defective insofar as the other one had authority is to misunderstand an important aspect of the power indicated by kurios.Footnote ⁸⁸ Instead, we should take this as evidence that power was amenable to being shared.

The natural limits on the power of the kurios over his free dependents are in contrast to his power as a despotēs, whose power was absolute.Footnote ⁸⁹ A slave is a distinct member of the oikos in that he alone is also under the power of the kurios in his capacity as despotēs. As master, he had complete control over his slave’s body, movement, labor, property, and status, while a kurios did not have absolute control in all those areas over his free dependents. The master also did not share this power with others. If he sold his slave, for example, he did not keep any residual rights, as the slave was now the property of another. Despotic power was practically and ideologically distinct from other types of power. Absolute power was thus conceivable for Athenians, but not considered a fundamental or even desirable element of the power essential to a citizen as kurios when in relation to other kurioi.

The anxiety present in the relationship of the master with his slaves can shed light on the unstable nature of even the most institutionally protected and socially rigid type of power. Vlassopoulos sees the slave-master relation as “the constant negotiation of [a] relationship of power.”Footnote ⁹⁰ Aristophanic comedies exploit this potential instability. In the Knights, for example, the Paphlagonian slave is constantly attempting to undermine his master, Dēmos, by appropriating the benefits that should be his master’s: he eats the best bits of food and drinks all the wine. The slave is not subverting the despotēs by wielding absolute power over his master, but by taking advantage of his benefits. The slave, in other words, is acting like the kurios of the household by assuming the disposition of power and successfully effecting his own desired outcomes. The worry exposed here is not merely that the master is duped and his possessions are being used up, but, as Olson puts it, “the danger is that the tables will be turned and he will become a slave of his own slaves … in which case most of the benefits that ought to come to him will go to others instead.”Footnote ⁹¹ Although the head of the household as despotēs has the most firm institutional power over his slaves, the fear of reversal is ever present. The Aristophanic jokes allow for a type of practical power divorced from legitimate power. While the slave technically has no institutionalized power, the threat is that in the practical context he may still be empowered by acting as the kurios.Footnote ⁹² Even the absolute power of the master can be challenged in this way by an effective act of power. The power of a kurios, shared in some legitimate cases, may be threatened and must be protected by performance of effective power.

Let us look, finally, at the relationship of a kurios and his property, for this, too, expresses a type of power. We may consider this field the economic order of the city-state. The head of the household was responsible for the family estate. He became kurios over his own inheritance and in some sense his wife’s dowry.Footnote ⁹³ While ho kurios was empowered to sell assets, invest, and otherwise manage the property, it was not without limits.Footnote ⁹⁴ The estate as a whole was considered the property of future generations, and the possibility of a public suit against a profligate kurios codifies that idea into law.Footnote ⁹⁵ The law also restricted to whom a man could bequeath ancestral property. If he already had heirs, he was not allowed to adopt or to leave the property to others by means of his will.Footnote ⁹⁶ Similarly, the dowry was not truly “his” in an unqualified sense, nor was it solely “hers.” It, too, was protected for progeny, but the female party retained a significant claim on it. In the event of a divorce, the dowry returned with her to her former household. If she died before bearing heirs, the dowry returned to her familial home.Footnote ⁹⁷ If the husband was thought to be squandering his wife’s dowry, she or her natal kurios could file for divorce. Thus, in the normal course of events, there seem to be layers of individuals with operative powers at work regarding property, which may not be immediately apparent when all sides are in general consent. However, the kurios’ power could be challenged, wherein he might not be able to effect what he wishes regarding property, revealing the levels of operative power that might normally be hidden.

In what sense, then, was the kurios actually kurios of his property and the dowry? We are hard pressed to call this “ownership,” since implied in “ownership” is the ability to dispense of goods and property as one sees fit. In Athens, beyond the social pressures to manage property in particular ways, the laws regarding dowries and estates legally limited what we colloquially mean by “ownership.”Footnote ⁹⁸ Scholars have suggested concepts ranging from “limited power of disposition” to “stewardship” to express Athenian ideas about ownership.Footnote ⁹⁹ All of these definitions move away from describing the kurios’ power as an absolute idea toward describing it as a more flexible, shared capacity. He could not unilaterally effect outcomes regarding all his property. Although the objects under his power are different, this is not unlike the relationship between the kurios and his free dependents.

The study of the relationship of the kurios to his dependents and property reveals various characteristics of power. Someone who is kurios has power to act on his will in both public and private realms; he can hold power over slaves, free people, and objects; he does not, however, have completely free rein or unlimited power to effect outcomes. He routinely shares power to some degree with others, and may even find his status challenged. The power of the kurios includes both power to and power over, but neither aspect is entirely absolute. We can derive from this well-attested institution these general features of a citizen’s power and trace how far they structure the conception of power in the public sphere.

4.4 Empowered Entities

Moving from the oikos into the polis, I turn now to the use of kurios in the public realm of the law courts to uncover who is considered empowered and the descriptions of that power. Several empowered entities are at play in the juridical context. The citizen is empowered in the polis just as he is in the oikos. The main human entities referred to as kurios in forensic speeches are the dikasts, the dēmos, and the litigants. The status of the various individuals as citizens anchors their ability to be kurios in the public realm. Inanimate objects, such as laws and decrees, are also referred to as kurios.

Speakers frequently call attention to the power of the jury in their speeches. For example, in a peroration for a defense speech, the defendant pleads with the jury to help him, “since the matter has come before your judgment and you are kurioi” (ἐπειδὴ τὸ πρᾶγμα εἰς ὑμᾶς ἀφῖκται καὶ ὑμεῖς κύριοι γεγόνατε, Isae. 2.47).Footnote ¹⁰⁰ The distinct outcome that dikasts have power to effect may be made explicit by the addition of an infinitive (e.g., “you are kurios to decide who should be the heir,” ὑμᾶς τοῦ κυρίους γενέσθαι ὅντινα δεῖ κληρονόμον καταστήσασθαι, Isae. 6.4).Footnote ¹⁰¹ They are also seen as kurios over the people in the courtroom and over the vote. The defendant’s submission to the people’s power is used as evidence of good character and is intended to garner goodwill.Footnote ¹⁰² In Demosthenes’ long letter to the Council and Assembly attempting to get recalled from exile, he reiterates his previous willingness to stand for the charges as evidence of his good character:

Since the jury is composed of citizens, they are already entitled to empowerment. The specific instantiation of citizen power includes the effective power to achieve a verdict in the judicial context, that is, to do “whatever they wish” with the defendant.

The dēmos’ power to judge, legislate, and generally administer the polis further elaborates the power each juror has to effect outcomes as a citizen. Speakers often address the jury directly, using the second-person plural pronoun and reminding them of their power throughout the city.Footnote ¹⁰³ Demosthenes’ On the False Embassy (19) treats the jury paradigmatically. Closing his account of the second embassy to Phillip, Demosthenes addresses the dikasts directly to tell them that they could easily imagine the nature of Aeschines’ actions in Macedon, since the defendant acts so terribly even in Athens where “you are kuriōn to reward and, conversely, to punish” (ὑμῶν … τῶν καὶ τιμῆσαι κυρίων ὄντων καὶ τοὐναντίον κολάσαι, Dem. 19.177). The reference to “you” does not limit them to their present role as dikasts. Rather, the contrast between action abroad and at home indicates that it refers to the control of the polis which is within the dikasts’ capacity as citizens. The fact that he mentions the power to give honors (τιμῆσαι), which are bestowed by either the Council or Assembly, not the courts, indicates that their empowerment is more comprehensive than the narrow dikastic role.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ The jury is, in fact, regularly equated with the Assembly.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ In the peroration of the same speech, he associates the conviction of Aeschines for treason with making clear to Philip that not the few, but “you, the many, are kuriois over everything” (ὑμῖν τοῖς πολλοῖς καὶ πάντων κυρίοις, Dem. 19.341). As is typical, the peroration underscores the various ways a trial will affect the city, citizens, and democracy itself. The reference again to “you” is broader than just the addressees’ role in that particular trial, or as jurors overall. The phrasing activates the extensive power of each dikast qua citizen, the role in which he is “powerful over everything” (πάντων κυρίοις). These kinds of references reiterate the empowered nature of each citizen, both with explicit power to and power over statements.

The insistence on each person’s responsibility emphasizes the individual and his discrete power within the dēmos. While urging the jury to think about the consequences of acquitting Timarchos, who has been accused of illegally exercising citizen rights, Aeschines says,

While the final decision is that of the jury as a whole, it is the individuals that are tallied in the total. By asking “each” person to consider his children, Aeschines zeroes in on the personal level.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ These individuals are the people who are kurioi over the vote. Just as each citizen is free and kurios in the household, so he is equated with being free and kurios in a public capacity.

Bad actors, however, may also be portrayed in prosecution speeches as kurios. While many defendants and their associates are citizens, and accordingly should be kurios, they find themselves in court for extending their power in an inappropriate way.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Their status as kurios can be marked by the prosecution as relevant to their misdeed.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Aristokrates, for example, is indicted for his decree to make the person of Charidemos inviolable. Charidemos was a foreign mercenary leader who was granted citizenship and other honors by the Athenian people, but allegedly did not prove to be a true benefactor to Athens. Demosthenes sets out to prove that Aristokrates’ decree was unconstitutional and undeserved by Charidemos. Since he is enfranchised, Charidemos has a claim to a share in everything citizens have.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ As a citizen, he is now kurios in the polis. Demosthenes aims to show that he is unworthy of this power, and that his status as powerful is a detriment to the city from his misuse. Demosthenes tells the jury,

Since Demosthenes claims he acts badly wherever he has become kurios, he implies that power is a precondition for effective harm. Undeserving of both the positive freedom and the power befitting a citizen, Charidemos abused the privilege by using it against the state that has bestowed it upon him. Both the moral and practical contexts of power are in play, not unlike the coming-of-age examples in Section 4.2.

In the law courts, the other entity commonly categorized as kurios is the law. Since a democratic trope focuses on the law-abiding nature of Athenians and, in a related fashion, how their success is related to the greatness of their laws, it is unsurprising that the laws should be presented as appropriately kurioi.Footnote ¹¹⁰ In fact, kurios is used as the default descriptor for laws that are extant and in force.Footnote ¹¹¹ Kurios in this use is usually rendered as “valid,” “operative,” or “in force,” but the sense of power is also present. Once a law is approved, it only becomes kurios after it takes effect. Diokles’ law, quoted in Demosthenes’ Against Timokrates (24), clearly deploys kurios in this fashion:

Although it may not apply for all, or even most, laws, there is a conceivable intermediary state between when a law is voted upon and when it goes live, so to speak. That moment, however temporary, indicates that there is a separation of the idea of a law as enacted (ἐτέθη), on the one hand, and as effective or empowered (kurios), on the other. While “operative” or “valid” may then be fine technical translations, they lack the color of the term kurios, which indicates a measure of power. The extensive use of kurios points to a conception of the law as powerful once it goes into effect. A law that is kurios is indeed “operative” or “valid” in the sense that it is effective, but it is also “empowered” once it can dictate outcomes. The power of the laws can also be expressly threatened. Cases are often presented as being not just about whether a crime has been committed, but “whether it is necessary that the laws be kurioi” (e.g., εἰ δεῖ κυρίους εἶναι τοὺς νόμους, Dem. 22.46). “Current” would clearly not work here, either in English or in the Greek (ὑπάρχων or κείμενος). A law that is kurios is not, then, simply currently in use, but is understood as having effective power.

Since laws do not have a will, they cannot deliberately effect outcomes in the same way as a person can. They are able, however, to limit or determine the incentive structures for individuals or groups, which the Greek idiomatically refers to as having power over those people (i.e., being kurios). Just like a person, the laws are called kurioi over things and people.Footnote ¹¹³ The law also idiomatically had the power to do things in the public and private spheres; they were spoken of as “ordering” (κελεύει) things to happen or making a person kurios to do certain things himself.Footnote ¹¹⁴ This use of “power” remains a conceptual metaphor, but some of the portions of the defining concept which are used when applied to people are not activated in this use, such as accomplishing a will.

Court speeches highlight public citizen power through their roles as jurors, members of the dēmos, and individuals, along with routinely attributing power to the laws. These different kurioi in the public realm are part of the conceptual metaphor of power and exhibit qualities parallel to the household kurios. By taking seriously the kurios label, we can uncover the qualities of power applied to each and judge their roles as entities involved in power struggles.

4.5 Conflicts

While power may be dispositional and shared, its exercise can give rise to dispute. The site of the law courts inherently designates a context where conflict has arisen between the variously empowered entities, namely, the jury, litigants, and laws. Citizens’ power was called upon to be overtly exercised in these situations because it had been violated. The courtroom, a place of adjudication between these conflicting claims to power, reveals covert power and illuminates who among holders of operative power can claim effective power. Due to the precarious nature of power, someone or something that is kurios is liable to become akuros in these struggles. As we saw in their role in the oikos, kurioi were liable to lose power even though their natural role is to be empowered. These overt exercises of power provided a context wherein the terms of power were openly mediated.

The negotiation of conflict reproduced a social reality where power was held by citizens and so provides a framework for understanding the relationship between individuals and the polis, including the laws.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Litigants, attempting to persuade the jury to vote a certain way, frame their arguments with reference to overarching legal and social norms.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Attending to the attributions of power by means of the term kurios in forensic speeches, we may probe who has power, what the reach of that power is, and whether it is presumed to be desirable or undesirable for them to wield that power. The individual citizen is empowered in and of himself and not just as an impersonal member of the dēmos. Each citizen’s power is taken as a rightful given and, as in the oikos relationships, can be unproblematically shared. The laws can be empowered and also metonymically represent the power of the dēmos. While the power of citizens and the law may be institutionalized, it is also subject to forfeiture in the face of competing and noncomplementary exercises of power. I shall show that citizen power, like the power of the laws, is at stake whenever someone breaks the law. In instances where one person’s power infringes on that of another individual citizen or the dēmos as a whole, his use of power is framed as inappropriate. Thus, because their power comes at the expense of others, criminals should not be kurios.

The precarity of power is evinced by the prosecution’s appeal to jurors to vote in accordance with the laws in order to keep them empowered. For example, Demosthenes writes,

He represents a conviction as voting with the laws and keeping them kurioi, while he associates acquittal with voting against the laws and rendering them all akuroi. This speech is a prosecution against a proposal of an unfitting law (γραφὴ νόμον μὴ ἐπιτήδειον θεῖναι). In this type of case, there is a clear conflict between laws, so it makes sense to speak of one law gaining power at the expense of another. One might argue that an appeal to a special quality of power is unnecessary to explain it. But this trope of associating acquittal with making laws akuroi extends to other types of cases as well. The opening of [Demosthenes’] Against Polykles paradigmatically raises the stakes of the verdict: the case is not just about private matters or public duties, but in fact it also “concerns the laws, whether they are kurioi or not” (περὶ τῶν νόμων, πότερα κύριοί εἰσιν ἢ οὔ, 50.1).Footnote ¹¹⁷ The charge revolves around Polykles’ alleged refusal to complete a liturgy, forcing Apollodoros to extend his own tenure in the position.Footnote ¹¹⁸ In this case, it is not a new law clearly contradicting an old law that causes the loss of power. Instead, the defendant’s illegal actions, if unpunished, are able to render the laws akuroi. A law is not absolutely powerful in itself but must be reaffirmed in the courts to remain in power. Otherwise, it may become akuros.

Preserving the status quo of power is presented as an essential legislative objective. Demosthenes’ speech against the decree honoring Charidemos not only argues that he is unworthy of a gift, but also that the terms of that gift upset the power dynamics in the city. Part of Aristokrates’ decree included a provision that anyone who murders Charidemos would be subject to summary arrest by any citizen. Since typically only family members could prosecute for murder, this provision expands the legally defined kin who may prosecute, and the speaker further interprets the arrest as allowing that person to subject the murderer to whatever retribution he desires rather than submitting him to the proper channels for punishing homicide. The difference, Demosthenes claims, is that:

The passage makes clear that a decree should not disempower the laws, but also reveals the role of the laws in adjudicating between claims to power. When citizens are in conflict, the law must mediate, or else those who should be equally sharing in power are placed in a hierarchy. Aristokrates’ proposal is contrasted with the correct way to legislate, where a proposal gives the honorand the same rights as other Athenians, not more. In this scenario, the other proposers “have allowed your laws about these matters to remain kurious and have respected them because they have granted them privileges by way of reward” (κυρίους μὲν ἐῶντες τοὺς περὶ τούτων ὑπάρχοντας ὑμῖν νόμους, σεμνοὺς δ᾽ ἀποφαίνοντες, οἵ γε ἐν δωρεᾶς ἐποιήσαντο τάξει τὸ τούτων μεταδοῦναι. 23.89). Disturbing the power of the laws is not only the substance of a charge brought against an illegal statute but can also threaten the imagined balance of citizen kurioi in the city.

Prosecutors may also claim that defendants directly disempower citizens. The prosecutor often conceptually divides the empowered citizens in the court room into the defendant and his cronies, on the one side, and the jury, on the other, with which he aligns himself. The jury, insofar as it is the dēmos, is further associated with the laws. The conflation of the jurors and the laws frames the main conflict in court cases as correct citizen power versus incorrect use of power by the defendants. Timokrates’ illegal law, for instance, is not only detrimental to extant statutes, but also makes the courts unpowerful, akura, over a specific realm (Dem. 24.2). If we are hesitant to understand the courts as standing in for the individuals that constitute the jury and Timokrates’ law as standing in for himself, Demosthenes leads us to that specific conclusion:

Timokrates’ law is presented as forcing multiple kurioi, normally coexisting, to become repugnant to each other. In the atypical situations represented in the courts, defendants are portrayed as gaining undue power and undermining the dikasts’ own status as kurioi. As Demosthenes argues in On the False Embassy (19), by rejecting the supporters of bad citizens, the jury can show that those men do not have power over them (ἐπιδείξητε ἀκύρους ὄντας ὑμῶν, 301) despite their current claim to be kurioi over the jurors (νῦν γάρ φασιν εἶναι κύριοι, 301).Footnote ¹²⁰ Convicting overreaching individuals will right the ship again, so that all the other respectable citizens share in power, as is proper.

An example from the symbouletic context illustrates that the framework can be applied in other public contexts outside the courts. In a speech regarding public finances, Demosthenes compares the Athens of the past, where politicians were modest and the city was great, to the current circumstances where the select few have extravagant homes and public expenditures suffer:

The Assembly’s ability to pass decrees notwithstanding, the de facto control of the city by a minority group has disempowered regular citizens.Footnote ¹²² Rather than each citizen being kurios as part of the dēmos and severally enjoying shared benefits with it, he has been demoted to the role of “servant” (ἐν ὑπηρέτου μέρει). His contention is that the leading politicians have become kurioi over what they should not be (“every benefit,” τῶν ἀγαθῶν), specifically at the expense of the dēmos’ status.

Since the power of the laws and the citizenry is deeply connected to democratic values, subverting their power is construed as an attack on democracy proper. Timokrates’ law is linked to antidemocratic practice, not simply because of a legal argument about extant laws, but because of the power dynamics at play:

In addition to contravening the laws, he is puffing himself up with power by devaluing the jury; both are related to acting oligarchically. To be sure, Demosthenes is playing the defendant against the jury. The terms of the opposition, however, are terms of power. Although he may seem to employ logical gymnastics to connect Timokrates’ law to oligarchy, the argument depends on the normative belief that power inheres in citizens and the laws. Demosthenes characterizes oligarchy as a constitution where a few people are empowered (kurios) to undo the past and arrange the future to their liking (ἕκαστος καὶ τὰ πεπραγμένα λῦσαι καὶ περὶ τῶν μελλόντων ἅν αὐτῷ δοκῇ προστάξαι κύριός ἐστιν, 76). In a democracy, by contrast, the laws properly determine the course of future events and the jury is the bedrock of its administration. Timokrates’ crime is placing himself above the laws and above the jurors. Demosthenes in fact directly correlates the dissolution of democracy with the disempowerment of the jury’s verdicts (τὰ δεδικασμένα ἄκυρα ποιεῖν … δήμου κατάλυσις, 152), reminding his audience that the overthrow of democracy in 411 was accomplished through abolishing the suit for illegal proposals (γραφὴ παρανόμων) and so dispossessing the jury of its power (παρανόμων πρῶτον γραφῶν καταλυθεισῶν καὶ τῶν δικαστηρίων ἀκύρων γενομένων, 154).Footnote ¹²³ The actions of the defendants inappropriately establish their own power to the detriment of the jury’s and laws’ power, fundamentally contrary to democratic practice.

Moreover, the threat to the power of the jury may be extended to a threat against the whole conceptual dēmos. As noted (Section 4.4), the dikasts are often referred to in the second person and transcend their juridical role to include their other citizen functions. In some cases, the dēmos is specifically mentioned as undercut by the defendant. This worry is central to Demosthenes’ arguments in Against Leptines (20). He argues that Leptines, through his law prohibiting exemptions from liturgies, is not only implying that those who currently have exemptions are unworthy of the gift but is also taking away the people’s power. In dissecting the text of Leptines’ law, Demosthenes accuses him of unfairly making underserving recipients and the jury (“you”) equals:

The jury is addressed as the dēmos and associated with giving exemptions, a role institutionally reserved for the Assembly. The laws and the citizens should both remain kurioi, in contrast to Leptines’ disempowering proposal. In a democracy, the loss of the dēmos’ power represents a more dire consequence than the cost of a few misguided gifts of exemption. Since each juror is of course a citizen, the prosecution may portray the defendant’s actions as an attack on different aspects of his power, whether as an individual citizen, a member of the jury, or a member of the overall dēmos.

The use of kurios and akuros to describe the laws, defendant, and jury shows that the courts were an arena for power and its contestation. Comparing these uses to those within the framework of the kurios institution in the household, we see similarities in the ideology of power. Namely, since various entities could be simultaneously kurios, the power thus indicated does not seem to be absolute. However, this does not mean that power could not be challenged. Claims to power were not stable. Just as a citizen needed to secure his status as kurios in the private sphere against those who infringed on his power, so, too, were the kurioi at risk of disempowerment in the public sphere, whether citizen, law, or dēmos. A dichotomy between harmful individuals and the power of the dēmos and laws is established as immanent in legal conflicts.

4.6 Individuals and Institutions

While the law and jury versus the defendant are presented as the main disputants by prosecutors, another potential power conflict is also at play. The laws and the jury are portrayed as a harmonious unit to which the defendant should be subordinate. As citizens, the defendant and jury members have equal status within the polis. The jury, and the dēmos too, should be subordinate to the laws. The Athenians were not anarchists, despite what their critics claimed, and so subordination to the laws was a practical necessity that also needed to be accounted for ideologically. How can citizens stay empowered when under the power of the law?

In a state constituted by its citizens, the government was not yet separated into an abstract and oppressive entity. Whether the polis was a “state” is a contentious subject. Hansen has shown that part of the difficulty in categorizing the polis as a “state” or not is that scholars often use conflicting definitions of the state when comparing the ancient and modern examples.Footnote ¹²⁴ If applying a strictly anthropological or historical definition of a phenomenon, a state is a centralized government with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. The Athenian polis, despite allowing self-help in select situations for extracting punishment, appears to qualify.Footnote ¹²⁵ The sticking point, however, tends to be the more robust concept of the modern state, which developed from a post-Hobbesian notion dependent on the concept of sovereignty. On this view, the state is an abstract, sovereign power over both rulers and ruled.Footnote ¹²⁶ The modern state cleaves the community into population and government, with “state” identified strongly with the latter. While the polis could be personified, such as in decrees where the polis itself is the subject of the action, the identification between citizens and government prevented a completely detached abstraction, as the common designation of “the Athenians” for the subject of action implies. Hansen’s nuanced view argues that use of polis as the subject of, for example, passing a law, electing an official, or making a sacrifice does indicate an ancient concept of an abstracted state. Even he allows, however, that in the ancient city-state, and in particular in democratic poleis, “government and citizens largely coincided … and the dominant ideology was that the polis was the people (demos) … In ancient Greece, citizens were proud to say ‘we are the polis.’”Footnote ¹²⁷ In my view, the basic abstraction that allows a polis to be conceived as continuing through generations or as taking an action bears little resemblance to the modern idea of an entirely abstract and detached “unitary, intentional actor, one that rules society as if from without.”Footnote ¹²⁸

Anderson has instead further advanced the conversation by arguing that the concept of the “state” requires a set of modern ontological commitments that simply do not hold in antiquity.Footnote ¹²⁹ One of these commitments is individualism, which “mandates a separation between this self-sustaining ‘(civil) society’ of free, self-actualizing subjects and any corresponding state. While ‘government’ may be necessary to protect rights … it is also by definition a ‘necessary evil,’ since it entails alienating one’s natural freedom to rule oneself to other self-interested individuals, who will inevitably rule for themselves.”Footnote ¹³⁰ Ancient Athenians, on the other hand, considered themselves interdependently bound to their community as constituents of both the polis and oikos.Footnote ¹³¹ In this context, a division between the state and the dēmos or between public and private spheres is incomprehensible. Taking this position, I use “state” in the simple sense to refer to the centralized apparatus of government, with no implication that it is a permanent, abstracted power standing apart from citizens.Footnote ¹³²

Discussions of power and freedom in Athens, however, often appear to rely on a division between “the people” and “the state.” Aristotle, along with other critics, decries the supposed lawlessness of democracy as the outcome of extreme freedom. In doing so, he implicitly creates an opposition between citizen and state.Footnote ¹³³ He goes so far as to assert that the democratic viewpoint sees living under a constitution as analogous to slavery (Pol. 1310a34–6).Footnote ¹³⁴ The antagonism between state and citizen, though, turns on the presumed conflict between the power of the government and the freedom of the individual. In this model, the citizen needs freedom from state interference and the laws function as the restrictive arm of the government. But if democrats viewed laws as slavery, as Aristotle contends, we would expect the same texts that revere freedom to reveal a disdain for the law. On the contrary, democrats constantly affirm their law-abiding nature. The state and the citizen are not perceived as being at odds by democratic sympathizers and, thus, their symbiotic relationship must be rationalized in any account of democratic freedom and power.

A conflict between the law and citizen freedom would point to a paradox in Athenian self-perception. Rather than looking at this issue in terms of freedom, however, I will approach the question of the individual and the state through the lens of power.Footnote ¹³⁵ In this way, I consider not the power of the laws versus individual freedom, but the congruence between the power of the laws and that of the citizen. As we have seen, Athenians did not conceive of effective power as necessarily absolute but considered it a shared disposition of several entities. The relationship between laws and the individual was, then, not merely top-down domination infringing upon the freedom of the individual, but an instance of two sets of kurioi with overlapping spheres of operative power. Each entity supported the others’ power. Ultimately, the primary building block of the democratic constitution was the free, empowered citizen. The citizen must ideologically be the source of power for the state, even if one wishes to relegate the citizen to a lesser importance than the polis as a whole.

The reconciliation of the power of the citizen and the power of the laws rested on the conceptualization of the source of their power. To begin with, the jury, in so far as it is a body constituted by law, was empowered by the laws. In a practical sense, the laws are what created the institution of the dikasteria, regulated its makeup, and so forth. In this way, the laws formally made these citizens play a particular role with particular powers. In the Athenian imaginary, the laws also protected dikastic power. Directly after Demosthenes has accused Timokrates of attempting to make himself and his law powerful at the expense of disempowering the citizenry and democracy in general (24.117, see p. 120), he reminds Timokrates that “laws which are kurioi make these men kurious over everything” (οἱ μὲν ὄντες ἡμῖν κύριοι νόμοι τουτουσὶ ποιοῦσι κυρίους ἁπάντων, 24.118).Footnote ¹³⁶ In this context, the laws undergird the power of the sitting jury.

The laws likewise empower citizens independent of their role as dikasts. For instance, in Against Meidias (21), Demosthenes introduces a former case where the father of an archon placed his hands on another citizen at a festival and was condemned despite his social standing. In the voice of the former prosecutor, he summarizes the successful argument, asking “What power does the law grant you even if you are the archon himself?” (τίνος ἐκ τῶν νόμων εἶ κύριος, καὶ ὁ ἄρχων αὐτός; 21.179). Demosthenes answers with infinitives to show what the citizen is and is not empowered to do (“[The power] to order the attendants to bar him, not to beat him yourself”; τοῖς ὑπηρέταις ἐξείργειν εἰπεῖν, οὐκ αὐτὸς τύπτειν, 21.179). In this passage, the laws give power to accomplish actions, but also deny power. If they do not give the power to strike, by inference they prohibit one from striking. This passage makes clear that the laws make citizens powerful not only qua jurors but also qua citizens. The individual citizen, in private or public capacity, is kurios and the laws appear to be the source of his power.

If the laws are the source of one’s power, it is personally beneficial for one to uphold the law. Thus, focusing on the laws as the source of power is a persuasive tactic in forensic speeches. If the relation were in fact unidirectional, however, the law would have ultimate power, insofar as it grants power to citizens. Therefore, without the laws, citizens would not be kurioi. The laws would then determine the freedom and power of the citizen, rather than the free, powerful citizen being the basis of the state. This would be consistent with democracy’s focus on law but would have severe consequences for the ideology of freedom that begins with the individual citizen. The source of the power of the laws is accordingly based on the citizens. Since statutes are ultimately created by citizens, whether laws by the nomothetai drawn from the jury pool, or decrees by the Assembly, the origin of the laws can be traced to the dēmos.Footnote ¹³⁷ The further resolution of the power held by citizens and the law is exemplified by Aeschines in an appeal to the jurors to convict Timarchos:

We have seen how the power of the laws is at stake in the law courts. Here, the prosecutor places the onus for the law’s survival on the people. The laws will not be kurioi unless the people uphold them. While the laws may bestow power on the dēmos, the dēmos actualizes the power of the laws and protects them from losing their power. Citizens, dependent on the laws for their own power, must reestablish the laws’ power. This creates a closed circuit of power between citizens and the laws.

The negotiation of power between the laws and the people appears as a common trope in the appeal to the jury to uphold the law. Indeed, the jury had some leeway in its rulings.Footnote ¹³⁹ The prosecutor had to prove not only that the defendant was guilty of breaking the law but also that the jury should vote in accordance with the laws. As a consequence, much rhetoric was applied to emphasizing why upholding the law was important for each member of the jury. As discussed, the greatness of the democratic state is attributed to the laws. The jury’s decision is framed in turn as protecting the laws. The locus classicus for a description of this relationship is in Against Meidias, where Demosthenes gives us the most extended and explicit version of this argument.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ I give the entire text of the relevant passage here:

Demosthenes conflates the laws and the jurors to present them as the victims in the suit, since they are both at risk of losing power. Ober’s reading of this speech emphasizes the role of oratory in establishing a truth regime molded by both individual orators and the audience of the collective dēmos.Footnote ¹⁴¹ Meidias, like other criminals who do not act as proper citizens should, needs to be submitted to a trial and conviction. Since he threatens the extant order, “in this situation, discourse must be translated into overt action. It is through the speech of the prosecutor and the subsequent vote of the people gathered as dikastai that the regime is reified … Logos becomes ergon and thus the power of the people is manifested in the life of the citizen.”Footnote ¹⁴² This manifestation is expressed in the quoted passage and in the nature of the relationship between individual, collectivity, and laws. In my reading, I focus on the quality of power itself and how that may be sustained. In the regime of truth, citizens and laws must be powerful, and the symbiosis neatly expressed in Dem. 21.222–4 creates the narrative for that to be the case. Self-preservation entails that each party, the laws and the people, support the other. Demosthenes uses many words for power throughout these sections, but the word kurios specifically at the beginning and the end. What makes the jurors kurioi? The answer is the laws, which in turn gain their strength (ἰσχύς, δύναμις) when those same citizens make them kurioi. Although this particular passage is about the jury as dēmos, based on the connection between citizen identity as kurios in his private and public capacity, the same reasoning pertains to the individual citizens.

Power, then, is neither unidirectional nor exclusive to either the laws or the people. The laws empower the people who empower the laws. This rests on a conception of power as both shareable and constantly negotiated through action. Each citizen, then, has selfish reasons to uphold the law, whether in his own private law-abiding actions or in his actions in the courts, Assembly, or any other public forum: undercutting the law is undercutting one’s own power.Footnote ¹⁴³ At any given moment, we might imagine the citizens and the laws as both having operative power, where effective power may be concealed. When there is conflict, however, and a power struggle erupts in the form of criminal activity, it is the citizens who hold effective power to accomplish their goals: the defendant and the jury are presented as engaged in conflicting claims to that power. The laws’ power is at issue, but its renewal is, in the end, up to the citizens sitting in judgment. Like freedom, power is integral to one’s status as a citizen. Acting in accordance with the law is thus also integral to citizenship and not in conflict with it. Ultimately, the state empowers the citizen, on whom it depends for its own power, and vice versa, in a feedback loop that permits the democratic citizen to both be law-abiding and powerfully free to accomplish his own will.

4.7 Conclusion

As we have seen, the struggles for and affirmations of power are set in the law courts, where legal conflicts force overt performances of power. By tracing the word kurios as a marker of power, and akuros as the lack thereof, the negotiation of power within forensic speeches reveals many of the same facets of power exemplified by the institution of the household kurios. As a position every adult male citizen would have held and recognized in each other, and given the permeability of the private and public spheres, being kurios was conceptually extended from personal power to public power, much like free status was extended with the advent of citizenship. The oikos framework functioned as a metaphor that structured the conception of power. Taking power as a disposition to accomplish outcomes, rather than only equivalent to domination, more capaciously captures the sense of kurios in democratic Athens. Power in this view squares nicely with democracy’s valuation of positive freedom. Notable features of power include its ability to be shared and its unstable nature: whoever acts kurios is kurios. These performances of power are key to the courts, where defendants who have acted inordinately powerful are reframed as threatening the power of other kurioi, namely the laws and the other citizens, by limiting their ability to accomplish a desired result. Since democratic citizens are naturally kurioi and are the basis of the civic and legal systems, the prosecution appeals to the jurors to keep their own power intact by punishing the criminal and upholding the laws.

The consequences of power viewed in this light create a fresh approach to the debates on the rule of law and sovereignty in ancient Athens. The mutually supportive power of the dēmos and the laws is heuristically useful for probing the Athenian position on the rule of law. In an attempt to systematize the definition of the rule of law in both the ancient and the modern context, Forsdyke reduces various definitions down to three main criteria: 1. legal supremacy, 2. legal equality, and 3. legal certainty.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ Scholars who argue against the rule of law in Athens point to sanctioned extralegal justice as militating against legal supremacy, on the one hand, and a competing system of values against legal certainty, on the other.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ The scholarly interest in the question of rule of law is motivated in part because its alleged absence has been used to characterize Athenian democracy as a majority tyranny that infringed upon individual civil liberties. Forsdyke, for instance, explicitly situates herself against that point of view to argue that Athenians had a “thick-ish” definition of rule of law in which “certain fundamental protections were afforded,” that is, “citizen rights,” if not modern “human rights.”Footnote ¹⁴⁶ She contends that permitting other concerns to bear upon the administration of justice is not unlike modern interpretations of justice which recognize the limitations of a strict application of the law, thus attributing to Athenians a preference for a substantivist, rather than formalist, legality. Gagarin has similarly emphasized that Athenians both aimed at the rule of law and recognized its strict impossibility.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ Like Forsdyke’s argument for a thick definition of the rule of law, Gagarin presents justice and public interest as fundamental objectives of the legal system that existed compatibly alongside the rule of law.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ My analysis of power contributes to the understanding of the Athenian point of view on the matter: since the state was not viewed as a separate entity by the Athenians, likewise they did not see their laws as a detached, oppressive force. Instead, the laws and citizens were mutually empowering elements. This entails that the Athenian ideal of the rule of law, while valuing legal supremacy, equality, and certainty, necessarily included provisions for the citizen. In this way, the Athenian preference for a substantivist legality that protected “citizen rights,” as per Forsdyke, or “public interest,” as per Gagarin, is of a piece with the value of citizen freedom and power. The designation of kurios to the law and citizenry linguistically conceptualized the balance between the power of law and broader concerns in the administration of justice, key to the Athenian notion of the rule of law.

Likewise, the question of what body might be sovereign at Athens becomes less pressing when the linguistic indicator of power, kurios, permits an interpretation not bound by the unitary concept of sovereignty. The question of whether the concept of sovereignty existed in Athens has been debated.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ The term kurios itself has even been translated as “sovereignty.” Hansen, for instance, has done so, but has also cautioned that it may be problematic.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ In clarifying what he means by “sovereignty,” he claims that the concept applied to a government body, rather than individuals, and distinguishes internal sovereignty from external sovereignty. Kurios, in his view, refers to an internal sovereignty, especially with its implication of “supremacy” when used with the objective genitive. Instead of classical sovereignty, entangled with the concept of a unitary sovereign, Hansen argues for a modern conception of internal sovereignty, which requires: “the existence in any state of a supreme legislative body of government, to whom people habitually pay obedience, but whose powers are circumscribed by the constitution, by the doctrine of separation of powers, by the idea of popular sovereignty, and by the distinction between state and society.”Footnote ¹⁵¹ In this view, the Athenian people would be sovereign in their role in the Assembly.Footnote ¹⁵²

Lane, too, has used kurios to outline a key piece of popular sovereignty in Athens, which she redefines as control of officeholders rather than power over legislation.Footnote ¹⁵³ She argues that the application of kurios to the dēmos arises in the fourth century to explain how the officeholders, or “rulers” in Greek (ἄρχοντες, ἄρχαι), do not “rule” (ἄρχειν) in a democracy, despite the traditional nomenclature. Instead, the people are “sovereign” (kurios) in the city although they cannot all simultaneously hold office (i.e., “rule”). Lane further argues that Aristotle pinpoints the institutional mechanisms for this popular sovereignty in the people’s control of officeholders, without which they cannot “dominate the erstwhile dominators.”Footnote ¹⁵⁴ Insofar as kurios is type of shared power in this reading, I would find the modification of “sovereignty” plausible.Footnote ¹⁵⁵ I hesitate, however, to ground kurios itself solely in the idea of mastery or domination, especially one linked to a groups’ power over the whole polis.

Landauer instead uses kurios to search for how “democratic control,” rather than “sovereignty,” was attained in Athens and rejects the view that decision-making was sufficient.Footnote ¹⁵⁶ His argument is anchored in Aristotle’s use of kurios “in a qualified sense to develop a fine-grained and disaggregated analysis of the concept of political control.”Footnote ¹⁵⁷ Ultimately, Landauer makes a thoughtful institutional argument, showing that agenda control and open initiative were considered central for democratic control. Although many of his conclusions are compatible with kurios as the power to act, such as the importance of citizen initiative, his attention on institutional control and his understanding of the dēmos as only non-elites assumes power as domination at its core.

These three studies (Hansen, Lane, Landauer) on the institutional mechanisms of being kurios differ from my own study of the overall conception of power both in their primary institutional focus and in their premise of power as domination. My view instead foregrounds the possibility of action, which may be taken by more than one party, and which need not be a zero-sum quality. The conception of power as the ability to act is a different orientation to the realm of private and political power than domination, even when institutions are the means to facilitate that power. While it does not preclude hierarchies, it also does not immediately create them among institutions or equal citizens.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ It is feasible that the quality of being kurios shares features with sovereignty, classical or modern, but highlighting similarities undermines what is unique about the Athenian conception of power so expressed. Unfolding the meaning of kurios reveals a concept distinct from sovereignty; one that is shareable and focused on the power to act.

I have been careful in the preceding pages to translate kurios as “powerful” or “empowered,” if at all. While no translation can work perfectly in every instance, I hope in this way to preserve the core of kurios as “having productive power” and to allow for comparative forms. In addition to “sovereignty” and “control,” “authority” has also been offered as a possible translation of kurios that may do similar work as “empowered.”Footnote ¹⁵⁹ While “authority” has the benefit of implying legitimacy, like kurios, and allowing more flexibility than “sovereignty,” in common parlance it still lies on the spectrum of domination. “Empowered” in modern English is not typically employed when discussing domination or political power. The distancing language prevents easy elision of differences between the ancient and modern systems. Preserving the strangeness of the Athenian language surrounding power retains the strangeness of Athenian democracy and allows the differences to emerge.

The citizen as kurios to achieve outcomes, both in his oikos and polis, structured the public and private spheres within the same network of power and freedom. The different mechanisms that kept the whole dēmos kurios, and its constituent citizens kurioi, did not do so at the expense of limiting all other instantiations of power, even within the same sphere. While individuals and community could conflict in practical terms, they were not in competition for ideological power; instead, they were kurioi symbiotically. Since power can be shared between citizens as individuals, the dēmos, and the laws, the conflict between law and individual is sidestepped in ideal conditions. When conflicts do arise, the rhetoric of power reinforces the various claims to power while singling out the rogue actor(s) as an outlier. Protection of citizen power lies at the heart of these manifold appeals. Thus, there is no inconsistency in portraying democracy as both the government most obedient to the law and the one where citizens have the most freedom and power.