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In name (μὲν) it is called a democracy, because we govern not for the few but (δὲ) the many; whereas (μὲν) before the law there is equality for all in private disputes, nevertheless (δὲ) regarding popular esteem the individual receives public preference according to his recognized achievement in some field-not by rotation rather than by excellence-and furthermore (ͅαὐ̑) should he be poor but able to perform some service for the city, he is not prevented by insufficient public recognition.
(Thuc. 2.37.1)
These words from the Funeral Oration ascribed to Pericles constitute one of the most discussed passages in Thucydides. Nine lines of Greek, more than 150 years of scholarly discussion, countless articles, exemplary commentaries, sharp debate-yet it is still hard to agree on a translation, let alone a full interpretation. Much of the discussion, however, is built on a shared assumption that the interpretive issues center on whether Thucydides approved or disapproved of Athenian democracy. Did he express a consistent judgment about it? Was it, in his view, an effective system of governance? And so on. Behind such questions is a more wide-ranging question: Did democracy (as Thucydides understood it) work, or did it cause the “Fall of Athens”?
These are legitimate questions with long pedigrees. An ancient commentator on Thucydides gave his answer to some of them in his paraphrase of the passage:
Since democracy seems to be a paltry thing, and he saw the Lacedaemonians boasting about their aristocracy, he continues by saying that in name our civic system is a democracy, but in reality an aristocracy.
(Scholion on 2.37.1 in manuscripts ABFGc2)
Many commentators since then have followed the scholiast’s lead and concluded that Pericles is here represented as implying that Athens was a democracy in name only-that, in effect, whatever Athens achieved was accomplished despite its democracy, while its failures were primarily the result of that democracy. Pericles in the Funeral Oration, then, would anticipate what Thucydides himself seems unhesitatingly to assert later in book 2:
In short, what was nominally a democracy became in his hands government by the first citizen. With his successors it was different. More on a level with one another, and each grasping at supremacy, they ended by committing even the conduct of state affairs...