Misodemos
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- For criticism see Criticism of Misodemos
Misodemos (Greek, μισόδημος) literally means "hater of democracy". This was the term for conservatives or reactionaries in the ancient Greek politieas.
Some writers in academic texts, instead of using misodemos use demoshater, demos-hater, or demos-hatred.
There were two terms for conservatives in ancient Greek, μισόδημος and όλιγαρχικοί (oligarchs). [1] In Athenian politics, if their leaders did not move fast in providing liberty and/or the redistribution of wealth, the people would charge their leaders with "having oligarchical tendencies".[2] Socrates and Plato can both to be said to be misodemos; they were reactionaries to the Athenian democracy.[3] In his Defence of Socrates, Libanius "says that Socrates' prosecutor claimed that Socrates taught men to be 'tyrannical and intolerable and to despise equality' (§ 38, p. 34); that he was a hater of democracy (misodemos) and that he encouraged those he associated with to regard the democracy as ridiculous (§ 54, p. 43)". [4]
In Aristophanes' the Wasps (474), the chorus charges a certain character with being a "ώ μισόδημε καί μοναρχίας έραστά", a demos-hater and a lover of monarchy.
The opposite of this word is φιλόδημον, "lover of democracy". [5]
Occurrences in literature
- "And when he see this, the man who has wealth and with his wealth the repute of hostility to democracy (μισόδημος), then in the words of the oracle delivered to Croesus,..."—566c; Book VIII; Loeb, pages 322.
Other occurrences of the word are at Xen. Hell. ii.3.47; Andoc. iv. 16.
References
- ^ Plato Republic (6-10), trans. by Paul Shorey, Loeb, Harvard University Press, (1935) 2000. page 317, Note 'i'. Prof. Shorey writes in the note: "i.e. reationaries"
- ^ Shorey trans. Loeb, pg 306. "How?" he said, "Why, when a democratic city athirst for liberty gets bad cupbearers for its leaders and is intoxicated by drinking too deep of that unmixed wine, and then, if its so-called governors are not extremely mild and gentle with it and do not dispense liberty unstintedly, it chastises them and accuses them of being accursed oligarchs." Book VIII, xiv, D; Loeb, pg 305.
- ^ In his introduction in the first volume of the Loeb, Prof. Shorey writes, "We may denominate him (Plato) a conservative and a reactionary". xxxix.
- ^ Gribble, David. Alcibiades and Athens: A Study in Literary Presentation, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1999. Pg. 228.
- ^ Shorey trans. Loeb, pg 322.
