Upside-down hegemony? Ideology and power in ancient Athens

This paper argues that in ancient Athens the demos – dominated by the lower classes – exercised a form of control on the formal and informal institutions of the polis akin to Gramsci’s notion of hegemony. It first uses Aristotle to argue that in theorising the alignment of the ethos of the politeia with that of the laws, institutions and of the very citizens of the polis, the Greeks display emic conceptualisations which are compatible with Gramsci’s hegemony. It then turns to Athens to argue, first, that the demos – understood as the lower classes – was there hegemonic, and, second, that the Athenian honour system was a key tool of that hegemony.