Democracy and People

Someone asked a question recently about a word we were describing in a textbook. There are those interesting moments when something in one language looks very much like another word in a different language. In this case a Greek word, δημον, or as commonly transliterated dēmon or daemon, looked distractingly like something very different in English, which most readers have already surmised at this point.

R. W. Browne said that this term for a group of people “combined the good and bad points in the character of a populace, with the distinguishing features of an educated deliberative assembly” (p. 361). Notice the "deliberative assembly," we were talking about democracy in action, and the action word was rooted in dēmon. Kurt Raaflaub wrote an interesting article called "The Breakthough of Dēmokratia" and others such as Eric Robinson gave some description of the concept at work as well (see note 68 on page 55 of his book).

In the formation of this country we adopted the terms "Assembly" and even "Congress" to borrow from the classical "deliberative" bodies in antiquity. In the largely forgetable movie of the stage play 1776, there was a wonderful moment when one of the founding fathers of the United States turned his head to the sky to address God, saying essentially that he permits us to cope with things like famine and pestilance, "But Congress? That's not fair!"

When you read through the book of Acts, think that some of those words like "crowd" or even "mob" are presented to you in translation of some form of the word dēmon. Thinking of the expression and some of our "deliberative assemblies" I can't help but think that this is a God-given pun at times. (This is about as political as I intend to get)


Robert William Browne. History of Classical Literature: Greek Literature. http://books.google.com/books?id=uPwQAAAAIAAJ

F. D. Morice. Stories in Attic Greek. http://books.google.com/books?id=GYkCAAAAQAAJ [see page 153, for δημος as “the people, the commons”]

Kurt A. Raaflaub, Josiah Ober, and Robert W. Wallace. Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece. http://books.google.com/books?id=6qaSHHMaGVkC

Eric Robinson. The First Democracies. http://books.google.com/books?id=T1kfcobFRSMC

Francis Edward Thompson. Syntax of Attic Greek. http://books.google.com/books?id=GfEIAAAAQAAJ

S. C. Woodhouse. English-Greek Dictionary. http://books.google.com/books?id=UR2bLaOYhucC [For "assembly" see sustrophe and ekklesia; for "crowd" see ochlos and plethos; for "body" see δίμας]