Downloadable Word File

EPISODE 85: Election Talk to Take Your Mind off the Election

 Transcription

Note: this is mostly an automatic transcription, lightly edited and corrected. Punctuation and formatting are not perfect.

Aven: [00:00:00] Welcome to the endless knot podcast where the more we know,

Mark: [00:00:04] the more we want to find out

Aven: [00:00:05] tracing serendipitous connections through our lives

Mark: [00:00:08] and across disciplines.

Aven: [00:00:16] Hi, I'm Aven and I'm Mark.  And today we're talking about the election as everybody has been forever

Mark: [00:00:24] for at least four years.

Aven: [00:00:27] Very important disclaimer, we are recording this before the election. Ideally, this is going out. At the latest on the day of the American election. So we don't know the results and we don't know what has happened in the last couple of days and for the day of the election.

Mark: [00:00:43] So you, future listener could be listening while we are following the results and.

Aven: [00:00:50] Weeping. I mean, I think no matter what the results are, I feel like we're probably going to be weeping just as a general rule after all of this stress. But anyway, yes, we're going to talk about elections. Specifically, we're going to revisit a video that we made four years ago, just in the lead up to the 2016 election.

The video is about the word ambition and about electoral vocabulary. So that's what we're going to talk about today. So we're not specifically talking about politics in the sense of individual people they'll come up a bit, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the language of elections.

Mark: [00:01:25] Yeah. The language and the, institutions

Aven: [00:01:28] and with a focus on American, but not only on American. No. So before we get to that one, patron to thank a new patron. Shawna or Sinead Young.

Mark: [00:01:38] Or Shawna or Shawnee So I did a bit of research cause, I'm fascinated by names, and so yeah, this is a Celtic name.

so depending on who you ask, I found a few possible pronunciations. So, those are the three that, that

Aven: [00:01:53] Shawna Shawnee or Sinead. Sinead. Yeah. Whichever one of it is pronounced or if it's something else, please let us know. We'd be very interested to know what pronunciation you use, but in any case, however you say your name.

Thank you very much for your support.

Absolutely.

Mark: [00:02:08] Thank you.

Aven: [00:02:09] Really appreciate it. All right. Next, we have our cocktail. Indeed. I searched for election cocktail recipes. It was very amusing to realize a whole bunch of hits came up and they were all lists of election cocktails. And they were all from 2016 and they were all articles saying, "we're all going to need a drink, here's some things you can drink on the night of the election".  But I thought it was really interesting that there were hardly any from 2020, even though. Surely we need to drink even more this year,

Mark: [00:02:36] frankly, people are too sober and serious about

Aven: [00:02:39] this. I think, I think it's harder to make it, make the frivolous articles that, you know, I mean, not that 2016 was a frivolous election by any means, but.

I guess it was still possible to kind of be like, well, this ha ha ha, let's get through this. And I don't think people are actually able to, even be that level

Mark: [00:02:58] it's too deadly serious now

Aven: [00:02:59] everything is too, and everything is too bad. Yeah. Not just the election. So anyway, having looked at the 2016 possibilities, we have settled on a ballot cocktail, which is.

the recipe I used anyway, specifically called for Maker's Mark bourbon, sweet vermouth, dry vermouth, bitters and, a sugar cube and orange peel.  And

Mark: [00:03:21] we used Dolin vermouth by the way. both, vermouths.

Aven: [00:03:24] So here we go. Since Mark's on a bit of a bourbon kick right now, so we actually happened to have the right bourbon in the house.

Nice. Oh

Mark: [00:03:31] yeah. I like

Aven: [00:03:32] that. It's got some sourness cause of the dry vermouth, I guess, as well as. So it's not just, the sweetness, like a Manhattan

Mark: [00:03:39] or something. Well the bitterness, yeah, It's not too

Aven: [00:03:42] sweet, too. Sweet.

Mark: [00:03:43] Which bitters did you use? Just, just Angostura

Aven: [00:03:45] right.

Okay. When it calls for just bitters, right? I mean, if we make it again, you could try something different. Like the orange Angostura would be good, probably given there's a lot of orange in it, but you want to know what it's like with the basic, I think. Sure. Anyway. Yeah. Quite tasty. All right. Well with that to fortify us, Would you like to introduce the voiceover for ambition?

Mark: [00:04:04] Sure. So, as, as we said, you know, this was originally a video made four years ago and the word ambition itself was the jumping off point here. it was one that I often enjoyed talking about with my students, this is one that I. You know, always highlighted with them. and it has this kind of surprising etymology, and its sort of background in Roman politics and how that works.

So there's a lot to kind of go on there. And since well, you know, politics was very much, in the news four years ago, and indeed it is now as well. it seemed like a fitting time then to do the video and a fitting time now to do this podcast. But it was more than just a rundown of political vocab, you know, political etymologies, because you know, a lot of people have done that.

Aven: [00:04:53] Right, right.

Mark: [00:04:54] At that time  in 2016, there was a slew of articles about, you know, here are all the political words and the, etymologies for those words. So I needed to figure out something more to do than just

Aven: [00:05:05] that.

Mark: [00:05:06] and at the time, you know, there were a bunch, the Allusionist podcast had an episode at the time.

and I think, she's also done did another one on political vocabulary since or political language since, and another good one at that time was Mashed Radish, John Kelly

Aven: [00:05:24] was doing blog

Mark: [00:05:25] posts

 was doing blog posts at that time. He now works for, Emojipedia. but, he had an excellent, blog post on the word candidate.

and of course there's lots of others out there, but those are just two that I found particularly good at that time. so I was inspired by that, but I figured I needed to do something more because they did such a good job of it. so I wanted to add a further dimension then of how language, how language change and how changing values sort of go hand in hand.

Right? So the vocabulary is a kind of, barometer.

Aven: [00:05:57] Of how political change and social change functions. Yeah.

Mark: [00:06:00] And so our, our words reflect our current value systems and both of those things are changeable and both of those change together. And as with, for instance, the, both positive and pejorative senses of ambition, right.

Ambition can be seen as a very positive thing or a very negative thing as we'll see.

Aven: [00:06:17] Yeah. We'll talk about that.

Mark: [00:06:18] And this, this idea of kind of using one to track the other is a kind of central premise of, you know, all the Endless Knot productions. and indeed in my dissertation. So this was, you know, that was my wheelhouse.

and so that's the direction I took.

Aven: [00:06:34] Okay. So let's listen to that voiceover and then we can pick apart some stuff and add to it and talk a little bit about how things have, or haven't changed in the four years since then.

Mark: [00:06:50] Times change, and so do words. Generally today we think of ambition as a positive thing, as in “the ambitious young go-getter”, but when the word entered the English language from French in the 14th century, it started out with the negative sense of “greed for success” — for instance the bishop Reginald Peacock writes about vices such as “pride, ambition, and vainglory” in the 15th century, and in the 16th writer Thomas Nashe calls ambition “any puft up greedy humour of honour or preferment”. You see to the medieval mind ambition, wanting to rise in the world, was a sin. God put people, and indeed everything in creation, into a rigid hierarchical order, and you were where you were because God wanted you there. This notion is called the Great Chain of Being, with God at the very top, and in descending order the ranks of angels, people, animals, plants, and objects. So if you’re a peasant, trying to become a lord is going against God’s plans. Even in Milton’s poem Paradise Lost written in the 17th century, Satan’s sin in rebelling against God stems from “pride and worse ambition”. But gradually a less pejorative sense of the word came to be used more and more, as less negative ideas about ambition spread as well, and by the beginning of the 19th century Milton’s figure of Satan was being reinterpreted by the Romantic poets, like Byron and Shelley, as a heroic figure. And while today the negative sense of ambition is still possible [for example, ambition is often criticized in women], the positive sense is the more common, with the pejorative sense having to be made explicit in phrases such as “overly ambitious”.

But where does the word ambition actually come from? It’s a kind of metaphor, coming from Latin ambitio from the verb ambire which literally means “to go around” from ambi- “around or about” and the verb ire “to go”. This figurative sense grew out of Roman politics. You see if a Roman were running for political office he would go about soliciting votes and support. And so ambitio came to mean canvassing for votes, which could involve flattery and even bribery, so that laws were passed to try to control it. Thus ambitio came to develop the sense of corruption or greed for office, which is how it passed through medieval Latin and French into the pejorative sense in English in the 14th century.

Of course today we don’t think of canvassing as an underhanded action, it’s a legitimate part of the political process, another example of changing values. But etymologically speaking, anyways, canvassing used to be part of quite a different process. You see canvass the activity comes from canvas the cloth and originally refers to tossing something about in a canvas sheet as you might with a small child as a game, and perhaps also to a kind of winnowing process, separating grain from chaff. From this it developed the metaphorical sense of “to discuss or examine something thoroughly”, and from there somehow [though no one’s quite sure how] the modern sense of “to solicit votes”. By the way, the noun canvas comes through Latin cannabis ultimately from a root referring to the fibre hemp, also the source of those English words—which reminds me of the Liberal campaign plank in the last Canadian election about legalizing marijuana. Though the incumbent Conservative government accused their rivals of over-permissiveness, it didn’t stop the Liberals from winning the election, another example of changing values I suppose.

Speaking of cloth and textiles, it’s from this area that we get another common electioneering term, taking us once again to the world of ancient Roman elections. One running for office in Roman elections was commonly called a canditatus, giving us the English word candidate. Candidatus literally means “white” coming from a root meaning “to shine”, and refers to the extra-white toga the candidate would wear when canvassing for those votes, symbolizing his purity. We also get the word candid from this root, a quality modern candidates certainly wish to project in their campaigns. The candidatus would have with him in his canvassing a slave called a nomenclator [literally “name caller”] whose job it was to know the names of all the electors the candidate talked to. From the same root, by the way, we get the English word nomenclature. Oh, and the more formal nomenclature for a candidatus is a petitor, from the root petere ‘to seek, attack’, and fellow candidates are called competitores, from which we get competitors. So in the competitive democratic process there’s an etymological justification for those attack ads, if not an ethical one.

Speaking of the democratic process, the word democracy comes from Greek and is often explained as literally meaning “rule of the people”. The first part, demos, meaning “people” or perhaps more accurately “the common people”, comes from a Proto-Indo-European root that means “to divide”, and so means a group in the sense of a part. Fitting I guess, since in the original ancient Athenian democracy, only the free-born Athenian male segment of the population had the right to vote. We could set the word democracy against the word monarchy, literally “rule of one” mono- meaning “one” in Greek. But you’ll notice that the second part of monarchy comes from the root *arkhein- meaning “to begin, rule, command”, thus appropriately the source of political power. But the second element of the word democracy, Greek kratos, means “strength” and has connotations of violence, coming ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European root that means “hard”. And indeed though today we tend to think of democracy in mostly positive terms, the same was not true in ancient Greece, where attitudes to democracy were decidedly mixed. Indeed philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato, much vaunted today, were quite critical of democracy, which they might almost gloss as “mob rule”. Again, an example of how values have changed.

Today of course, from this same root we also get the word Democrat to refer to one of two main political parties in the United States. Funny thing is, the Democratic party used to be the Republican party. Until 1828, the Democratic Party used to be called the Democratic-Republican Party or simply the Republican Party, until the word Republican was dropped. In fact the term “democratic” was initially an insult, associating them with populism tantamount to mob rule, until the party decided to embrace their populist associations and dropped the word “republican” from their name. Then in 1854 the Republican Party we know today was formed from Democrats and Whig Party members who opposed slavery. On the other hand, until well into the 20th century the Democratic Party used to represent a politically conservative constituency. Once again, funny how things change. By the way, we have 19th century caricaturist Thomas Nast to thank for popularizing the Democratic donkey and inventing the Republican elephant. The donkey was originally a pun on President Jackson’s name — think jack ass — and was used as a criticism implying stubbornness, until the party itself adopted the symbol for its common-man implications. Turns out there really is a lot of flip-flopping in politics!

Oh, & that name Republican? The word republic come from Latin res meaning “thing” and publica “public”, so literally the “public thing”. Latin publicus is related to another Latin word populus, close in sense to Greek demos, thus meaning “people” — in fact we get the English word “people” through Anglo-Norman French from the same Latin word — and of course we can see the word popular in there as well, reminding us of the popularism that was such a sticking point in the political attitudes of both the ancient world and 19th century America. Another word for a popularist is a demagogue formed from that same Greek word demos. The US government was in some ways consciously modelled on the republic of ancient Rome, hence the cachet of the word republican in American political circles from early on.

But getting back to the election trails, we can see an interesting etymological parallel to the Latin-formed word republic. When candidates are out canvassing, we can say that they are on the hustings. The word husting comes from Old Norse hus meaning “house” and ðing meaning, well, “thing”. But thing also used to have the sense of “meeting” or “council”, so the hus-ðing was the meeting house, and the plural hustings came to refer to temporary platforms for political speeches, and then the campaigning process itself. Coming originally from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “stretch” the word thing came to have the sense of time, as in a stretch of time, in early Germanic, and from that the appointed time for the meeting of a judicial or legislative assembly, and then the assembly itself. From there thing transferred in sense from the subject matter of the assembly to any matter or thing. A long way to go for such an unprepossessing word! In Old Norse the main judicial and legislative assembly was called the Althing, literally the “all-meeting” and this is still the name of the current national parliament of Iceland, making it arguably the oldest extant democracy [though there are competing claims for that title].

Another contribution to political language that ON has made is, surprisingly, in the vocabulary of Canadian politics. The common name for an electoral district in Canada is a riding. Though there’s a folk etymology that this comes from the idea that it’s the area a rider can cover in a single day, the true source of the word is Old Norse þriðjungr, literally a “third part” of something. Originally referring to the three districts into which Yorkshire, England is divided, riding is preserved in the specialized sense of an electoral district in Canadian English.

The root of politics is the ancient Greek city state—literally. The ancient Greek polis means city state, from a Proto-Indo-European root that means “citadel, fortified high place”. We also get the word policy from this same Greek root, and policies should really be the main focus for any politician. By the way, the word police likewise comes from this root, as their main job is maintaining civil order. In ancient Athens, politics and policy were supposed to be important to all the citizens, as it was a direct democracy, meaning that the people voted not for politicians, political representatives, but directly for policy, such as new laws or other affairs of state. Of course in practise some citizens with more expert knowledge tended to lead the politics and policy, while many individuals, although they did their duty and voted, tended to be more concerned with their own private affairs than the affairs of state. And for that reason they were termed idiotes, from a root that means “personal, private”. We get the words idiom and idiosyncrasy from this root as well as the word idiot, because the word came to be used pejoratively of people who didn’t take an interest in the city’s affairs. When early 20th century psychologist and eugenicist Henry Goddard devised categories of mental retardation on the basis of IQ scores, he termed those with scores between 0 and 25 idiots, 26 to 50 imbeciles, and 51 to 70 morons, but these terms are now considered offensive, another example of changing values. So while we shouldn’t call people who don’t concern themselves with the affairs of state idiots, this etymology does highlight the importance of being aware of the policies of our modern political world.

In our modern democracies we no longer vote directly on our laws as the ancient Athenians did, but instead elect legislators, politicians who enact laws, for that purpose. The words elect and election from Latin ex- and legere literally mean “to pick out”. That Latin verb legere, which also gives us words such as select, collect, neglect, elegant and elite [think picked out from the crowd], also had a secondary meaning of “to read” whence the words legible and lecture. If we go back further to Proto-Indo-European we come to a root which means “to collect”, which also probably leads to another Latin word lex meaning “law” from the idea of a collection of laws. We inherited this root in the English words legal and legislate, so there is an etymological connection in those legislators seeking election. Although the word law looks a bit similar to this root, it’s actually etymologically unconnected coming through Old Norse from a root which means “to lay”, as laws are something laid down.

Once we’ve gone to the polls we say we’ve given our elected officials a mandate to govern. The word poll, coming into English in the 13th century, originally meant “head”, and came from a Middle Dutch word that meant “top, summit”. By the 17th century the word had developed its “collection of votes” sense from the idea of counting heads. But that’s not the only body part in political vocabulary, because mandate comes from the Latin words manus “hand” and dare “to give” so literally to put in the hand — the word command by the way is also from the same source — and this word nicely suggests that the power politicians wield truly comes from the electorate, so make sure you get out and vote. These body words might suggest another metaphor for the structure of society, the body politic, with the head of state and the citizen body.

But getting back to classical influences on the US political system, one of the most notable examples is the legislative body called the Senate, which takes its name from the ancient Roman Senatus, which started as an appointed council of elders, then, as a body of ex-magistrates, became one of the chief governmental institutions in Rome. And if looking at the make-up of the US Senate makes you think they’re just a bunch of old white guys, you’re not far from the truth etymologically speaking. Not only did most of them start off as a candidatus, Senate comes from a root that means “old”, related to the words senior—reflecting the value the Romans placed on the wisdom of their elders—and senile, which may suggest something about how modern values have shifted. Not that senators are senile of course!

The US Senate along with the House of Representatives together make up Congress, a word that comes from Latin roots but does not reflect a Roman institution. Coming from com- meaning together and gradi “to go, step”, congress is thus related to other step words such as gradual, grade and progress. The Latin word congressus could mean “a [friendly] meeting” or “a hostile encounter” — I’ll leave it to you to decide which applies to the US Congress! — but it’s another example of the changing senses of words over time. Both the Latin and English words can also refer to a sexual encounter, which of course is entirely irrelevant to politics. The more specialized sense of a “meeting of delegates” dates from the 17th century, and the political assembly sense from the 18th.

Other English-speaking countries like Britain, Canada & Australia, instead of having a Congress like the US, have parliaments as their national deliberative bodies. We get the word parliament from the Anglo-Norman French of the middle ages, the word parler meaning “talk”, which some might say is all they do in parliaments! By the way, from this root we also get the words parlance, parley, and parlour [evidently a room set aside for conversation]. But it’s not just the word that has a medieval connection.When the old medieval Westminster Palace, which at that point housed the British parliament, burned down in 1834, it was replaced by the current buildings built in the Gothic Revival style, with medieval-style pointed arches and elongated vertical proportions, thus symbolically reaffirming the British commitment to the medieval institution of the monarchy in the face of the trend towards revolution and republicanism in places like the United States and France. Compare this with the American Capitol Hill, in its neo-classical style with Greek pillars and Roman rounded arches. Unlike the US, Canada did not rebel from British rule, and so fittingly the Canadian Parliament Buildings are also built in the Gothic style. Etymology, architecture, and history all going hand in hand! Incidentally if we dig further back in the etymology of parliament, we see that the word comes through Latin from Greek parabole meaning “comparison”, from para meaning “beside” and ultimately a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to throw”. In addition to obviously parabola and parable, this Indo-European root also gives us such words as symbol, devil, kill, and problem [make of that what you will], as well as the word ball, not the round thing you throw but the dance.

But it’s the other type of ball that we turn to finally, as it’s related to another election word, ballot, which we inherited from Italian. You see to have a secret vote [a word which by the way comes from Latin meaning promise or wish], one would once drop a small coloured ball into a container [the colour black often indicating a negative vote thus giving us the term blackballed]. The Proto-Indo-European root that lies behind this word, meaning “to blow, inflate, or swell” also gives us such words as fool, phallus, and bollocks [a somewhat rude British term for testicles]. But lest we cynically decide that politicians are a bunch of foolish blowhard dicks talking bollocks, instead we might remind ourselves when we cast our ballots to elect someone with the ambition to become our political representative that, though a society’s values may change over time, and the language change with it, a vote still should be able to force those politicians to carry out the will of the people. It’s the democratic way, after all.

Aven: [00:22:36] okay. I know you have a bunch of things you want to talk about, but one of the things that was not, fully. You didn't go into great detail about, and without the visuals is a little yeah. harder to pick

Mark: [00:22:48] up. I hinted at it with the visuals, but

Aven: [00:22:50] yeah. is you mentioned ambition as, so you talked at the beginning about it being, is it pejorative or, praise and one thing you mentioned was how it can be used when used of a woman.

It has been often a pejorative, particularly pejorative. And the picture you have in the video is of Clinton, because of course at the time Hillary Clinton, you know, that was, something being thrown at her. And I will say that in our comments to that video, one of the most common comments we got was, Hey, we, there's no problem with women being ambitious, how dare, you know, essentially arguing with that point. And it's a tiny, it's one line in the whole video and it's one throw away and we just have a picture of Hillary and yet. I'd say good, like quarter of the video videos, comments mentioned it in some way or not, you know, really hit a nerve. Right. And generally it's a few people saying, yeah, that's a problem.

But men, most people's like total bollocks to say that, there's any prejudice against women being ambitious. Everyone loves women who are ambitious. The big problem is women feel that they have to be ambitious and otherwise they're in trouble. And of course, in a sense, that's true. There's the double-edged sword.

You're supposed to want it all, but also be able to do everything. But also if you want everything you're in trouble, like there's no, for a lot of women, historically, there has been no good answer. If you aren't ambitious, then you're not good enough. If you are ambitious, you are a shrew, right? Like there's no, there's actually no happy medium.

But the whole topic of women and politicians and ambition came up again in this most recent run-up in particular, in the moment when Biden was deciding on his VP.

Mark: [00:24:33] Though, even before that, through the whole primary process.

Aven: [00:24:36] Yes, definitely during the primaries, but it came when I, you know, I remembered that it had gone by and I did a little search.

And when I searched just for women, female politician ambition, a whole bunch of articles from August came up, which was just when Biden was deciding on Kamala Harris. Right. And, you know, before he decided on her, Because specifically there was a report that a bunch of democratic insiders didn't want her to be picked because she was considered too ambitious because she wanted to be president and people would think, and the argument was that she would be focused on becoming president rather than doing a good job as VP.

Now, these are people who have nominated a former VP as their presidential pick. Yeah. So the articles I found were talking about these problems and about the hypocrisy of it all. And it is it's, the hypocrisy is so openly blatant in that, that it it's almost laughable except the world isn't laughable anymore.

No one would have

Mark: [00:25:36] said anything like that about a man, you know, being picked as VP.

Aven: [00:25:40] No! Like it is actually impossible to imagine somebody saying.

Mark: [00:25:44] Oh, he just wants

Aven: [00:25:45] to, Oh, no. Yeah, but he, you know, he's very ambitious. He'd like to be president. It would, it would be if somebody said that there would be a, well, you know, he'll do a good job because he wants to be president later.

Right. That's like just normal. So, you know, I don't need to dwell on it particularly.

but just to read the headlines from, so these were all from the beginning of August, from the Hill. "Why is ambitious a dirty word for female candidates" or, there was one article from the Harvard Gazette saying "American voters don't hate ambitious women after all". And it was about a study that had been done.

But what the study showed was that Democratic voters didn't mind, ambitious women and Republican voters did. The headline as often is...that's not what it said, actually. That's not what the content was. Yeah. and then, another from Vogue. from August again, from the beginning of August, the Veep watch, some people seem to have a problem with Kamala Harris's ambition, I wonder why". And of course with her, it's not just that she's a woman it's also that she's black or mixed race. And therefore, that much more problematic that she should dare to be ambitious. Shouldn't she just be glad to be nominated as the first VP candidate and, you know, Be grateful for that position and grateful for having been chosen.

And a lot of this stuff is never made really explicit, but it's there and I don't care how many YouTube commenters tell us it's not. It really is. Of course there are women, who get praised for their ambition, there are exceptions to all rules and all of these things happen differently with different people in different contexts.

And some people are not bigoted and say the right thing, you don't like it's not universal, but no, there is not a single male politician that I can think of over the last 20 years who has ever been criticized for being ambitious, ever. So if any woman ever has that's evidence of a different standard and more than one has.

So just wanted to bring that up because it has become depressingly relevant again. And nothing really changed.

Mark: [00:27:51] I mean, here's the question to ask yourself, you know, when I said the line "ambitious, young go getter", did you picture a man or did you picture a woman? Yeah, cause I specifically didn't gender it in the script.

and I can't remember now what I did with the visuals.

So, yeah. there's the, there's an automatic assumption, even if you don't consciously think you're being sexist,

Aven: [00:28:11] yeah. Well, we've all been programmed, right? This is not about people being bad people intrinsically it's it's it's the programming that's out there.

I'm probably guilty of it too. Right? Like what do I expect in a female politician? You know, there's a whole, there's a whole other realm of this with people having to focus on their motherhood to offset, you know, it's, it's okay to be ambitious as long as you prove that you're also a deeply committed parent, but only women ever have to do that.

Men never have to prove their commitment to their parenting in order to offset their ambition. So. There's a whole range of things, but it's not about individual people being sexist, pigs, sometimes it is. But it isn't only about that. It's also about these really deeply ingrained, societal norms.

Yeah. Okay. So that was my first thing I wanted to pull out. But, I know you have some other thoughts about stuff you talked about, you wanted to expand on.

Mark: [00:29:06] Yeah, a few things that I wanted to, sort of clarify or add to

So I mentioned the word poll, and that, re it originally meant head, which is why, you know, a poll tax is, tax by head

Aven: [00:29:18] essentially per

Mark: [00:29:20] person. Yeah. well, it's possible that etymologically, it ultimately comes from the same root as ballot. so I sort of gave the immediate, source of the word, but it may be traceable back to that same root from ballot, or at least, you know, one that is related to it.

So this is just. Speculation. but again, to, plug, Mashed Radish blog posts,

he's got a, a post on the word poll. So if you want to hear more about that possible connection, You can, you can find out more there.

but if so, that would make a nice extra connection tying poll and ballot together. A little clarification on the word riding, specifically as it applies to Canadian, politics. I should have said that it's not the official term. So "riding" is, it's not in any.

Aven: [00:30:12] law or election,

Mark: [00:30:14] you know, it's, it's not there.

officially it's called an electoral district.

Aven: [00:30:18] There is not a single Canadian out there, whoever calls it that. And on election night, they all talk about writings on CBC and everybody. But I mean, I believe that, but

Mark: [00:30:29] but the name is indeed so commonly used that even elections, Canada, which is the body that oversees the elections in Canada as the name quite accurately describes, they do use the term in common contexts. So not in

Aven: [00:30:46] official language, not in the laws and the policy, but when they, when they're telling people to vote or what to do.

Yeah. Cause that's, if you said electoral district to any Canadian. I think they would think you were talking about the States, right? We're so used to hearing that terminology. Yeah down South, so

Mark: [00:31:00] but yeah, no riding is not anywhere written in laws or official, you know, things, And, in terms of the etymology of that word, we can see a similar formation, to that word, thrithing originally,  in the sense of three parts with the word farthing four parts, A farthing is an old, denomination of coin in Britain.

no longer is, a current part of their decimalized  money, but before they decimalized, they had farthings. and it's worth a quarter of a penny,

Aven: [00:31:31] right.

Mark: [00:31:31] And, in the middle ages, it was even common to produce a farthing by literally cutting a penny in four.

Aven: [00:31:39] Right. I've seen pictures of that in a video you happen to be working on right now

yeah.

Mark: [00:31:43] So I was going to say, this is a bit of a teaser for an upcoming video, and I won't tell you how it ties in because it's a bit of a surprise. but you can hear more about the farthing and

Aven: [00:31:56] if the video ever comes out yeah.  It's a really long video and it's taken a long time to make

Mark: [00:32:03] stay tuned.

Aven: [00:32:04] Mm. I mean, ideally it's already out by the time you hear this podcast, if

Mark: [00:32:08] it isn't, we failed,

Aven: [00:32:09] but the world is very far from ideal right now.

Mark: [00:32:14] so staying in Canada, as one should,

Aven: [00:32:17] as we do, because we're certainly not traveling anywhere else,are we Mark?

Mark: [00:32:23] So as for the Canadian parliament, the upper house is actually called the Senate. And this is a question that I have, I wonder how this term was adopted.

Aven: [00:32:34] I remember doing, trying to do research on this at the time when you were doing the video and we couldn't, we couldn't, we sort of vaguely tracked down when they first started calling it the Senate, but we saw nothing about Discussions about what to call it because the British upper house is the house of Lords.

Mark: [00:32:48] Now we couldn't call it. Obviously we don't have

Aven: [00:32:50] Lords. Okay. Fine. The American Senate.

Mark: [00:32:53] So did we copy

Aven: [00:32:54] them...  so the American version is not an upper house in the same

Mark: [00:32:59] way.

No, they're legislators.

Right.

Aven: [00:33:02] When really, it doesn't make a lot of sense to call it after the Roman Senate, because the Roman Senate was the primary decision-making body. I mean, the only way in which it makes sense to model it on the Roman system would be to say that the assemblies constituted the. constituted the Commons, right?

Like if you, if you think the House of Commons, cause we do have a House of Commons. So if you think of the commons as being the assemblies, the, I say assemblies because there were multiple assemblies, differently constituted groups of the people.

Who were the assemblies and it's true that they were the ones who technically made laws. They voted on the laws.

Mark: [00:33:38] and so the Senate had to approve the expenditure of money

Aven: [00:33:41] yes. And foreign affairs. But I mean, obviously that's not the way the division happens in Canada, but to a certain extent, the Senate is, a sort of more select group.

Mark: [00:33:51] Right.

Aven: [00:33:52] I guess if you decide the assemblies are like that, the commons, then the only group leftover is the Senate. Right. but, you'd think there would be this, discussion about, but that in Ca- I mean, Canadian politics, the constitution of the house of commons and all of that is recent enough.

You'd think there'd be copious discussions of it because, but we could not find anything in any of the histories of the Senate or the parliamentary system. So if anyone knows anything that I'd really like

Mark: [00:34:16] to know, if there are any experts on Canadian political history,

Aven: [00:34:20] was there any debate about it?

Was it obvious? Where did it come from? Even when did the name start? Because it seems like maybe there were provincial senates before that, like in upper Canada and lower Canada, but now. I'm now I'm trying to remember looking it up four years ago, so I might be misremembering, but I couldn't find.

Anything very clear about that.

Mark: [00:34:39] The other question is, are there any other countries that have

Aven: [00:34:42] senates doesn't Australia have a Senate? Yeah. So Australia has a Senate is the upper house of the bicameral parliament, the lower house being the house of representatives. So they don't call it the house of commons.  But I, you know, who knows when that happened, maybe they were, you know, Australian, electoral history is very different from Canadian electoral history.

But yeah, I would be very interested if anyone has any idea, because we, I was really interested in that and I remember trying to sort of figure it out and I could not find any source for when we started calling it a Senate.

Mark: [00:35:16] Also just a, sort of word of caution. I greatly simplified the discussion of, the history of early us political parties. there were in fact, numerous parties back then with very shifting platforms and it's super complicated.

Aven: [00:35:33] so. Yeah.

Mark: [00:35:35] So I only touched on, you know, a few elements of that.

I've come back to that topic a few times since, but never with a fully, you know, explained history of that. so for that, I would suggest going to other,

Aven: [00:35:49] yeah, there are explainers about that sort of stuff

 Mark: [00:35:52] now.

I mentioned, some Icelandic etymologies in there. So I've got another Icelandic etymology to add

Aven: [00:36:00] if you have any way to talk about Icelandic things, always talk about Icelandic things. Absolutely.

Mark: [00:36:06] Well, first of all, I should point out that, we indeed visited the Althing.

Aven: [00:36:11] That's a stretch. We took a bus past the Althing,

Mark: [00:36:15] Though we saw the original Althing.

Aven: [00:36:17] Yes, that's true. That's true. Not the one that we picture in that video, but the real one. yes, in the time, since putting that video out, we have seen that

 and that was very exciting.

Mark: [00:36:26] Yes. but of course, you know, this, this idea of, the Althing and this sort of site that is in the middle of nowhere,

Aven: [00:36:34] kind of,

Mark: [00:36:35] and they would go, and it was kind of the middle of nowhere then

Aven: [00:36:39] clearly always was.

Mark: [00:36:40] And what they would do is they go and set up these temporary dwellings, on this site that was away from any settlements.

and they would go in and set up these temporary dwellings that, You know, the, the attendees of these old, you know, medieval councils stayed in and they were called booths.

Aven: [00:36:59] Right.

Mark: [00:37:00] and that's where we get the modern English word booth from it's, you know, it is the, old Norse version of the word booth.

So it comes from a Germanic root that means to dwell. so the old Danish word is both a temporary dwelling, and the East nor source of that is *boa- to dwell. and it comes from the proto germanic root bowan. And also gives us, the second element in words, such as neighbor, the bour part in neighbor, is that, and husband, the band part of husband.

So it's sort of house dweller. Yeah. Right. and it goes back to the proto indo European root. That means to be, to exist. That gives us the word be right. and it's the, the proto indo European root, *bheue-.

so to be, to exist, to grow. And it is obviously found in many.

daughter languages of proto indo European. but if, if you're interested in this word booth, there is a wonderfully detailed, blog post written by, Anatoly Lieberman. who is the Oxford Etymologist is his handle. and really if you're interested in, etymology and the really deep etymologies, Lieberman's posts are just

Aven: [00:38:14] amazing.

We'll link to these of course, anything Mark mentions.

Mark: [00:38:18] A few other references that connect this video to other things, other Videos and, or, podcasts that we've done. if you want to hear more about, that whole stuff, about architecture that I referenced. So the neo-classical Gothic

Aven: [00:38:34] architecture, that's

Mark: [00:38:35] Sublime, right?

Sublime.

Yeah. and I, I go into that and super detail.

Aven: [00:38:40] well you say that, but it's, it's not 55 minutes long, so I don't think you can call it real detail.

Mark: [00:38:47] Is that a challenge?

Aven: [00:38:48] No,

it is not. Yeah. The video on sublime.

Mark: [00:38:55] Yeah.

And if that name Thomas Nast rings a bell,

Aven: [00:38:59] you've talked about him like 75 times. He comes up.

Yeah.

Mark: [00:39:02] All the time. I think the earliest mention of Nast was in the cocktail video, which is right from the early days. And we have, definitely done a podcast of that. And his connection to that first celebrity bartender, Jerry Thomas, who also comes up a bazillion times. and they both come up in later videos, I think most recently in Manhattan,

Aven: [00:39:27] yeah.

Mark: [00:39:27] So there you go. Now, another thing I wanted to expand on is this very offensive term idiot.

Aven: [00:39:34] which I'm not gonna lie. I have trouble getting out of my vocabulary. I not in any way disputing the offensiveness of the term, but you know, it's there like crazy. It's a word that I know I should not use and I do not want to use.

And I use it. I know. And I'm just, I'm copping to that right now

Mark: [00:39:52] because it's the same, it's really hard because you know,

Aven: [00:39:55] It's emotive and it's built into a bunch of phrases and it feels like there isn't another option, which isn't true, but it does feel like there isn't something else that has the same force of vitriol that I want it to have.

And I know that I know it's a problem and I need to deal with it.

Mark: [00:40:12] And we, grew up using these words

Aven: [00:40:14] without anyone,

Mark: [00:40:15] without anyone pointing out that these were problematic words,

Aven: [00:40:19] right. They weren't thought of as problematic. That's not an excuse. It's just, it's in my brain and I'm trying to work on it.

So. I ve probably used it and I apologize, but, you know, apologies. Aren't helpful being better as helpful. Well,

Mark: [00:40:33] there are a number of other words that that guy Goddard the eugenicist.

Aven: [00:40:38] there's always a eugenicist. Like it doesn't matter what video, how many of our videos do not have a eugenicist Yeah,

Mark: [00:40:46] it's terrible.

well, so he had a whole system of categories,

Aven: [00:40:50] right?

Mark: [00:40:51] Defining different levels of

Aven: [00:40:53] which got turned into. I mean, I remember, so my grandfather worked with kids with special needs, as a teacher and then a principal through his life. And he worked in a system which used those designations as like.

Meaningful and useful. I'm not, no, they didn't sterilize anybody. Like don't get me wrong here. He was trying to help. And I think he, within the constructs of his time did a lot of good. I don't think he did evil, but he worked in a system where, you know, he differentiated morons from idiots, from.

Different, you know, people those were, those were meaningful terms to him. So in a sense, he wasn't using them loosely the way I do. Yeah. He was using them for people with certain levels of IQ. And I'm not, that's not a defense, but you know, that, that is, that's how close it is, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

You know, these were people when he. You know, slow kids and retarded kids, which is the other, another term, which is of course a problematic term in like it's not even a strong enough term. It's, it's an abusive offensive term, but that was also, you know, these terms, this is the pejoration, right? Like they're technical terms, then they become terms of abuse and then they become offensive terms

that have to be removed from a vocabulary. And he was in a different phase of that time. And so that's, you know, that was 40 years ago. That's not that long ago that these were being used in school boards. And so I guess what I'm pointing out. So yeah, we grew up with very different terminology and we're trying to change that,

Mark: [00:42:28] so yeah, although these terms are.

really awful, looking at their etymologies is at least instructive as to why they're so bad.

Aven: [00:42:37] and idiot in Greek didn't.... No, it didn't have the same.

Mark: [00:42:40] So that's a later, that's a later development it's his fault, right? It's Goddard's fault. Yeah, absolutely. So the word imbecile another of Goddards terms, it comes into English through French, from Latin.

so the prefix in that's the negative prefix, meaning, you know, not, and baculum, which means stick

So it's like a walking stick is what you want to picture here. So the idea is that someone is weak because they lack support in baculum, no stick. and this weakness narrowed in sense to refer to those who are weak in the mind rather than physically weak.

Aven: [00:43:20] Right.

Mark: [00:43:20] the term moron comes ultimately from Greek, from Greek moros, meaning foolish or stupid. and there isn't an earlier etymon for this. There does seem to be a Sanskrit cognate, Mora. So we don't, it hasn't been adequately mapped out. We don't

Aven: [00:43:39] have the evidence enough versions in enough languages to really do it.

Mark: [00:43:43] Yeah. now, just because I, found this, Goddard had, written an opinion about democracy. so I thought it's kind of relevant here. So he says, quote, democracy then means that the people rule by selecting the wisest most intelligent and most human to tell them what to do to be happy.

 Now, I'm not sure that this really fits with most people's definition of democracy

Aven: [00:44:10] today. No,

Mark: [00:44:13] We don't want to be told what to do by our leaders

Aven: [00:44:16] really. And that wouldn't be the, you know, that's not the rule of the people.

Mark: [00:44:20] No, I think the way that most people think of democracy now is. We tell our leaders broadly what we

Aven: [00:44:27] want,

and then they work out the nitty gritty of it.

Like they do the, they do it, the stuff none of us want to do because we don't have the time for it. Right. The figuring out how to spend the money and pass the

Mark: [00:44:36] laws. Okay. The ideals, we have these, very generalized ideals and we say, this is what I believe in. And you can do that for me, please.

Yeah.

Aven: [00:44:44] That's a very party centric thinking. Yeah, right. That's how I think that's how most modern democracies work, maybe all of them, it's a little different than a politician makes a bunch of promises and then we hold them to it. I think there's actually real tension between those two models of democracy right now, and a contradictory tension where we both kind of want both, you know, the anger at people who flip flop or don't fill their promises.

And yet. If I trusted them to hold my ideals and then go into parliament, then if they changed their mind, I would trust that they did. So for reasons that were, you know, you make a bunch of promises before you're elected and then you go into, and you find out all the details and you know, you can't carry them out or something changes or something changes.

In theory. If I trusted my representatives to have the same value system as I had, and that's why I'd elected them. Then I would trust them to change their views in response to changing information. and I, you know, sometimes I do and sometimes I don't and like sensible people should change their views when they see changing information.

And yet there's this discourse of, The worst thing a politician can do is not fulfill their promises or break their promises or, or flip-flop on a subject. And those two that's not consistent, you can't actually hold like, those don't make sense they are opposing views.

So

Mark: [00:46:02] I was supposed it comes down to question to the difference between. You know, what was originally conceived of as a representative democracy, where you elect someone who represents you,

Aven: [00:46:11] who has the same interests and the same, maybe background and views. Yeah. And

Mark: [00:46:16] voter as consumer. Right. You buy a thing and you want

Aven: [00:46:20] to that promise, you know, if you don't, if you don't do these seven things you said on your list, then you have failed me as a yeah.

Or as a contract. Like it's a business proposition. Yeah. I don't have an answer to that. because I've, you know, I have felt both ways about politicians I have voted for. I didn't vote for Trudeau, but he, he said he was going to change the electoral system and he didn't. And I feel like that was a hundred percent a broken promise.

And yet other maybe he changed because the world changed and he had to change. And so. I'm not consistent in my views on that either. So I don't know what to do about it, but I think these are different models. the word democracy is used now to encompass such a wide range of different views about how the relationship between the voter or the citizen, which is not the same as the voter and the politician, you know, what is that relationship.

And I think that's a really good, an important point to make about the difference between democracy in the ancient world, in the few places that were democracies or systems, where there were democratic aspects like Rome, which had democratic aspect in the sense that we mean democratic, the differences between them and now, and what people thought they were getting and the reasons for doing it The whole beginning of this, was you talking about that? So, yeah. Yeah.

Mark: [00:47:39] So on that note, I think I finally, I, I want to just talk a little bit more about, politics in the ancient world, in Athens and in Rome. so let's start with Athens, and you can kind of expand on this general outline that I'm giving, So in Athens, in ancient Athens, Though opinions about democracy were indeed mixed as I sort of indicated.

Aven: [00:48:02] Yeah. And over time too, it's very important to say that the democratic period of Athens was fairly short. Yeah.

Mark: [00:48:08] So not only are we not talking about all of Greece, so, you know, people say, Oh, Greece, the home of democracy. So, Athens,

Aven: [00:48:15] now, other places had democracies too. We don't know nearly as much about them.

And they had different varieties of it for different periods. Athens supported democracies in different places while they had it. Like, it was very complicated, but yes, there's no such thing as Greece in the ancient world. So let's just dispense with that right away. So, yes, we're talking about, we're talking about Athens because that's what the system we know.

Yeah.

Mark: [00:48:37] Athens over about what 150 years approximately.

Aven: [00:48:42] So the peak of Athenian democracy goes from basically the fifth century with some problems in between, in the middle of the Peloponnesian war, There are then a restoration of the democratic system, on and off in the fourth century. So there's little patches of democratic, more or less democratic systems, because of course, when we're talking about the real peak of Athenian democracy, the full on Athenian democracy, that's only actually in the fifth century, that's only maybe 60 or 70 years of that.

Range where, it was at its most democratic and I don't mean that in a modern sense. Right. I'd be in the Greek sense, in the Athenian sense it was the most democratic. Yeah. Yeah. really important point. And I don't know if this is what you're going to say. I might be heading you off, but one of the really key things is that the Athenian democracy in its most democratic form.

did not in fact elect most of their officials.

Mark: [00:49:36] Yes. So this was the point I was going to make.

Aven: [00:49:38] Go ahead.

Mark: [00:49:39] so, well, so I've got a few things to

Aven: [00:49:42] kind of go ahead and get up to that point.

 Mark: [00:49:44] Although they have this sort of mixed opinion about this. that didn't stop them from personifying the concept as a goddess Democratia. I mean, yeah,

Aven: [00:49:53] they love to personify everything,

Mark: [00:49:57] but they did make offerings to her.

Now their assembly, their you know, kind of political assembly was called the ecclesia, which means literally calling out. and, the word was later adopted to refer to the church in Christian times. So from political assembly, it became religious assembly.

Aven: [00:50:16] And it just meant people who were called together in order to make decisions.

So they just modeled the church forms on the political forms. Yeah.

Mark: [00:50:25] From ecclesia, we get, the English word ecclesiastic or  As to voting, it was initially done by a show of hands without an exact

Aven: [00:50:36] count,

just

Mark: [00:50:38] like the, you sort of estimate.

Aven: [00:50:40] Yeah.

Mark: [00:50:40] Ballots were however used in the law courts. So actual counted ballots, and, one particular instance of voting.

In that very specific ballot sense. in ancient Greece is ostracism in which, you know, that was the exiling of, someone who was thought to be dangerous to the state. They would be exiled for 10 years and it would be decided.

Aven: [00:51:02] Exiled, but they did not lose their property. It's an important point because normally exile entailed.

It was a capital punishment , You became a non

Mark: [00:51:09] person, a non citizen.

Aven: [00:51:11] Yes, you became a non citizen and also your property was seized. So your heirs did not

Mark: [00:51:16] inherit. It inherited.

Aven: [00:51:17] Whereas, with ostracism, you went away for 10 years, but your property was not confiscated. And then you could come back.

Yeah, it was meant to reduce the political power of a person. Right. It wasn't really a punishment. In other words, The people who are ostracized were often people who were

Mark: [00:51:32] very popular. It was a solution to a problem

Aven: [00:51:34] solution to people being too popular, too popular.

Mark: [00:51:37] Right. So in this case of ostracism, voting was done with pottery fragments, which in Greek are called.

well, it's called an ostracon, a pottery fragment, a shard.  So this word ostracon is related to the word osteon, which meant bone from which we get medical terms like osteoporosis and, osteoarthritis and so forth. it's also related to the word ostreon, which means oyster.

And from that we get the word oyster.

Aven: [00:52:09] It makes sense

Mark: [00:52:10] now. So this is the bit that you were referring to, the most notable difference between Athenian democracy and our modern systems is that, with the exception of some military positions, Which, you know, required specialized abilities and knowledge.

government officials were not elected, but chosen by lot It was a

Aven: [00:52:30] lottery!.

and that is like a serious and important distinction. And when people talk about Athenian democracy as the origins of say American democracy, it's not true. I mean, It is true because of course that idea of popular rule was very influential and very important.

And when countries later modeled themselves deliberately on Athenian democracy, that matters. And we should talk about that. But there were very few in the height of Athenian democracy. So there are a whole bunch of different. Stages. it was the strategoi who were the generals who were elected because yes, they had to have real skills.

You couldn't just throw any person in charge of the army and expect them to win a

Mark: [00:53:12] battle

You couldn't be terrible at strategy and hope to win a war.

Aven: [00:53:15] Yeah. So it was, that was important. So the strategoi, and there were 10 of them regularly. So for instance Pericles whom people will know as a name, probably from Athens was elected as a . strategos, that's why. It mattered that he was popular because he was actually elected. And there were a couple of Archons who were at various points elected, and those were other kinds of officials, but almost every one else in the height of democracy was just chosen by lot. And there was a whole very complicated system for marking who was eligible and how that worked.

And these really cool machines too, for choosing people.

Mark: [00:53:49] And it was considered your duty, your civic duty to do that job. When you're you

Aven: [00:53:54] number came up, you, you had to do it. And there was a, they were fairly short one year, one year terms. Usually in fact, there were some other, there were like the prytaneis and things like that were actually, even shorter than that.

now where the voting came in was the voting for laws. Right. And that was voting. It was direct democracy. You had to turn up on the day and you had to stand there and you listen to the people arguing for the different points.

And then you made your vote on the day in person. So, you know, that's the part that is democratic in the sense that we think of as democratic, People proposed laws or actions like going to war or not, and taxes and stuff. And that was voted on. So that was voting for sure.

Mark: [00:54:33] That's more like what the Icelandic, you know, the althing was voting on specific

Aven: [00:54:40] issues.

Yeah. And now we would, we would call that a referendum. Now, if we did that, which we do very rarely, but some, you know, so California has referendums all the time, Australia, New Zealand, like some places have them more often than others.

And that is very much closer to the original direct democracy. .

Mark: [00:54:59] Now, I should say, with reference to the, Icelandic democracy. Of course there were shenanigans that went on in the background, to influence how people voted

Aven: [00:55:08] Of course there were shenanigans in Athens too. Like, don't let anybody try to pretend to you that it was some sort of pure.

And I mean, we have lots of stuff about bribery and corruption and also most people. You know, this is the drawback to direct democracy. Most people don't have time to think about the issues, right. And so they follow influential people. So Pericles was a strategos but he was also an influential speaker that people just generally trusted.

So when he said we're going to do X, everyone voted for X, because he got his, people trusted him. And the other thing that's important to understand about Athenian democracy, quite apart from the fact that, you know, women couldn't vote, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you weren't a landowner, if you weren't an Athenian citizen, if you didn't have enough land, you couldn't vote though. In the very height of the democracy, anyone could vote, you didn't have to have any land at all or money. And that was, that was the thing people hated the most about it was that like even poor people had a vote. It's horrible.

And it wasn't, can you imagine that,

Mark: [00:56:07] and it wasn't just a question of whether or not you were born at Athens it's whether your entire lineage came from Athens

Aven: [00:56:16] again at the most restrictive periods. Yeah. But, the other really important thing to realize is, you know, so at the height of the democracy you were paid, if you went to the assembly, you got a little bit of money, like not a lot, but a little bit of money for attending the assembly.

And if you went and were a jury, that's the other really important thing about democracy is that all the court cases had large juries, you know, like 500 people or a hundred people. and you were paid for jury duty and it was the fact that the general people were chosen by lot to be jury members that was considered one of the hallmarks of Athenian democracy.

So actually the fact that they voted on laws was actually not that unusual in many Greek States, in many Greek States, the laws are proposed by small councils, but voted on by the assembly of people. To some degree, maybe it was restricted by property qualifications or something, but it was still voted on by the people.

But the idea that the court cases were decided by the people at large was actually the thing that other Greek States thought was the most surprising about Athens. If you see what I mean. but at the height of the democracy, you were paid a little bit of money for that, but basically the reason you could have direct democracy where people spent many days.

Out of the year, standing around in an assembly, listening to people, make speeches and voting and not at their farms and not at their shops and not at their work. Why could they do that? Slavery. Thank you very much.

Mark: [00:57:43] Yes.

Aven: [00:57:44] So it's really important to understand that the reason people had that Liberty to spend their time doing this.

And even if they weren't. You know, investigating every single piece of information about policy, but being able to kind of make something of a reasonably informed decision about a lot of this was because they had enslaved people to do their work. And that's really important to understand when we talk about Greek democracy and Athenian democracy.

the Liberty of Athens was enabled by an, in very large number of people with no freedom and that's,  wow. What a surprise that America modeled themselves on that. Yeah.

 Mark: [00:58:24] Now I have this vague memory of reading this and you can correct me if this is wrong, but I mean, obviously.

Slavery was an institution in many, many parts of the ancient world in many parts of

Aven: [00:58:35] Greek city States.

Mark: [00:58:36] but at that particular time, Athens had, a big number of,

Aven: [00:58:42] enslaved people. I mean, this is one of these things we it's hard to know because we have the different sources of information, but yes, Athens, Athens is generally considered in the fifth century to be a slave economy and slave state in a way that not all Greek States were right.

So I don't know that I can get much more specific than that without more knowledge than I have. but yes, not all. States had the level of enslaved labor available to them. Athens did I think that is definitely true. And Athens didn't always have that much either. So that's, you know, the rise of democracy at Athens comes along with the rise of their, economy and ability to have large numbers of enslaved people.

Right. So, and we see that at Rome too. Right. Even though Rome didn't have a direct democracy quite the same way. the ability of Roman citizens to be so deeply engaged with politics definitely comes along with the rise of enslaved, a slave economy and a large enslaved population.

Yeah.

Mark: [00:59:49] So at least anyways, in theory, having this democratic system meant that, you know, you didn't get the same kind of political campaigns and it prevented the sort of development of an exclusive political class as in Rome.

Aven: [01:00:04] Yeah. And that was definitely the purpose of it. If everybody is eligible for holding these positions and it's all rotated on a.

Basically random basis, nobody's going to be a career politician, right. Because it's no such thing as a career. So there will be like a handful. Maybe these people have become strategoi, but that's mostly that they're soldiers. Yeah. And otherwise, there will be people who will have influence in the assembly and that still happened.

But there won't be people who would just live their life going from office to office because.  It's random. Right. And in fact, once you've held an office, you're removed from eligibility for that office for X number of years. Right. They were really big on amateurs. They wanted amateurs to hold these offices.

No, I mean, they did. They really did. They didn't want them to be professionals. Now there's drawbacks to that. Right. Especially cause they didn't really have the bureaucracy. Which it's okay to have an amateur in charge. If you have

Mark: [01:01:00] experts who are telling them, well, okay, this will work or this one work or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah.

Aven: [01:01:07] So there were drawbacks to it, but in a small state with a reasonably simple economy and foreign policy, it's maybe doable.  I don't think it is now.

Mark: [01:01:16] And we've seen that go very

Aven: [01:01:19] badly.

Mark: [01:01:21] in modern times. so, you know, speaking of Rome then, so in ancient Rome, voting was initially oral, with officials who were called rogatores, literally questioners, who would ask each voter for their vote and then would write it down

Aven: [01:01:39] because of course you don't have a literate society.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mark: [01:01:42] But later on they, developed secret ballots.

Aven: [01:01:45] Yeah. And before that  you had to go and you had to declare it in front of everybody. And we have lots of evidence of like strong men and like standing next to the place where you had to declare your boat going, like, what do you think you're going to vote for? You're going to vote for my guy or not.

You know, and that was something people had to campaign for was a secret ballot because it was so very, obviously being manipulated by basic threats and also bribes. Right. Because of course you bribe people to vote for you, but if there's a secret  ballot, you don't know if they did or not

Mark: [01:02:17] know.

Aven: [01:02:17] So nobody liked that, you know, the people who had the money to bribe, didn't like the idea that they wouldn't know if people would actually followed through or not. Right. Yeah. It was a big thing.

Mark: [01:02:27] So these secret ballots, I gather involved wax

Aven: [01:02:30] tablets.

Mark: [01:02:31] That seems easy to, I mean, nevermind hanging CHADS.

I mean, you could, you just like scrape off a little thing.

well, you have to have the right

Aven: [01:02:39] people counting, I guess, that's

Mark: [01:02:41] the important point.

So, you know, in terms of how the mechanics, the mathematical mechanics of voting work in, in Rome, it's not a question of simple majorities, but voting blocks, which decided elections, which really reminds me of the whole crazy, electoral college system in the U S

Aven: [01:02:59] I don't even want to talk about, I don't want to talk about assemblies at Rome .

Mark: [01:03:03] It's complicated from what I gather

Aven: [01:03:06] it is so upsettingly complicated. Okay. In my Roman Civ class, I'm like here are what they are. And now we're all going to forget that immediately, because that was too hard. So I'm not going to go over it all, but there were different, as I said, different blocks could be constituted different ways,

Mark: [01:03:21] like centuries, is that the term

Aven: [01:03:24] one.

So there was the Centuria assembly, which was organized by centuries, which were, the groups in which you fought in the army. Right. Because most originally. to be an enfranchised citizen, you had to be an, an army in the army. That was, or to

Mark: [01:03:39] put it another way. If you were a citizen, you were expected to

Aven: [01:03:42] go, Oh, no, it's sort of not, because originally you could only be in the army if you had a certain property qualification.

Mark: [01:03:50] Right.

Aven: [01:03:51] Okay. So it was complicated, but you nonetheless were a citizen, even if you couldn't be in the army in terms of say protections of your person, people couldn't beat you in the street and you weren't allowed to be, executed without trial because you were still a citizen.

but there's the centuriate assembly, which is organized by centuries . There's another one that is only the plebeian assembly. So only if you're a plebeian, are you a member of that assembly? And so if you're a member of the patrician class, you cannot be a member of that assembly that the plebeian assembly elects, the plebeian tribunes, for instance, the tribunes of the people. Any of the assemblies can vote on laws.

So people would decide which assembly to call depending on whether they thought that that particular arrangement of voters would pass the law or not. so one of the assemblies is the one that is organized by census grade. And then that means by how much money you have, then there's the tribal assembly, which is arranged by the tribes, which are sort of originally.

Where you lived and your family lived, but then became divorced from geography much like the demes did in, in Athens, after a certain amount of time. And there were only, there were certain ones that were the city of Rome and then the other ones that were outside of the city of Rome. And then there was this whole issue when the allies of Rome became Italians became Roman citizens.

Which tribes would they be in? Because you voted yes. By voting blocks. So the tribal assemblies would vote by. The tribe, which was sort of your kinship group, but not really. and each group would vote and the majority vote of that group would then decide. So say yes or no,

Mark: [01:05:23] it's all or nothing.

If

Aven: [01:05:25] the majority of the group in that tribe voted yes.

Then that tribal vote counts. That tribe counts as one yes. Vote. Yeah. And you would add those up now. That's not so bad with the tribal assembly because those are geographical though. It means that there's, most of the tribes were in Rome and there were only a few that were assigned to outside of Rome.

So the people inside of Rome had this high level of, power, but the centuriate assembly was arranged by money. So the top. Let's say 1% was in one century and then the next 5% of, so it was by levels of income. Right. You know, how much property, not income property did you own? and so you were organized into these groups.

And they voted and each block voted and then each block counted for one, but you know, the top 1% that the top century had maybe like, I don't know, let's say 500 people in it. The bottom century, which was the people who had no money at all had maybe let's say 10,000 people in it, but that century counted for one vote.

And the top 500 people counted for one vote Even better when they recorded the votes, they started from the top and they went on until they got a simple majority and they didn't even ask the votes of the bottom half. Right. So if, if the first five or 10 or 15 centuries all voted one way. That was it.

That was it. So the centuriate assembly then is the one that you go to if it's going to appeal to the upper classes, right. Or the rich people, but the plebeian assembly, which rules a lot of those upper classes out, because the patricians are generally the ones with all the money, though. It doesn't necessarily track that way, blah, blah, blah.

you might go to for others. So different magistrates were allowed to call different assemblies. Some magistrates could call all of the assemblies or not all of the assemblies and they would do so. And then the different assemblies also voted for different magistrates, right? So each of the assemblies, voting for particular magistrates.

So when the elections were held for consul and aediles and tribunes of the plebs and stuff, it was different. Assemblies would vote for each of those. I don't know how any Roman kept any of this straight it's utterly baffling to me. but I mean, I guess, whatever, the way that you do it is the way that you do it, you know, like people figure these things out, but it's so, and  yeah no pretense of every vote is equal.

None. Like nobody even Tried to pretend that that was true.

Mark: [01:07:47] So Americans, as you look at your unbelievably complex, from what I understand ballots and are baffled, yeah, that's that goes back a long way. So the Romans feel your pain.

Aven: [01:08:00] Yeah. They only ever had one simple ballot to do at a time, but they had a lot of voting to do, took them a lot of days to vote.

So same deal.

 Mark: [01:08:09] So in terms of popularism in Roman politics, I mean, we can talk about sort of basically two major factions from what I understand the populares, who appealed to the lower classes, and the, you know, the popular assembly, to achieve their political ends.

Aven: [01:08:26] Right? So that's what I'm talking about.

Populares the thing about them was that they would call the popular assembly or the plebeian assembly to do what they wanted. It didn't mean that they were necessarily themselves from the lower classes or in fact, even. Cared about the lower classes, but they felt they could draw their power and their support from the popular assembly.

Mark: [01:08:47] Right. So they had ideas that were, you

Aven: [01:08:50] know, palatable to those groups. Yeah.

Mark: [01:08:52] and then on the other hand, there was the sort of, ruling elite, I guess you could say, who stressed the authority of the Senate. They were known at least to themselves as the optimates, meaning literally the

best

right. I don't know that the others would call them, would have

Aven: [01:09:09] called them that, but you know, see, this is where the history is written by the victors part comes in. Right. Because the people whose the stories we hear are the people who can call themselves the Optimates. Right. So now that said like Julius Caesar was a popularist.

Yeah. So, it's not only, but, and that's an important point. He was a long-term patrician. His family was an old upper-class family. There was no way in which he was a man of the people in the sense of coming from the people, but he decided his support base would be, and he cultivated support base among.

Plebeians and, the populares.

Mark: [01:09:46] I guess that makes sense in that he spent a lot of his time with the rank and file in the military.

Aven: [01:09:53] Yeah, it was still a choice, there were lots of generals who were, you know, who were Optima tes you know, Pompey ended up, siding with the Optimates.  you

Mark: [01:10:02] He didn't do so

Aven: [01:10:02] well, though in the end?

No, but he did well for a long time.

He did. I mean, don't just because he lost the civil war in the very end. I mean, he was extraordinarily successful politically for a very long time. And he was not from a patrician family and yet he sided with the Optum Montes and his. But, and yet he was a popular general with his troops.

Right? So it's, it was complicated. It was not, it was not as predictable as you might think it would be. Yeah.

Mark: [01:10:30] but yeah, indeed, the, the leaders of both groups, as you suggest, are kind of elite senatorial class,

Aven: [01:10:37] everybody who was actually a politician was

Mark: [01:10:40] You've got to have the means to that, to do that job,

Aven: [01:10:44] because it's very important to know that in the ancient world, in both Greece and Rome, but especially in Rome, no one was paid.

Right. No governmental magisterial position. Like, so none of these magistrates was paid for the job. In fact, often you had to use your own private funds to fund the job you took. So if you had part of your job was to put on games, for instance, you be given a certain amount of money from the state, but then you were expected, you know, expected to put your money towards putting on those games.

Right. So, People did make money from being government officials in roundabout and slightly underhanded and sometimes deeply raw, fraudulent ways. But the actual job itself did not have a salary. There was no pay involved with any of these positions. So yes, you had to have money like Joe blow on the street.

Couldn't ran for office cause he couldn't afford the money for. Campaigning. And then he couldn't afford to hold the office cause he wouldn't be able to do his normal job and he'd have to spend his own money on paying for, people to do the actual work. In fact, like you didn't even get a staff in the Republic, you weren't given, a staff, you used your own friends relations, freedmen, and slaves to do that.

Grunt work of the job. S o yeah, it definitely was not a role that everybody could do.

Mark: [01:12:02] So yes, we shouldn't think of  the populares as  as proto Marxists or

Aven: [01:12:06] goodness. No, they were, populist in the same way that populist politicians tend to be now, which is from the moneyed classes, but appealing to people who don't have necessarily as much money, like a certain

Mark: [01:12:18] someone we might,

Aven: [01:12:19] I can't think of anyone that that would apply to no.

Mark: [01:12:22] So this political situation is one of the major features of Roman politics, especially during the later Republic or the, you know, however you want to define that

Aven: [01:12:33] the mid, mid to late to late Republic.

Mark: [01:12:35] so yeah, as you say, Julius Caesar, he was one of the popular Cicero was an optimate

Aven: [01:12:41] then you

Mark: [01:12:41] can see why they didn't get along, I guess.

Aven: [01:12:44] Yeah. Though Cicero came from a provincial family who didn't have previous connections, you know? So there's a lot of psychology involved in looking at why these people ended up where they were. Yeah.

Mark: [01:12:53] so, you know, this is all, you know, not too dissimilar from modern politics in the U S and many other countries.

Where, even though the political platforms of the parties may be aimed at, you know, the working class or the middle class or the, you

Aven: [01:13:09] know, upper class or whatever,

Mark: [01:13:11] the politicians themselves usually end up coming from the wealthy elite because you can't afford to do it. You know, you've got to put yourself out there and promote yourself and that takes money and.

You know, the time, which itself is money, to do

Aven: [01:13:28] it.

Mark: [01:13:28] so you know, some things politically don't change when we've talked about how, you know,

Aven: [01:13:34] words and culture, culture

Mark: [01:13:35] have changed, but some elements are kind of consistent, you know, especially the, the sort of financial side of it.

Aven: [01:13:43] Absolutely. Though ambition no longer directly means bribery.

Mark: [01:13:48] Right?

Aven: [01:13:49] Which it did mean in the ancient

Mark: [01:13:51] world.

Aven: [01:13:51] Yes. It came to mean.

Mark: [01:13:53] And

on that happy note,

Aven: [01:13:54] I'm sorry if you're listening to this on election day or afterwards, because I really don't know what the results will be and I, I don't even know. I don't know what, I, I don't even want to say what I hope, because hope seems such a fragile thing right now, but yes, to there being more elections in the future.

Mark: [01:14:11] Yes. As problematic as they sometimes are,

Aven: [01:14:13] we can only hope that they continue to happen. Yeah. Cheers.

 And we'll be back. Eventually with another podcast.

Mark: [01:14:21] Bye for now.

Aven: [01:14:22] For more information on this podcast. Check out our website, www.alliterative.net where you can find links to the videos, blog posts, sources, and credits, and all our contact info.

Mark: [01:14:34] And please check

out our Patreon where you

can pledge to support this show and our video project. You can go directly to the videos at youtube.com/alliterative

Aven: [01:14:43] our email is on the website, but the easiest way to get in touch with us is Twitter.

I'm AvenSarah a, V E N. S a R a H,

Mark: [01:14:51] and I'm @alliterative. To keep up with the podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcast app or to the feed on the website,

Aven: [01:14:58] and if you've enjoyed it, consider leaving us a review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. It helps us a lot. We'll be back soon with more musings about the connections around us.

Thanks for listening.

Mark: [01:15:07] Bye.