I've been reading the Landmark edition of Thucydides, and it sets out that Athens had c.30k voting citizens, needing 6k in an assembly to make binding decisions. But Athens often sends out armies and fleets involving thousands (tens of thousands?) of men, who I understood to at least primarily be citizens, thus meaning a very significant part of its voters are absent for decisions.
Was there an issue when Athens went to war that it was sending out a very large proportion of its voters, and that this skewed votes while it was away? For instance
- Did the levy system mean a particular army could be called up from a particular geographical region or a particular class so that people could deliberately make sure a certain group was sent on a war to stop them being able to vote something down?- - Was there ever an issue with armies formed from volunteers skewing votes (e.g. most pro-war people go to war, people left at home vote for peace to be made)
This is a really great question and there's a lot of I could talk about in response. However, I'd like it to get the attention it deserves, so instead of answering a thread that's sitting at zero upvotes, I'm just going to ask you to post it again tomorrow ;)
In my experience, it helps to have the actual question as the title, and to introduce it a bit so people know what you're talking about. You're more likely to get people interested if you rephrase it into something like: "In Classical Athens, armies and fleets consisted of citizens, who could not vote while they were on campaign. Did this affect the decisions of the democracy?" or: "In the Athenian democracy, did any leader or faction ever take advantage of the fact that many voting citizens would be away from home in wartime, and unable to vote?" Or something along those lines. Then you can add your specific questions in the body post.
Thanks!