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In recent scholarship, both the idea of the aristocratic symposium and the notion of Greek aristocracy have been challenged.² In their fine introduction to the collective volume on “Aristocracy” in Antiquity. Redefining Greek and Roman Elites, Nick Fisher and Hans van Wees suggest that “‘aristocracy’ is only rarely a helpful concept for the analysis of political struggles and historical developments or of ideological divisions and contested discourses in literary and material cultures in the ancient world” (Fisher and van Wees 2015: 1). In their own words, Fisher’s and van Wees’ suggestion was conceived in reaction to two fundamental errors of earlier scholarship, both resulting from excessive scholarly reliance on the claims of ancient aristocratic ideology. “In modern scholarship, these claims are often translated into a belief that a hereditary ‘aristocratic’ class is identifiable at most times and places in the ancient world […] and that deep ideological divisions existed between ‘aristocratic values’ and the norms and ideals of lower or ‘middling’ classes” (p. 1). When put in very general terms, these remarks are hardly controversial.³ Van Wees and Fisher persuasively argue that “the political and economic preconditions for the creation of hereditary aristocracies of the medieval and early modern European type (strong royal authority, stable transmission of wealth) did not exist in most parts of the ancient world, and we have much less evidence than we used to imagine for the importance of hereditary status and privilege in general and for the existence of closed hereditary elites in particular.” If anything, “[a]rguably the Bacchiadai in Corinth and the patricians [in Rome] at their most ‘closed’ are the only elites that deserve this label […]” (both quotes at p. 7).

Consequently, H. van Wees and N. Fisher praise an approach that seems more and more common in current scholarship. This approach is well represented by Alain Duplouy, who banished “aristocracy” and “aristocrats” from his ground-breaking book (Duplouy 2006). Instead, he tried to conceive a “behavioral definition” of aristocracy studying diverse mechanisms of “social recognition” of those aspiring to, or enjoying, elite status. His work focuses rather on the activities and strategies adopted in order to achieve their aim by individuals who were in constant need of negotiating or confirming their “prestige.” In their introduction, van Wees and Fisher have recourse to the notion of “leisure class” (adapted from the classical sociological theory of Veblen 1899) to denote those who not only objectively belonged to propertied social groups, but also adopted a particularly ostentatious lifestyle.

The conclusions reached by H. van Wees and N. Fisher look entirely logical in the light of modern definitions of aristocracy that universally emphasize—with some minor variations—the hereditary nature and a high degree of exclusivity of such groups alongside their high material status (cf. van Wees and Fisher 2015: 1–2). The problem, however, lies less in our inability to find such “closed hereditary elites” in the archaic period than in the fact that these very definitions miss the point when applied to the historical realities of the archaic Greek world. To prove this, it is enough to point out that such definitions excellently fit the entire citizenry of a given political community in this period.

Before the rise of the first Greek democratic regimes and the concomitant enlargement of the citizen-body in Athens and elsewhere to include those, who did not own landed property (i.e., thētes, or poor free men working as hired laborers), the strictly hereditary group enjoying absolute exclusivity was no less than citizens at large. One must have been born into a family of citizen descent to be a citizen and only citizens had access to political rights, however we define them in each particular case. What is more, the civic status was obviously based on (relatively) substantial wealth, since the right to the ownership of land was limited to citizens only. I submit we should, and I am confident the archaic Greeks themselves most certainly did, view all the citizens of the archaic period as self-conscious elites of their own communities—hereditary, closed and privileged at the expense of all other inhabitants of their land. But can all citizens, following our contemporary definitions of “aristocracy,” be called aristocrats? Obviously not! And this is why, I would argue, we should look for other definitions rather than agree on the non-existence of the aristocracy in the archaic Greek world.

The definitions that provided the starting point for van Wees’ and Fisher’s analyses (Shorter Oxford Dictionary online; Oxford English Dictionary, definition 5) share a common weakness in that they systematically blend the notion of “aristocracy” with that of “nobility,” using both terms interchangeably. This is of course understandable given the British political tradition, but in many European countries the (so-called “titled”) aristocracy will historically stand out as a more or less exiguous “super-elite” of a broader social order of “nobility.” It so happens that the notions of heredity (of noble birth) and exclusivity (of political status), which feature in the aforementioned definitions are historically much better suited to the social group of nobility, whereas the additional emphasis on (hereditary) titles and offices and on exceptional wealth is more appropriate for aristocracy.

In our present case, the citizen-bodies of all Greek communities of the archaic period can logically be subsumed under the category of nobility. What remains is the question of tools or definitions one should employ in our quest for an archaic Greek aristocracy. In that, whatever path of enquiry we adopt, the necessary starting point must be the axiom that in archaic Greece, to quote van Wees and Fisher once more, “the political and economic preconditions for the creation of hereditary aristocracies […] (strong royal authority, stable transmission of wealth) did not exist.” In fact, if we look for archaic Greek aristocracies, hereditary titles and offices, or large property, bestowed upon individuals or families or larger social groups by a superior political or religious authority will not be there. Rather, we should focus on the relationship and on conceivable differences and interplay between the “nobles” and the “aristocrats,” i.e., between the citizens at large and their elites.

Following the pioneering study by Benedetto Bravo, I would suggest a working hypothesis based on a historical analogy that I consider particularly appropriate in this context (esp. Węcowski 2014: 21–26).⁴ In several European countries of the late mediaeval and early modern periods, aristocracies were less dependent on the good graces of the monarch than in others. But a truly exceptional case is that of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth between the late 15th and late 18th centuries ad, where royal privileges were conspicuously limited by the political rights of the so-called “noble nation” consisting of all nobles of the land and amounting to 10 up to 15 percent of the population (cf. Frost 2007). Importantly, hereditary aristocratic titles were banned because of the dominating ideology of the basic equality of the entire body of “noble brethren,” as they called themselves. Their elite, who called themselves “magnates,” was never legally defined. The estates of many of such aristocrats exceeded by far those of the wealthiest aristocrats in Western Europe (in particular in what is now Ukraine, where they were duly called “petty kings” and mercilessly exploited the local population of this fabulously fertile land), whereas many nobles in central Poland were often poorer than their non-noble neighbors. Despite that, the ideology of the equality of nobles as a group was much more than a fiction, since the political rights were limited to this group, featuring the most spectacular right to elect the king. On such occasions, every member of this group, i.e., every member of the citizen-body of the “noble nation,” had the same say, with one vote for each of the nobles notwithstanding their economic or political status.

Despite the inherent risk of anachronism in such historical analogies, this is a very close approximation to what we encounter in the archaic Greek city, where the basic political right to participate in the Popular Assembly and to vote on the most vital communal issues did not depend on the economic status of a citizen, provided one was regarded as such. In both historical cases it was clear to all who did and who did not belong to those powerful few who were “more equal” than the others and who, based primarily on their elevated economic status, dominated the political life of their community.

But the most important lesson to be drawn from this historical analogy is that for a member of a well-defined and legally delimitated “nobility” of a given community, in our case, for a Polish or Lithuanian noble proud of his elite status and of his ideological equality with all other members of the group including the most powerful and the wealthiest, it was possible to advance into the ranks of the “aristocracy,” or the “magnates,” when one was propelled by spectacular individual success (political, but especially military) backed by a steady economic advance. If able to pursue the lavishly “aristocratic” lifestyle, one becomes universally perceived as an aristocrat. Naturally, the nouveau-riche aura may accompany a family for a time, but this is another phenomenon that we also find in archaic Greece.