The creole language of demos. On the Old Oligarch (Ath. resp. 2,8) and on the sociopolitical meanings of multilingualism in Greek thought

Abstract

In [Xen. ] Ath. resp. 2, 8 the Old Oligarch attributes to the Athenians a kekramene phone, built with elements taken from "all the Greeks and barbarians" (here 'Athenians' means 'urban demos', and this situation is considered the result of a conscious choice). Although inserted in the section on the advantages of thalassocracy, this kekramene phone is not seen an advantage, as some commentators have thought. Nor does it have a general derogatory value against the demos, in order to qualify it as ‘ignorant’. As it is shown by the analysis of the Greek attitude towards individual multilingualism and creolization, the kekramene phone attributed to the Athenian demos is a way of stating that the Athenian demos is no longer Greek, perhaps even that they betrayed the Greeks for the barbarians, and certainly to equate the demos to a mass of slaves (in the Greek world of classical age slaves are the multilingual ones par excellence), just as urban demos is assimilated to slaves in 1,10-12: this is functional to the ideal of enslavement of the demos, envisaged by the Old Oligarch in 1,8-9.