I symbouloi di Turi, Atene e Protagora

The subject of this paper is the influence of Athenian democratic political culture on Thurii, with special reference to the role possibly played by Protagoras. There is no reason to doubt that Protagoras “wrote the laws of Thurii”, as Heraclides Ponticus has it, and one may surmise that this had a profound impact on the political culture of the ‘Athenian’ colony. Within this context the paper discusses that passage in Aristotle’s Politics where Thurian officials called symbouloi are viewed as charged with responsibility in the matter of annulling a law and introducing a new one. Now, on the one hand the symbouloi of Thurii have ostensibly nothing to do either with the Spartan symbouloi, or with the oligarchic probouloi of many Greek poleis, on the other hand a thorough examination of Plato’s passages where Protagoras views of political virtue and participation to collective decision-making are considered shows that the family of words symboule, symbouleuein, symboulos is central to Protagoras’ understanding of the deliberative and normative processes within any participatory political community. The name of the Thurian symbouloi, then, should be related to the semantic field of symbouleuein and therefore to a crucial aspect of Athenian democracy.