Here I want to outline a relatively novel
account of ancient citizenship and its
broader legacy in the early modern and
modern worlds, one which seems to me
more in sympathy with the general approach
of the present volumes. I will suggest that it
is possible to find an ancient ancestry for
both the ‘passive’ and ‘active’ citizens of the
early-modern and modern worlds – and
indeed, that the two concepts were often
seen as integrally related. And I will argue
that, contrary to modern accounts which
present ancient citizenship as an antidote or
alternative to the modern sovereign state,
the ancient civic legacy and its significance
were adopted and contested on both sides
of the debate over the roles of sovereign
power. In so doing I want to stress the
genuine complexity and ambivalence of
images of citizenship and civic life in the
ancient world. For Cicero civic activism was
dangerous as well as laudable, disruptive as
well as potentially liberatory. Civic heroes
needed to be treated with kid gloves. And so
those writers in the early modern world who
stressed the importance of what we moderns
are bound to see as purely passive forms of
citizenship – such as tolerance and respect
for others, or simply minding one’s own
business – may not be so new-fangled as
they are sometimes depicted. And this
should not really surprise us, since some of
them were among the greatest classicists of
their era.