La democracia precaria. El sistema del sorteo de la democracia ateniense antigua en Francisco Rodríguez Adrados y Antonio Tovar Llorente.

This article explores two groundbreaking studies of Ancient Democratic Athens in Franco’s Spain: Life of Socrates (1947, 19532, reed. 1966, 1984) and The Athenian Democracy (1975, 19661, then entitled Enlightenment and Politics in Classical Greece), written, respectively, by renowned scholars Antonio Tovar Llorente (1911-1985) and Francisco Rodríguez Adrados (born 1922). The article analyses, through a discussion focused on the treatment in those works of the most distinctive element of Ancient Athenian Democracy, the selection by lot (sortition), their internal contradictions, ideological misreadings, as well as the achievements. Firstly, the analysis is based on the opposition between ideology and science, as read by Ellen M. Wood in classical scholars and, secondly, on a framework of Sociology of the intellectuals