[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 60 (Tuesday, May 16, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E836-E837]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 PATARA: THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY, 1800 YEARS AND 7,000 MILES 
                                  AWAY

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. CLIFF STEARNS

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, May 16, 2006

  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, the city of Patara in Turkey sports a 
fantastic beach that sprawls for more than 11 miles. It recently rated 
number one on the London Sunday Times' list of the world's best 
beaches. But Patara is worth our attention for more than sand and surf. 
An archeological team led by Akdeniz University Professors Fahri Isik 
and Havva Iskan Isik recently unearthed an ancient parliament building 
in Patara--the meeting place of the first federal republic in recorded 
human history. The building, called the Bouleuterion, housed at least 
twenty-three city-states of the Lycian League, which existed along the 
Mediterranean coast of Turkey from about 167 BC until 400 AD.
  The Lycian League's republican governing system, utilizing 
proportional representation, was unparalleled in the ancient world, and 
fascinated the pioneering philosophers of the Enlightenment, 
particularly Montesquieu. Depending on the size of the member cities, 
each elected one, two or three representatives to the Lycian 
parliament. When cities were too small, two or three banded together to 
share one representative vote. The six largest cities in the League had 
the right to three votes. The parliament elected a president, called 
the ``Lyciarch,'' which at various times served as the League's 
religious, military, and political leader. Although it is contested, 
there is evidence to suggest that women could be, and in fact were, 
Lyciarch.
  In Book IX of Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws, after charting the 
highs and lows of the earliest republics, he stresses the utility of a 
confederacy. He cites the Lycian League as an example: ``It is unlikely 
that states that associate will be of the same size and have equal 
power. . . . If one had to propose a model of a fine federal republic, 
I would choose the republic of Lycia.''
  Montesquieu's interest in the Lycian way of government would prove 
central to our founding. Thanks to his writings, in the debates about 
our own Constitution, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison cited the 
Lycian League as a model for our own system of government.
  As well, in literal linkage, the semi-circular configuration of seats 
in this House of Representatives is exactly the same seating 
arrangement as in the Bouleuterion in Patara. The Bouleuterion's 
throne-like perch, where the elected Lyciarch sat, is much the same as 
the seat of the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
  On June 30, 1787, at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, 
James Madison appealed to the delegates' understanding of the Lycian 
League. The Convention had just rejected the ``New Jersey Plan'', which 
called for a rather modest revision of our Nation's first 
constitutional framework, the failed Articles of Confederation. The 
delegates resolved to come up with a new constitution, but had few 
notions in common of how it should proceed.
  A delegate from Connecticut, Oliver Ellsworth, had just finished 
arguing for the Articles

[[Page E837]]

of Confederation's principle that every State should be equal in the 
national arena. He specifically asked, ``Where is or was a 
confederation ever formed, where equality of voices was not a 
fundamental principle?''
  James Madison replied that the Lycian League was different, according 
representation in reflection of actual size. His Virginia plan provided 
for a bicameral legislature, with both houses' representation based on 
States' population. He eventually had to accept a compromise, with a 
people's house of proportional representation, our House of 
Representatives, in tandem with a Senate of equal State representation.

  Hamilton and Madison also cited the Lycian League in defense of 
representative democracy. While direct rule usually resulted in either 
tyranny or anarchy, the two founders felt that delegation of authority 
to elected representatives would allow the government to function 
properly.
  The ideas and debates of our founding fathers may seem archaic to our 
modem times, but we face questions of federalism every day in this 
Congress. A federalist system of government divides power between a 
central authority (the Federal Government) and constituent political 
units (the States and localities). The delineation of that power comes 
into question particularly often on the Energy & Commerce Committee, of 
which I am a Subcommittee Chairman, whether we are debating the proper 
authority over electricity transmission across State lines, the 
regulation of hazardous waste, or the transmission of information 
through our telecommunications infrastructure.
  Meanwhile, whether we are helping Iraq and other Middle Eastern 
countries develop representative democratic systems, or providing 
advice to the burgeoning democracies of post-Soviet Eastern Europe, we 
effectively reenact the Constitutional Convention's debates about the 
Lycian League and the nature of democracy around the world. We are 
doing what we can to help spread freedom and democracy, in our own 
image. Unfortunately, while it is relatively easy to conceive of the 
best model of government--as our founding fathers did, and Montesquieu 
did before them--the diversity of the real world, in geography, 
ethnicity, religion, and history, makes applying that best model quite 
difficult in practice.
  The British archeologist George Bean highlighted some of the unique 
features of the Lycian League--features not dissimilar to our own 
country's: ``Among the various races of Anatolia, the Lycians always 
held a distinctive place. Locked away in their mountainous country, 
they had a fierce love of freedom and independence, and resisted 
strongly all attempts at outside domination; they were the last in Asia 
Minor to be incorporated as a province into the Roman Empire.''
  Our experience so far in guiding the nascent democracy in Iraq should 
certainly illustrate that representative democracy may not be perfectly 
replicable, at least overnight.
  Fifteen years ago, all a visitor to Patara would have noticed were 
the tops of a few old stones. Today, the excavations at Patara have 
unearthed the remains of an entire city. The archeological team has 
rescued numerous buildings and items from the sand and scrub brush, 
besides the Bouleuterion parliament building, including: a large 
necropolis; a Roman bath; a sizeable semicircular theater; a sprawling 
main avenue leading to the market square; a Byzantine basilica (one of 
22 churches once packed into Patara); one of the world's oldest 
lighthouses; and a fortified wall.
  I would encourage everyone to visit Patara, for its beauty and for 
its archeological significance. The excavation site is 10-15 minutes 
from the glorious beach, and will be opened to the public in 2007. 
While we wait, one of Turkey's largest museums, the Antalya 
Archaeological Museum, displays many of the finds from Patara and the 
surrounding area.
  We owe a great debt to Turkey's Ministry of Culture and the Akdeniz 
University in Antalya for their dedication of time and money to 
bringing the ancient ruins of Patara out of the dust and back into our 
lives.
  In closing, I would like to thank: Dr. Gul Isin, Associate Professor 
of Archeology at Akdeniz Antalya in Turkey, who has been diligently 
working with Dr. Fahri Isik and Dr. Havva Iskan Isik to uncover the 
mysteries of the Patara site; Professor James W. Muller of the 
University of Alaska, Anchorage, who dissected how the Lycian League 
affected the founding fathers; and the American Friends of Turkey, the 
Friends of Patara, and former Representatives Stephen Solarz and Robert 
Livingston, who graciously introduced me to the archeological findings 
at Patara, and the important work of Professors Isin and Muller.

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