Democracy is one of the many legacies bestowed upon humanity by the ancient Greeks. The word democracy is a combination of two Greek words demos, meaning village or people and kratia meaning to rule. It was in Athens that people got the right to participate in nation-building policies, where the rule of the people was held supreme.
Nowhere in Greece or the Western civilisation will one come across the liberties enjoyed by Athenians at the peak of democracy during the 5th century BCE. Democracy has a long history and in this series of articles, we will discuss its evolutions from the earliest days to the mighty Athenian empire.
In the earliest account of Greece, the political landscape comprised small-town kings ruling over their terrain which consisted of houses and homes alongside their land, slaves and livestock. In some locales, certain kings overpowered others and acquired larger lands and claimed dominance over other kingdoms. This is the picture of the Greek world as envisaged by the Homeric epics.
Bust of Solon the law giver copy from a Greek original (c. 110 BC) from the Farnese Collection, now at the National Archaeological
Museum, Naples
Agamemnon was known as the “King of Kings” and exerted authority over other warriors like Odysseus and Achilles who were in their own right illustrious kings of their hometowns. Homeric Greece was a warrior aristocracy in stark comparison to what is seen in Athens during her prime. The first king of Athens is Theseus, the mythological hero who is attributed for having made Athens, a prominent state in Attica.
During the 8th to 7th century BCE Athens moved away from being ruled by kings to a small number of land-owning aristocrats. According to Aristotle’s Athenian Constitution, Athens was ruled by a board of Archons comprised of King Archon, (basileus), the polemarch – the commander in chief and Archon eponymous, whose name was the basis of the calendar. Later on, six other junior archons were added to the board, known as the Thesmothetae. Thus a board of nine archons along with the Aereopagus consisted of ex-archons ruled the proceedings in Athens. Archons were elected based on birth and wealth and were wholly consisted of aristocrats.
Laws of Draco
In 621-620 BCE, the Athenians enlisted the help of a certain Draco to help draw out a new constitution. This constitution was harsh and largely in favour of the aristocrats. As some critics claimed it might as well have been written by blood, as the death penalty was used for every offence from loitering to murder. The laws of the lawgiver Draco were extremely harsh on the poorer classes and pitted them against the wealthy.
The poorer farmers, with years of bad harvests, had to mortgage parts of their land to affluent citizens as a trade-off for food and seeds to plant. Having relinquished the usage of a piece of their land, the poor were specifically powerless and subjected to successive hardships. Ultimately, many Athenians renounced the use of their land completely and became tenant farmers and slaves to the wealthy. The resultant crisis endangered the equilibrium of the Athenian population as the state was in danger of losing its farmer population to debt bondage and slavery.
The first seeds of democracy were planted in Athens during the times of Solon, the lawmaker in the 6th century BCE. Solon was born into an aristocratic family of the Eupatridae and had sufficient wealth and influence to bring about a drastic change in the hierarchical aristocratic system which placed birth as the deciding factor for holding office in the state.
In 594, Solon came into power as archon and set about repealing most of the laws of Draco. Solon as an archon did away with debt bondage and issued a decree ‘seisactheia’ which means shaking off the burdens. It was decreed that heretofore no Athenian should be subjected to slavery. He made it a personal crusade to rescue Athenians from slavery and used his funds to buy back the freedom of many Athenians.
One of the most democratic reforms came about when Solon issued a decree that birth should not be the criteria for office but wealth, thus diminishing the importance given to aristocratic hierarchies. He came up with four classes based on wealth replacing those that existed before based on birth.
The first class was the Pentecosiomedimni, those who had a property worth 500 measures of produce per year. The second class, the Hippeis were those who could maintain a horse along with 300 measures of produce. The third class, the Zeugitae had to produce 200 measures, while adding a fourth class known as Thetes, who owned the smallest amount of property.
Solon changed the way the archons were elected, 40 members were chosen from the three classes and out of them nine were elected by lot. Being the poorest the Thetes were also exempt from taxation and could not hold any office. They were also freed from military service and gained a spot in the Ekklesia the public assembly of Athens. The Ekklesia had a say in the appointment of the archons (the annually elected head of state) and heard accusations against them. The citizenry further functioned as a legal body the Heliaea and cases were tried before the esteemed assembly.
Solon is sometimes credited with the establishment of the boule, also known as the Council of Four Hundred drawn from the three tribes by lot. The council prepared the agenda of issues that were dealt with at the assembly.
Esteemed bodies
One of the most esteemed bodies in the Athenian constitution was the Council of Aereopagus which consisted of ex-archons. It probably served as an advisory body during the times of the kings and was one of the most conservative elements in the Athenian constitution, consisted exclusively of aristocrats. The Aereopagites had censorial powers and had the right to inquire into the private lives of the magistrates and acted as the custodians of the laws. Solon did little to alter this institution although in times to come the body would be incompatible with the growing democratic ideals that sprouted in Athens.
Solon intended to bring about a sense of justice (isnomia) into the constitution of the Athens he so loved, he was not a Democrat but represented equity. He aimed to make Athens incorruptible and fair so that she would not be subjected to tyranny which was being experienced by many other Greek states during this time.
After drafting his constitution, it is said that Solon travelled widely to allow his work to unfold itself but before long, the tyrant Peisistratus had usurped power in Athens and unfortunately for Solon, he had to die in an Athens that had been captured by a tyrant, the very situation he tried to avert. According to Aristotle, the Government of Athens under Solon was a combination of many elements. The courts were democratic; the archons elected were aristocrats; while the Aereopagus was oligarchic.
The period following the Solonian reform was a crucial one for Athens. The nobility felt they had been ousted from their place in society and were waiting their turn to reverse the order of things to what it was before Solon. Their plans were disrupted with the arrival of Peisistratus who appealed to the poorer classes of society to help him overthrow the Government in 560 BCE. He tried thrice to become a tyrant and finally succeeded on his third attempt. Peisistratus is sometimes referred to as a constitutional tyrant as he did little to undo the reforms of Solon.
Cleisthenes is described as the first true democratic reformer of Athens, hailing from the distinguished albeit cursed family, the Alcmaeonid he sought to make a real difference in the constitution of Athens. The family had a cursed past when Cleisthenes’s great grandfather, Megacles put to death a band of tyrants led by Cyclon who had taken refuge in a temple.
They were promised to be spared of their lives if they vacated the temple premises by Megacles, but once they did they were captured and put to death. The Oracle at Delphi pronounced a curse upon the family which would come to haunt Cleisthenes several times during his career. The family was caused to be exiled multiple times during the history of Greece and in 546 Cleisthenes had to go into exile and could not return to Athens for another 20 years.
The discovery of a fragment in the excavations near the Athenian Agora revealed that Cleisthenes held the position of chief archon in 525–524. After the death of Peisistratus in 527, his son and successor, Hippias, attempted to win over the nobles who had opposed the tyranny. However, this attempt at reconciliation didn’t last long. In 512, as Hippias became more oppressive following the murder of his brother in 514, the Alcmaeonid and other nobles tried unsuccessfully to overthrow him, until they sought help from Delphi. Delphi repeatedly urged the Spartans to free Athens, and eventually, it was a Spartan contingent that forced Hippias and his family to leave Attica.
Main principles
After the tyranny fell, Cleisthenes struggled to assert his leadership, and in 508, Isagoras, the leader of the more conservative nobles, was elected chief archon. According to later tradition, it was at this juncture that Cleisthenes allied with the people and changed the situation. By the end of 508–507, the main principles of a wide-ranging government reform were approved by the popular assembly; a relative of the Alcmaeonid was elected chief archon for the following year.
Isagoras left Athens to seek Spartan intervention, and Sparta sided with Isagoras. The Spartan king demanded the expulsion of “those under the curse,” resulting in Cleisthenes and his relatives being exiled again. However, this time the Spartans misjudged the people’s reaction and their attempt to install Isagoras as the leader of a narrow oligarchy faced strong popular backlash, resulting in a Spartan retreat. The Athenians then went ahead and recalled the exiles and implemented the decision made by the assembly in 508.
After arriving in Athens, Cleisthenes realised that for the Solonian reforms to truly work, the roots of hereditary nobility had to be dismantled.
To do that, he had to change the political organisation of Athens. He thus swayed the people to change its basis from the family, clan, and phratry (kinship group) to the locality. Henceforth public rights and duties depended on the deme (township) which had its mayor, demarch, own register, elected its officials and kept a record of its citizens. The citizens hereafter were not exclusively known by their father’s name but also that of the deme. This feature reinstated the importance of the community rather than familial connections.
Attica consisted of three specific geographical regions, the countryside, the coast and Athens and its suburbs. According to tradition, the residents of these areas had their political interests and concerns according to regional affiliation. To counteract this tendency, and get the Athenians involved in politics common to all of Athens, Cleisthenes further rearranged the population. The 139 demes were allocated to one of 30 trittyes or “Thirds”. Ten of the Thirds were inland, ten were coastal and ten were based in Athens and the suburbs.
These Thirds were then allotted to ten Tribes phylai, so each Tribe retained three Thirds, one from the inland, one from the coast, and one from the city. These ten Tribes dispatched 50 citizens annually to the new Council of 500. The tribes were named after legendary heroes of Athens.
Although registration of citizens, selection of candidates and local politics took place in the demes, the tribes became the divisions of an institution that figured prominently in the governing of Athens. Citizens from all regions of Attica functioned together as part of the tribes to rule the city.
To prevent regionalism from sneaking its way into the design, Cleisthenes enacted a law that once a citizen was given a deme, he must keep his deme-affiliation even if he moved to another region of Attica. These reforms formed a noteworthy reshaping of the Athenian community along new lines. Ancient ties, according to region or families, were shattered. The rule of Athens was now placed in the hands of the Athenian Demos bypassing the perimeters of clan or territory.
