Demos: The Men Who Made and Perfected Ancient Athenian Democracy

21. Ancient Athenian Debt Traps

Athens’ region of Attica was made of three parts. The Plains was a prosperous agricultural interior. The Coast relied on fishing and trade. The Hills was an impoverished region of mostly shepherds and small farmers scratching a living from poor soil, containing most of the population. Over the centuries, a pattern developed in which poor farmers borrowed seed from rich aristocrats to plant, then repaid the loan at harvest time with grain and labor. That pattern was disrupted in the seventh century BC when commerce revived after a centuries-long slump. The non-aristocratic Athenians of the Coast got into seaborne trade, bought land with their profits and, using slave labor, farmed it more efficiently than the aristocrats. The aristocrats found themselves outcompeted by the nouveau riche, so they squeezed their poorer neighbors, and enslaved them and seized their farms whenever they failed to repay their seed loans on time.

20. Outrage Over Debt Slavery

Debt slavery outraged many Athenians. Not that they objected to slavery per se, but to the enslavement of Athenians. That outrage, combined with the resentment of the middling farmers, craftsmen, and rising merchants at their exclusion from government, brought Athens to the brink of revolution. So the citizen body met in the Ecclesia, the Athenian Assembly. They entrusted Solon, a respected aristocrat, to reform Athens, and bound themselves with solemn oaths to accept his decisions. Solon’s reforms solved the immediate problem, even as they upset all sides.

19. A Settlement That Upset Everybody

Few were happy with Solon’s settlement. The wealthy were upset because he cancelled debts, freed the Athenian debt slaves, and prohibited the future enslavement of Athenians. The aristocrats were upset because he granted the vote to all adult male citizens, regardless of class or wealth. The poor were upset because he did not return the lands that had been seized by the aristocrats, refused to break up the big estates and redistribute the land, and because he reserved all government posts for the wealthy. And the wealthy were split because some government positions were reserved for nobles, to the exclusion of non-aristocrats.

18. A Workable Solution

Despite the discontent, the Athenians kept their promise to accept Solon’s decision. That done, and to avoid having to constantly defend and explain the reforms, Solon left his countrymen to work out the kinks in his new system. He went traveling, informing fellow Athenians that he would be gone for at least ten years. Solon’s reforms alleviated the immediate crisis and averted civil war. However, they did not resolve many underlying tensions that continued to plague Athens for years. Solon took the first steps by making all citizens equal before the law and reducing the power of the aristocracy. It would take generations of reformers, however, to build upon and fine tune what he had created before Athenian democracy was established.

17. The Rise of a Tyrant

When he returned from his travels, Solon discovered that Athens had divided into regional factions. One of them was controlled by Pisistratus, a popular general whom Solon suspected of intentions to overthrow the government and set himself up as tyrant. In Ancient Greece, “tyrant” did not carry modern connotations of brutal oppression. It had a narrower meaning of a populist strongman who, supported by commoners excluded from power by an aristocracy, overthrew an oligarchy and replaced it with his own one-man rule. Many tyrants were wildly popular – except with the aristocracy. Commoners had little power in the aristocratic system, so they were no worse off ruled by one tyrant than when they had been ruled by a clique of nobles. Moreover, with the power of aristocrats reduced, government under tyrants tended to be more equitable, rather than wildly skewed to benefit the nobles.

16. The Benefits of Ancient Tyranny

Economically, commoners tended to be better off under tyrants. The strongmen usually encouraged activities such as commerce and crafts and manufactures. Such activities were previously viewed by nobles as socially gauche, and even threatening insofar as they destabilized the social order by making jumped up commoners as rich as or richer than their social betters. A tyranny was thus often a predicate for democracy, because it removed from its path the barrier of a strongly entrenched nobility. Tyrants had an interest in weakening aristocrats who had monopolized power for centuries. So they adopted populist policies that appealed to commoners, whose support was necessary for the tyrant’s continued hold on power. Only after the aristocracy had been weakened, and its stranglehold on power broken, would there be an opening for democracy.

15. The Would-Be Tyrant and the Fake Goddess

Athens’ poorest and most populous region was the Hill District. Its impoverished residents got little from Solon’s reforms other than a meaningless vote, so they invited Pisistratus to make himself tyrant. With their support, he marched on the city in a procession headed by a tall girl dressed up as the goddess Athena. She blessed Pisistratus, and declared it her divine will that he be made tyrant. Other Athenians saw through the mummery, and chased Pisistratus and his followers out of town. Fleeing, he bought silver and gold mines in northern Greece and got rich off their proceeds. Then, investing his wealth in mercenaries, Pisistratus returned to Athens and tried again, this time with a well-equipped private army instead of a girl dressed up as a goddess. It worked, and in 546 BC, he overthrew the government and had himself proclaimed tyrant.

14. A Popular Tyrant

Championing the lower classes, Pisistratus’ tyranny was a wild success. He suppressed the feuding factions, and exiled his aristocratic enemies. Pisistratus confiscated the nobles’ land holdings, broke them up into small farms, and redistributed them to his followers, thus cementing their support. He also loaned small farmers money for tools; lowered taxes; standardized currency; enforced the laws even handedly; promoted the growing of olives and grapes; encouraged commerce and craftsmen; funded popular religious rites such as the Dionysia; promoted theater, culture, and the arts; built an aqueduct; implemented a public buildings program, and beautified the city. By the time Pisistratus died, circa 527 BC, Athens was peaceful and more prosperous than it had ever been, with a growing and increasingly affluent middle class. He was succeeded as co-tyrants by his sons Hippias and Hipparchus.

13. The Gay Lovers’ Spat That Rocked a Tyranny

At first, Hippias and Hipparchus governed Athens competently and with a light hand. Then Hipparchus was assassinated in 514 BC at the hand of two gay lovers, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, in a private feud that stemmed from an attempt at romance that went bad. Hipparchus had hit on Harmodius, the eromenus, or younger gay lover, of Aristogeiton. Harmodius shot Hipparchus down, and told Aristogen what had happened. The spurned Hipparchus then set out to get some payback. He invited Harmodius’ kid sister to play a role at a religious festival, then publicly berated and chased her away as ineligible because she was not a virgin. That shamed Harmodius’ family. In retaliation, Harmodius and Aristogeiton decided to assassinate both Hipparchus and his brother Hippias, and free Athens of tyranny. They were only partially successful. At the Panathenaian festival, they stabbed Hipparchus to death, but only wounded Hippias.

12. The End of a Tyrant, and the Beginning of the End of Tyranny

Hipparchus’ bodyguards killed Harmodius on the spot, and Aristogeiton was arrested, tortured, and eventually killed by Hippias. For centuries afterwards, the lovers were celebrated and honored as the Tyrannicides, and public statues were commissioned in their honor. In the meantime, Hippias grew paranoid, and his rule became oppressive as he lashed out indiscriminately at enemies real and imagined. Hippias’ descent into violence eroded the popularity that tyranny had enjoyed since the days of Pisistratus, and the number of victims and exiles forced to flee Athens grew. One exile was Cleisthenes, born circa 570 BC and referred to as “The Father of Athenian Democracy”. He created the system that, with incremental reforms, governed Athens during the Classical era.

11. Bribing the Spokeswoman of the Gods

Cleisthenes plotted with fellow exiles to overthrow the tyranny. They considered invasion, but Hippias had a well-equipped army, while the exiles did not, and lacked the funds for an army of their own. So they sought to enlist the help of Sparta, which had the Greek world’s best army, to liberate Athens. The Spartans were known for their piety. So the exiles bribed the priests of Delphi, the Greek world’s most important religious site and home of the Oracle of Delphi, to put in a good holy word. The Oracle, which for centuries had given petitioners cryptic answers that could be interpreted in various ways, suddenly began to give every Spartan petitioner who showed up the same uncryptic answer: “Liberate Athens!” So the Spartans marched into Attica in 508 BC, liberated Athens, then marched back home. The Athenians, left to govern themselves, immediately split into rival camps.

10. Victory, Followed by Factionalism

An oligarchic camp, led by Isagoras, wanted government returned to the hands of the wealthy. A populist camp, led by Cleisthenes and comprising a majority of Athenians, declared Athens a democracy ruled by a popular Assembly. Cleisthenes’ camp prevailed, but the oligarchic faction solicited Spartan aid to overthrow the democracy. The Spartans, no fans of democracy, sent another army to Attica, overthrew the democracy, and replaced it with an oligarchy. Cleisthenes and 700 democracy-supporting Athenian families were exiled. However, the exiles soon returned, the population rose up in revolt, and the aristocratic faction and the Spartans were besieged in the Acropolis, Athens’ fortified hilltop. The rebels allowed the Spartans to leave, but the Athenian anti-democrats were massacred.

9. Dealing With Regional Factionalism

After he decisively dealt with the oligarchic threat, Cleisthenes enacted reforms that established Athenian democracy. The major reform was the reorganization of the citizen body (demos) of Athens. Before, Athenians had been grouped into four tribes, based on kin groups. Cleisthenes argued that such grouping lent itself too readily to factionalism. Instead, Cleisthenes instituted an artificial classification system that divided the citizen body into ten at-large tribes, with membership drawn at random from all classes and all parts of Attica. Each tribe thus contained a representative sample of the entire population, including all classes and regions. That reduced the incentives for parochialism, as no tribe had cause to act out of geographical or familial loyalties at the expense of Athens as a whole.

8. Establishing Basic Democracy

A new council, the boule, was created, in which all citizens had the right to speak. At a stroke, Cleisthenes thus not only eliminated the parochialism that had plagued Athens for generations, but also granted the entire male citizen population access to institutions and powers previously reserved for aristocrats. Another of Cleisthenes’ reforms was ostracism, whereby an annual vote would be held in which each citizen could name any person he thought was too dangerous or getting too powerful for the good of the city. The citizen receiving the most votes would be exiled for ten years, without prejudice to his property while he was gone, or to his citizenship rights upon his return. Cleisthenes’ reforms thus created the constitutional structure to which further incremental reforms were made to transform Athens into a direct democracy.

7. The Man Who Transformed Athens Into a Radical Democracy

Ephialtes was a reformer who initiated the final transformation of Athens into a radical democracy. He was strongly opposed by the conservative Athenian upper classes, who under the leadership of Cimon, son of Miltiades, had the upper hand and controlled the Assembly. That changed when, in 464 BC, Sparta appealed to Athens for help to suppress a Helot serf revolt. Over Ephialtes’ strong objections, Cimon carried the day and convinced the Assembly to send an Athenian force to help Sparta. However, when the Athenians arrived, the Spartans changed their minds. Fearing that their democratic notions might infect their remaining Helots and inflame them into joining the revolt, they sent the Athenians back.

6. Literal Ostracism of Rivals

In the ensuing outcry, Cimon’s humiliated faction lost credibility, and leading conservatives were put on trial for corruption. Ephialtes engineered Cimon’s ostracism and exile, assumed the mantle of Athenian leadership, and launched his program of radical reforms. His greatest reform was to emasculate the Areopagus, a council of city elders similar to the Roman Senate, comprised of those who had held high public office, and that was more conservative than the citizen Assembly. It served as Athens’ highest tribunal, with jurisdiction over all cases, including constitutional review of the Assembly’s enactments. That gave the Areopagus a legislative veto over the more democratic Assembly.

5. The Transformation of Athens Into a Direct Democracy

Ephialtes stripped the Areopagus of nearly all its powers, transferring them to more democratic bodies whose membership was drawn by lot, such as the boule, a city council appointed to run daily affairs, and the Heliaea, Athens’ supreme court. The Areopagus’ jurisdiction was narrowed to murder and arson cases. Ephialtes also reduced property qualifications for officials, and introduced pay for the holders of public office. That enabled poorer citizens to hold offices that previously had effectively been the preserve of the wealthy and those with enough means to support themselves while holding office, without needing to work and earn a living. Ephialtes’ reforms were strongly resented by the oligarchic faction, who had him assassinated in 461 BC. His deputy, Pericles, took the leadership reins, and completed Ephialtes’ agenda, finalizing the transformation of Athens into a direct democracy.

4. The Age of Pericles

Pericles (495 – 429 BC) was Athens’ dominant political figure in the mid-fifth century BC. The Athenian golden age, during which the city reached the peak of its power and its empire reached its greatest extent, is also known as the “Age of Pericles”. His father, Xanthippus, was a popular general who had been ostracized and exiled in 484 BC, only to be recalled four years later during the crisis of the Persian invasion. Xanthippus led the Athenians at the Battle of Mycale, a victory that ended the second Persian invasion of Greece. Pericles, raised amidst wealth and privilege, was a patron of culture and the arts since his youth – Aeschylus’ oldest surviving play, The Persians, was paid for by Pericles in 472 BC. He was also a friend and patron of Phidias, Ancient Greece’s greatest sculptor. During the Periclean Age, Athens flowered into a center of culture, art, education, and democracy.

3. The Aggressive Expansion of Democratic Athens

Inheriting his father’s democratic leanings, by the 460s BC Pericles had become the deputy and right hand man of Ephialtes, Athens’ radical democratic leader. When Ephialtes was assassinated in 461 BC, Pericles stepped into his shoes. He completed Ephialtes’ reform agenda, and dominated Athens until his death in 429 BC. A hawk, Pericles was a proponent of expanding Athens’ power abroad. Throughout his years in power, he aggressively advocated the expansion of Athenian dominance in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean.

2. Transforming a Defensive League Into an Empire

Pericles successfully transformed the Delian League, which had started off as an anti-Persian defensive alliance headquartered in the island of Delos, into a de facto Athenian empire. Members were not permitted to leave, and had to pay annual taxes and other contributions into a treasury controlled by Athens. By the 440s BC, any remaining pretense was abandoned, and the Delian treasury was transferred from Delos to Athens. There, it was used it to pay for a magnificent public works program. Athens’ grandest monuments, such as the Acropolis and the Parthenon, were paid for by that act of brazen embezzlement.

1.     The Last Great Athenian

In 431 BC, the drawn out Peloponnesian War (431 – 404 BC) between Athens and Sparta began. Pericles ably led his city in the first two years. He successfully neutralized Sparta’s advantages as the Greek world’s most formidable land power, and leveraged Athens’ sea power to take the war to Sparta and her allies. However, a plague struck Athens in 429 BC, and Pericles was one of its victims. Athens failed to produce another leader of Pericles’ caliber. The city, led by a series of lesser men during the prolonged conflict, lurched from mistake to mistake, until the war ended in catastrophic Athenian defeat and collapse in 404 BC.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Arid, Hamis – Pericles: The Rise and Fall of Athenian Democracy (2004)

Aristotle – Athenian Constitution

Classical Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 1 (1999) – Pisistratus’ Leadership and the Establishment of the Tyranny

Ehrenberg, Victor – From Solon to Socrates: Greek History and Civilization During the 6^th and 5^th Centuries BC (2010)

Encyclopedia Britannica – Solon

Encyclopedia Britannica – Peisistratos

Fine, John Van Antwerp – The Ancient Greeks: A Critical History (1983)

Gonick, Larry – The Cartoon History of the Universe, Volumes 1 – 7: From the Big Bang to Alexander the Great (1990)

Grant, Michael – The Rise of the Greeks (1987)

Herodotus – The Histories

Hignett, Charles – A History of the Athenian Constitution to the End of the Fifth Century BC (1962)

Laertius, Diogenes – Lives of the Eminent Philosophers: The Seven Sages

O’Neil, James L. – The Origins and Development of Ancient Greek Democracy (1995)