THE GREEK CITIES.
I have already stated that between 650B.C.and 338B.C.the Greek communities with the exception of Sparta are to be classed as city states, or communities in which a walled city is of supreme importance and the rural districts count for very little. It seems right to place the beginning of the city states so early as 650B.C., because at that time three out of the four communities of which we have records were ruled oppressively by bodies of magnates who lived in the cities or close to them, and who owed their power to the protection of the city walls and to the facilities for concerted action which they gained from living close to a common centre. It must however be admitted that the evidence of the great importance of the cities is not so clear at the early date which I have named as it is a century later, in the age of the tyrants.
The examination of the political institutions of the Greek cities will be divided into four parts: I. The early aristocracies and oligarchies; II. The tyrannies; III. The democracies and the later oligarchies; IV. The conquest of Greece by Macedonia.
Before the year 650B.C.the heroic monarchies had ceased to exist in all the more important Greek peoples and other governments had taken their place. Of the process of the change from the old tribal system to other systems we have no contemporary records in any case: and traditions even of a laterdate are absent except in regard to Corinth, Megara, Athens and Argos.
At Corinth it is said that in 745B.C.the members of the royal family, two hundred in number, deposed the king Aristomenes, and took the control of the state into their own possession, electing one of their own number every year to act as president and discharge the functions of king. They were distinguished by their descent from king Bacchis, were known as the Bacchiadæ, and in order to keep themselves a distinct caste they forbade all members of their family to marry any one but a descendant of Bacchis. In 655B.C., after they had ruled for ninety years, their government was selfish and oppressive118.
At Megara we know only that the government was in the hands of certain rich families, and that eventually their oppressive rule provoked the common folk under the leadership of a man named Theagenes to rise against them and overthrow them119.
At Athens the nobles gradually deprived the king of his power and prerogatives: and from a date somewhere between 700B.C.and 650B.C.the government was controlled by a permanent council of nobles, and its details were managed by nine archons or administrators, who were selected yearly by the council120. The council consisted of those who were serving or had served the office of archons121, so that the council in selecting new archons also filled up vacancies in its own numbers: among the nine magistrates the first in rank was The Archon, who gave his name to his year of office: the second was the Archon Basileus, who performed the religious rites: the third was the Polemarch, who commanded in war: the other six were called Thesmothetæ, and probably attended to judicial business122. The nobles then from 650B.C.or earlier were in exclusive possessionof power: how they used it when first they got it, is not recorded: by 600B.C.they were employing it selfishly for the interests of their class.
The first truly historical Athenian is Draco, who, about 620B.C., collected the customary law of Athens and formed it, together with some provisions of his own, into a written code of legal regulations. The newly recovered Aristotelian treatise on the constitution of Athens contains a passage which also attributes to him some very important changes in the structure of the government123: but, as this passage was certainly either not known or not accepted as genuine by Plutarch in the first centuryA.D.and Pollux in the second century, though they were well acquainted with Aristotle's treatise, it seems impossible to regard it as an original part of the work124.
Whether Draco did or did not attempt to reform the government, he did not put an end to the oppressive practices of the nobles and the wealthy. They took advantage of the harsh laws relating to debt, to deprive the poorer freemen of their lands or to reduce them to slavery: but the poor showed so much inclination for fighting that their oppressors were alarmed. In the year 594B.C.it was agreed by both the contending classes that Solon should be elected archon and entrusted with power to deal with the existing discontents and to make a new form of government. He cancelled all existing debts, restored to liberty those who had been enslaved, altered the law in regard to security for debt, and then attempted to remedy the defects of the political system.
Solon devised a moderate system of popular government of the kind to which Aristotle afterwards gave the name of Polity. It was popular, since the mass of the citizens had a controlling power: but it was moderate, because no class had opportunities for governing in its own interest. His new institutions were theδικαστήριαor popular law-courts, theἐκκλησίαor assembly of citizens, theβουλήor council of four hundred, and certain regulations which made eligibility to office depend on wealth.The archons kept their titles and functions: the permanent council of ex-archons, henceforth known as the council of the Arêus Pagus (in Latin Areopagus), survived with diminished authority.
Theδικαστήριαwere courts in which large bodies of citizens sat as judges or jurymen: and Athenian citizens of all classes, including the Thetes or labourers for hire, were qualified to serve in them. The extent of their jurisdiction is not precisely known: but as they were empowered to hear appeals from the decisions of all magistrates, they had the final judgement in questions of the greatest importance: and as the laws were imperfect or uncertain, they could often be a law to themselves. Under the oligarchy there had been no general assembly of citizens or it had been as powerless as the common folk in anἀγορήof the Homeric age: Solon ordered all citizens to come together yearly in assembly for the election of archons. The choice however of the archons was conducted by a process that was not purely elective: each of the four ancient tribes, into which the Athenian families were divided, elected from among the richest class of citizens ten candidates for the office, and, from the forty thus chosen, nine were taken by drawing lots. As Solon ordered that the laws which he had made should continue in force for a hundred years, we may infer that he intended that the assembly should for the present do little or nothing in the way of law making: but, in case it should be inclined towards unwise innovations, he established as a check upon it hisβουλήor council of four hundred. To make up this council he selected a hundred men from each of the four tribes; and, to give it a restraining power, he ordered that no proposal should be brought before the assembly till the council had approved it. His rules for eligibility to office depended on a division of the citizens into four classes according to their wealth. The richest class were the Pentacosiomedimni, whose lands yielded in the year not less than five hundred medimni (about seven hundred bushels) in aggregate produce of corn, oil and wine: next came the Hippeis, who had three hundred medimni yearly and could equip and maintain a horseman for warfare: then the Zeugitæ, who had two hundred medimni andkept a yoke of oxen: and lastly the Thetes, who were the poorest class and worked for hire. The richest class were alone eligible to the archonship and the treasurership: the second and third class could hold lesser offices suitable to their condition: and the Thetes alone were incapable of holding places in the administration125.
The constitution of Solon remained in full working order for only three or four years: then there arose violent contests about the appointment of archons, which show that the immediate effect of his changes had been to transfer the chief power to the nine magistrates126. The turbulence of factions made it impossible to enforce some parts of his constitution: but other parts of it were probably observed, and the whole served as a foundation for Cleisthenes to build upon. It is probable that the strife of classes which spoiled the working of Solon's institutions led to the restoration of some kind of oligarchy: for if it was not so, it is hard to account for the readiness of the poor citizens to accede to the wishes of the demagogue Pisistratus.
The prevalence of oligarchical governments in the Greek cities of Sicily at an early stage of their career is noticed by Aristotle127: the existence of similar governments in the Greek cities generally in the same stage of their progress may fairly be inferred from the silence of historians.
It is to be noticed that none of the traditions about the governments of the nobles in the Greek cities of the seventh centuryB.C.tell us anything about their behaviour or character when first they rose to power. From the probabilities of the case however we may conjecture that at first they were good governments and used their power well: they supplanted the long-established heroic monarchies, and could not have succeeded in such an achievement unless they had had merits of their own. It seems then that during the first part of theirexistence they ought to be called aristocracies rather than oligarchies: for an aristocracy is a government conducted by the few best men in a community for the best interests of the whole community, while an oligarchy is a government conducted by a few for their own selfish interests. From what has been already stated about the governments of the nobles in the later part of their careers, it will be seen that oligarchy is a name which suits them precisely.
At the beginning of the chapter it was remarked that the nobles lived in the cities or close beside them, and owed their power to the protection of the city walls and to the facilities for concerted action which they gained from living close to a common centre: and it is now necessary to give authorities for the statement. Aristotle128speaks of the oligarchy at Athens asοἱ πεδιακοί, or inhabitants ofτὸ πεδίον, a little tract of level ground near Athens, Plutarch129calls themπεδιεῖςin exactly the same sense, and the Etymologicum Magnum130a much later authority says the Eupatridæ lived in the city of Athens itself. The oligarchy at Megara were overthrown by Theagenes: and he succeeded in overthrowing them by catching them while they were taking their horses and cattle to graze beside the river131:—a fact which shows that when they went out into the open country they were caught at a disadvantage, and implies that they habitually lived behind defences. As to the Bacchiadæ at Corinth there is not any statement that they lived in the city, but Herodotus in a story which will be told presently explains carefully that a certain Corinthian who was not one of the ruling caste did not live in the city but in aδῆμοςor place in the open country. The evidence for my proposition that at Athens, Megara and Corinth the cities as distinct from the open country were of great importance is not, I confess, very conclusive: but I have thought it sufficient to justify me in regarding the communities which lived at those places as city states and not as tribes.
At Argos the course of events was not the same as in thosecities of which I have spoken. The Argive monarchy, as we have seen132, was not abolished but continued to exist so late as 480B.C.: the king however was not a great power in the state: for we do not hear of any doings of any of the kings. On the other hand, the fact that the monarchy was permitted to survive shows clearly that there was no oligarchy at Argos so violent and exclusive as the rule of the Bacchiadæ at Corinth or the Eupatridæ at Athens. Since then supreme power did not belong either to the king or to the nobles, power must have been in some way divided, so that Argos had a mixed or balanced form of government: and this fact is of some interest, since it adds something to the slight resemblance between Argos and Rome which has been already noticed, by showing that in these two cities forms of government succeeded one another in the same order. In each there was first a strong monarchy: next an excessively strong monarchy or tyranny: and afterwards a mixed or balanced form of government. At Rome the three stages are marked by Servius Tullius, by Tarquin the Proud, and by the division of power between patricians and plebeians: at Argos by the early Doric kings, by Pheidon, and by the mixed form of government which was established after the decline of his power.
The way in which the oligarchic governments were destroyed is illustrated by the successful enterprise of Pisistratus at Athens: the character of the despotisms which succeeded them by the history of Cypselus and Periander, tyrants of Corinth from 655B.C.to 585B.C., and by the reigns of Pisistratus and his son.
The story of the origin of the Corinthian tyranny, as told by Herodotus133, begins when Corinth was ruled by the oligarchy of the Bacchiadæ. It was, as we have already seen, the custom of this family to forbid their children to marry any but a Bacchiad. But one of them had a lame daughter named Labda, and, asnone of the Bacchiad princes would marry her, she was given to Eetion who was below the caste. Eetion had also another wife: Labda had a child, but the other wife had none, and Eetion, being discontented, sent to consult the Delphic oracle. The priestess took no notice of what he asked but declared that Labda should bear another son who should be an important person. The Bacchiadæ heard of the oracle, held counsel what they should do, and appointed ten men of their own number to go to the village where Eetion lived and to destroy the child. The ten men came to the house, went into the court and asked for the new-born infant: Labda thinking they had come out of kindness to congratulate Eetion, brought out her child and put it in the hands of one of the visitors. They had arranged that the first of them that got hold of it should dash it on the ground: but it chanced, by luck sent from the gods, that the child smiled on the man who had received it: he took notice of this, and could not perform the murder, but passed on the child to the second man, and the second to the third, and so the child was passed round all ten and none had the heart to slay it. They gave it back to the mother and went outside the house, reproached one another for soft-heartedness, and resolved to go back and carry out their commission. But it was fated that from the seed of Eetion mischief should grow up for Corinth: Labda standing by the door heard their words, and hid the child in aκυψέληor chest: his life was saved, he received the name of Cypselus (Κύψελος), and when he was a man overpowered the Bacchiadæ, and established himself as tyrant. He drove many of the Corinthians into exile, reduced many to penury, and put to death many more. After a reign of thirty years he was succeeded by his son. Periander, the new tyrant, at first governed gently: but after he had sent an envoy to Thrasybulus, tyrant of Miletus, to ask how he could best secure his power, and had learned from the envoy on his return that Thrasybulus had replied only by going into a plot of standing corn and lopping off the tallest ears, he began to destroy the most distinguished citizens and became a more murderous oppressor than Cypselus had been.
The character of Periander's government is exemplified inthe stories of the spoiling of the Corinthian women and the seizure of the Corcyræan boys.
Among those whom Periander killed was his wife Melissa: a treasure had been committed to her keeping by a friend, and Periander after he had killed her regretted that he had not first learned from her where it was concealed. To repair his error he sent to the necromantic oracle at Acheron to question her ghost. Melissa appeared, but refused to say where the treasure was, complaining of being cold and naked, since the clothing buried in her tomb was no good to her because it had not been burned. Periander issued a proclamation inviting all the Corinthian women to a great festival at the Heræum: and when they came in their best attire, the spearmen surrounded them and stripped them of their clothes and jewels, which Periander heaped together in a pit and burned as an offering, accompanied by his prayers, to Melissa. Her ghost was propitiated, and, appearing a second time, revealed the place where she had hid the treasure.
The father of Melissa was Procles tyrant of Epidaurus. The two sons of Periander and Melissa had no suspicion how their mother's death had occurred, till at the ages of eighteen and seventeen they visited their grandfather at Epidaurus. When the visit was at an end, and Procles was bidding them farewell, he remarked "I suppose you know, boys, who killed your mother?" The elder son gave no heed to this: the younger, Lycophron, after his return to his home at Corinth, would not speak to Periander, and was accordingly driven out of his house and went to stay with friends in the city. Periander forbade them to show him hospitality; and at last, to force his son to return home, proclaimed that any one who spoke to him must pay a fine to Apollo. Lycophron, driven from the houses of his friends, did not go home but went to sleep in the open air under the porticoes. After this had gone on three nights, Periander went himself and tried to talk his son over: but got no answer except "You have incurred the fine to Apollo by speaking to me." Periander, seeing no other way of getting Lycophron out of his sight, sent him to rule over Corcyra, which was a colony of Corinth and, contrary to the usual practiceamong the Greeks, remained under the government of the mother city. When Lycophron had lived long in Corcyra, Periander grew old and unequal to the task of ruling the Corinthians, and besought Lycophron to come and be tyrant at Corinth, promising that he himself would go to Corcyra. Lycophron, after much persuasion, was brought to consent, but the Corcyræans did not like the prospect of the change and to make it impossible put Lycophron to death. The vengeance of Periander was worthy of a tyrant: he seized three hundred boys of the best families in Corcyra and shipped them off for Sardis to be made slaves and eunuchs to Asiatics and barbarians: the commanders however of the ships which carried them were obliged to touch at Samos, and the boys were enabled to take sanctuary and were afterwards through the kindness of the Samians restored to their parents in Corcyra.
At Athens, in the year 560B.C., the chief contending parties were the rich men of the plain, the men of the sea-shore, and the poor men of the hill country. Pisistratus, a young Athenian who had twice won military distinction, having formed a body of partisans and declared himself to be the leader of the men of the hill country, obtained tyrannical power over Attica by means of a trick. He drove into Athens in a chariot drawn by a pair of mules, both he and his mules bleeding from many wounds, which had been inflicted with his own hands. The people were already assembled or came together to meet him. He addressed them and said he had been driving into the country and had been attacked by his political opponents: and went on to request them that he might have some men to protect him. A resolution granting his request was proposed by Aristion and accepted by the assembly: before long he and his guard of club men seized the Acropolis and he became tyrant. Twice Pisistratus was expelled from Attica in consequence of rebellions stirred up by Megacles, the head of the noble house of the Alcmæonidæ, and twice he recovered his despotic power. After his first expulsion, he bade a certain woman named Phyê of tall stature and graceful figure to array herself in a splendid suit of complete armour and drive in a chariot into the Acropolis: he sent heralds before her to makeproclamation "O Athenians, give good welcome to Pisistratus: ye see that the goddess Athenê has honoured him above all men, and is herself leading him home into her own Acropolis." The people in the city were thus persuaded that Phyê was the goddess Athenê, and were induced to give good welcome to Pisistratus: he became master of the Acropolis, and his despotic power was re-established. After his second expulsion, he spent ten years in exile: at the end of that time he had contrived to amass large sums of money, and had gained the adherence of a strong force of mercenary troops and soldiers of fortune. At the head of his army he landed in Attica and began reducing the country: the Athenians marched out to oppose him but showed no vigour in their resistance: and before long he was admitted within the city. Then for the first time his tyranny rooted itself firmly in the soil. Hitherto his government had been mild and orderly: he had never tried to meddle with the habits and home life of his subjects: and, as neither of his attempts to recover his power had been vigorously resisted, his rule must have been regarded with favour by a large part of the Athenians. Now he began to rely on force and fear alone for the maintenance of his authority. He surrounded himself with a strong body of foreign mercenaries: many of the citizens from fear of him went into exile: and those who remained in Attica, in case they fell under any suspicion, were compelled to deliver their children into his charge as hostages for their good behaviour. And yet, even in this period when his government was most oppressive, he never put a stop to the election by the citizens of the nine yearly archons according to the ancient constitution, though he took care that one of the archons should always be a member of his own family134. At his death in 527B.C.he was succeeded by his son Hippias, who for some years imitated the policy of his father by tolerating the maintenance of some of the popular institutions while he kept the substance of power in his own hands. After the unsuccessful conspiracy of Harmodius and Aristogeiton in 514B.C.his rule became harsh and repressive135.
The fall of the Athenian tyranny was brought about through a foreign intervention. The wealthy family of the Alcmæonidæ had been forced at the last restoration of Pisistratus to leave Athens and go into exile. It chanced that the great temple of Apollo at Delphi had been destroyed by fire, and the Amphictyonic council, composed of delegates from the Hellenic races, making great efforts had obtained money enough to rebuild it. The Alcmæonidæ contracted with the Amphictyonic council that they would for a certain sum restore the temple: and to acquire influence with the Delphic priestess they performed the task with splendour far exceeding what was required of them. After this, whenever the oracle was consulted by the Spartan state or by any Spartan, the answer was always the same "Set Athens free." In 510B.C.the Spartans resolved to obey the commands of the god: the king Cleomenes was sent to Athens in command of a Spartan army, Hippias was expelled, the exiles restored, and the Athenians were free to establish any constitution that they might desire136.
It was probably impossible for a Greek city, in the period when democracy was unthought of, to overthrow an oligarchy without setting up a tyranny in its stead. Tyrannies are found in all parts of the Hellenic world in or about the sixth centuryB.C.: at Sicyon, Megara, Epidaurus, in the island of Samos, at Mitylenê in Lesbos, in all the cities of Asia Minor, in Italy at Rhegium, and in Sicily at Agrigentum, Zanclê, Himera, Selinus, Gela and Leontini137. Most of the tyrants began their ambitious careers, as Pisistratus began his, by flattering the poor and oppressed classes and professing to be champions of liberty138: some of them however started with being hereditary kings possessing limited prerogatives[139], others were high officers of state[139], or were members of an oligarchy139: but all alike were usurpers of absolute power and found it necessary eventuallyto maintain themselves in power by employing a body guard of foreign mercenaries140. Pheidon of Argos, as I have already remarked, cannot properly be counted among theτύραννοι: the same may be said of Pittacus of Mitylenê with still greater confidence: for Pittacus was in no sense a usurper, but was deliberately chosen as Æsymnetes or permanent dictator and endowed with absolute power by a vote of the people141. If Pittacus were counted as a tyrant, Solon would have to be counted as a tyrant also: for the powers conferred on the two men were the same, and were bestowed on them for the same purposes and by the same authority and procedure.
The establishment of tyrants, or usurpers of absolute power, was necessary to the development of most of the Greek states, because nothing else would have sufficed to destroy the oppressive power of the nobles: and many of the new rulers for a time governed well and were respected by their subjects. All however in time became selfish and cruel, and being detested by their countrymen were forced to hire foreign mercenaries to protect them. But no precaution on the part of the tyrants could avail them for long in the face of the general abhorrence with which they were regarded. Their dynasties usually lasted only for one or two generations: the most long-lived of all was that of the Orthagoridæ at Sicyon which lasted a hundred years142.
The feelings with which the memory of the tyrants was regarded in the latter part of the fifth centuryB.C.when Herodotus wrote his history are shown by a speech which he puts in the mouth of a Corinthian named Sosicles. The Spartans at some time between 510B.C.and 490B.C.conceived a project of reinstating at Athens the tyrant Hippias whom they had helped to dethrone, and requested their allies to send ambassadors to discuss the matter. The envoys of all the states disliked the proposal: it was Sosicles who expressed the feelings of all. "Surely" he said "the heaven shall be set below the earth, and the earth raised above the heaven, and men shallhave their habitation in the sea and the fishes live on dry land, if ye, O Lacedæmonians, are preparing to destroy equal governments and to bring the cities of Greece under the rule of tyrannies, which of all things in the world are the wickedest and bloodiest. If indeed ye think it good for cities to be ruled by tyrants, ye should first set a tyrant over yourselves, and then seek to do the like for your neighbours: for if ye had experienced, as we have, what a tyrant is, ye would bring before us sounder opinions on the subject than those that ye have now declared143." He enforced his opinions by telling a large part of the story of Cypselus and Periander: and the effect of his words was such that the envoys at the congress declared their agreement with them and the Spartans had to abandon all thought of the restoration of the Athenian tyranny.
There can be no doubt that in the age of the tyrants the Greek communities were city states, or communities in which a walled city is of supreme importance and the rural districts are of comparatively little moment. In the case of Athens, the story of Pisistratus affords conclusive evidence: for in it we can observe three times over that, so long as his influence or authority extended only to the rural districts, he was but an aspirant to sovereignty: but, as soon as he was master of the city, he was established as tyrant. And in the other Greek communities tyrannies were upheld by body guards of foreign mercenaries: and this could hardly have taken place if there had not been in each community a single fortified city of such importance that a body guard by occupying it could dominate the whole country.
Between the tyrants of the Greek cities and the tyrants of the Italian cities of the middle ages there is a close resemblance: but the tyrants, both Greek and Italian, differ in one most important particular from all monarchs who have ruled over empires, tribes or nations. In an empire, a tribe or a nation the power of a monarch always has some visible utility: in an empire he holds the whole structure together: in a tribe or nation he repels foreign attack or leads his subjects to assailtheir neighbours: and above all, if his tribe or nation is successful and annexes new territory, he is supremely useful in amalgamating the people of the new territory with his old subjects. To a tyrant all these kinds of usefulness were impossible: the community that he ruled was too small to need holding together: it was too well protected by its mountain bulwarks and city walls to fear much hurt from hostile invasion: it could not hope to conquer neighbours whose defences were as strong as its own: and it did not acquire new subjects. There was, as we have seen, one momentous service which the tyrants could and did perform for their cities, and that was to put down the oligarchies and to ensure that they did not rise again: but, when once this task was performed, there was little else that they could do, and their power became a mere political survival, or an institution which exists not because it is useful but because it has existed and has not yet been removed.
By the year 500B.C.the tyrannies had disappeared from Greece proper from Asia Minor and from the Ægean sea: and from about that time democracies and oligarchies—the rule of the many poor and the rule of the few rich—succeeded one another alternately in most of the cities till the battle of Chæroneia in 338B.C.put an end to the independence of the Greeks. My examples both of democracy and of oligarchy will all be taken from the history of Athens: for the march of events at Athens has been illuminated for us by Thucydides, Aristophanes, Xenophon, Aristotle, Demosthenes and other great writers and orators, while of the other Greek cities we have no knowledge beyond what can be derived from a few fragmentary notices. At Athens the period which we are considering was most unequally divided between democracy and oligarchy: the government was oligarchic only for four months in 411B.C.and for eight months in 404B.C.; throughout the rest of the time, a duration of nearly two centuries, it was steadily democratic.
My sketch of democracy and oligarchy as exemplified in Athenian history will be divided into five parts: (1) Moderate popular government 508B.C.-480B.C.(2) The changes between 480B.C.and 432B.C.(3) Democracy during the Peloponnesian war 432B.C.-404B.C.(4) Democracy after the Peloponnesian war 404B.C.-338B.C.(5) Oligarchies in 411B.C.and in 404B.C.
After the expulsion of Hippias a contest for power arose between Isagoras and Cleisthenes. Isagoras was a friend of the expelled tyrant: Cleisthenes, finding that he was getting worsted, made an alliance with the poorer classes and within three years after the exile of Hippias he was victorious. Cleisthenes, like Solon, devised a new system of government: and his system, like Solon's, was popular but moderate, and formed an instance of what Aristotle called Polity. He desired to grant the rights of citizenship to certain classes which did not possess them: and to this end he deprived the four old Ionic tribes of all political significance: for, as a tribe contained threeφρατρίαιor brotherhoods, and eachφρατρία—at least theoretically—contained thirty kindreds, each tribe was a close corporation consisting of a fourth part of the families of the Athenian citizens and would resist the intrusion of new members144. He divided the people, for political purposes, into ten tribes constructed on a new principle and defined not as containing certain families but as dwelling in certain demes or villages: and he enrolled in these tribes, and thereby in the list of citizens, a large number of men who resided in Attica, but were not of pure Attic descent145. It may be that each of the old tribes had formed a rallying point for one of those factions whichhad produced the dissensions between localities and classes in the time before Pisistratus: for Cleisthenes took care in his new division of the citizens that the demes which formed a tribe should not lie all in one district but some of them should be urban or suburban, some situated in the inland parts, and others along the shore146.
The whole body of Athenian citizens, greatly enlarged by the inclusion of the new citizens, formed theἐκκλησία, or general assembly in the constitution of Cleisthenes. The importance of the meetings of the assembly in the time before Marathon (490B.C.) is proved by a passage in Herodotus in which he attributes the military successes of the Athenians in their wars with the Bœotians and Chalcidæans between 500B.C.and 490B.C.to their newly acquired right of free and equal speech147: for the right of free speech could not have produced such effects unless it were used in a general assembly.
The other parts of the Cleisthenean constitution have to do with the organisation of the army and of the council, with a strange and novel process known as ostracism, and with local government within the demes.
The military force under Pisistratus and his son had consisted of foreign mercenaries: Cleisthenes established an army of citizens. Each tribe furnished a brigade serving under the general whom the tribe had elected: at Marathon in 490B.C.the right wing was formed by a body of troops under the Polemarch and then from right to left the ten tribal brigades were marshalled in order each under its own general148.
The number of the council, which Solon had fixed at four hundred, was raised by Cleisthenes to five hundred, fifty councillors being taken from each tribe149. In the time of the Peloponnesian war, (as will be shown further on,) the council of five hundred was a committee of citizens entrusted with the duty of controlling the proceedings of the generalassembly: it considered resolutions and projects of law before they were submitted to the assembled people: the fifty councillors of each tribe enjoyed for a tenth part of the year the dignity ofπρυτάνειςor presiding officers, both in the council and in the general assembly, and the nameπρυτανείαwas applied both to their right of presidency and to the thirty-five or thirty-six days for which they possessed it: and, as the assembly met often and had much business to attend to, such a committee was obviously necessary. The records of the age of Cleisthenes give no details about the doings of the assembly and the council: but the activity of the assembly, as we have already seen, began in that age, and it is natural to suppose that some of the later functions and organisation of the council may be referred back to this time. The opinion is confirmed by a piece of evidence from Plutarch who states incidentally that in 490B.C.the tribe Æantis was the presiding tribe in the assembly which resolved that the Athenians should march out to resist the invader Darius150. It is probable that under the Cleisthenean constitution the assembly met once in each prytany.
The process of ostracism was devised to guard the state against any future demagogue who might, like Pisistratus, aspire to make himself a tyrant, and perhaps also against the recurrence of such a contest for the chief power as had arisen between Cleisthenes and Isagoras. The public assembly could, without naming any person, order that on a fixed date a vote should be taken in which each citizen might write on a potsherd the name of any man who ought in his opinion to be banished. In case the name of any citizen was found to be written on six thousand of the potsherds, he went into exile for a term of years but did not suffer any further hurt151.
Local divisions and local governors had existed in Attica even before the time of Cleisthenes: the divisions were called naucrariæ and their governors naucrari. We know nothing about them except that each naucraria contributed two horsemen to the army and a ship to the navy, and that the naucrari assessed the taxation needed for these purposes and had something to do in the expenditure of it. Cleisthenes established his demes as local divisions in lieu of the naucrariæ, in each deme he set up a demarchus or president of the deme, and the demarchi took over the functions which the naucrari had hitherto discharged152. Beyond what I have stated we know nothing from direct testimony about the demes in the days of Cleisthenes: but there can be no doubt that even in his time the inhabitants of every deme used to meet in assembly and the assembly regulated the affairs of the deme. There had been a time when Attica was the home not of one state but of many independent commonwealths each having its own government153and its own divinities: and the people in the days of Cleisthenes had not forgotten the fact, for their descendants eighty years later in the time of Pericles still cherished its memory154. Moreover the Athenians even so late as the time of Pericles delighted in country life for its own enjoyments155, and even then a majority of the citizens of Athens lived not in the city but in the country156: and if the attractions of life in the city did not draw men to desert their demes and live in Athens in the time of Pericles it is certain that nothing that the city could offer in the time of Cleisthenes would entice them from rural to urban life. From all these considerations it is clear that the rural demes in the days of Cleisthenes were well filled with a resident population: the resident inhabitants of the rural demes were citizens of Athens, and, as citizens, took part in settling great matters of state: and it cannot be supposed that they did not take part in regulating the comparatively trivial affairs of their own localities. In the time of Demosthenes about a century and ahalf after Cleisthenes the assemblies of the demes were fully organised bodies and had plenty of business to employ them157.
One more change made by Cleisthenes is worth a passing notice. He ordered the archons to be directly elected, and abolished all drawing of lots in their appointment. Twenty years later, in 487B.C., the Athenians made the appointment more a matter of chance than it had ever been: they selected five hundred, and out of this large number the nine archons were taken by drawing lots158.
I may now give a brief summary of the political condition of Attica in the days of Cleisthenes. In Attica at that time, as in all parts of ancient Greece at all times, the population consisted partly of free men (i.e. the citizens) and their families, and partly of slaves. In matters of government the decision of great matters rested with the assembly of all the free men: but, as most of the free men lived habitually in the country and the assembly met only about once in a month, the management of current business was left to the Archons for the year and the permanent council of the Areopagus composed of Archons and ex-Archons. The government therefore was a mixture of different elements: for dealing with ordinary matters the governors were a small number of the ablest men, while for dealing with matters of special importance the rulers were the whole body of free men. In such a government there was no likelihood that either the rich citizens could oppress the poor or the poor could oppress the rich: it was in short what Aristotle afterwards called a Polity, or the rule of all the citizens conducted for the good of the whole community. There is every reason to believe that no government with precisely the same qualities existed elsewhere in Greece: for, if there had been one, Aristotle, who admired such governments beyond all others, would have mentioned it in his Politics.
The invasion of Greece by the Persians under Xerxes and the subsequent maritime supremacy of Athens produced great changes in the character of the Athenian government. When the Persians had passed over the mountains near Thermopylæ, Attica lay at their mercy, and the ten generals proclaimed that every Athenian must save himself as best he could. The council of the Areopagus however contrived to provide a sum of money as an instalment of pay for men who were willing to serve on shipboard; a hundred and eighty ships were manned, and the men who served, probably about thirty-six thousand in number, received a sum of eight drachmas apiece. The Athenian fleet, which was thus provided, formed more than half of the whole Greek force that won the marvellous battle of Salamis: and the Areopagus was allowed by the Athenians in recognition of the service it had rendered to have the chief influence in the government of Athens for twenty years159. But the whole body of the citizens who risked their lives in winning the great battle had contributed more effectually to the result than the council that found the money. Moreover within a few years after the defeat of Xerxes the Greek cities in the islands of the Ægean sea requested Athens to be their defender against Persian attack: from being protector of the islands Athens soon became their suzerain, receiving from them contingents of ships or payments of tribute, and possessing a maritime supremacy and abundant revenue such as no Greek city had ever enjoyed: and all these brilliant achievements were due to the exertions of the poorer citizens who served as common sailors on board the galleys160. Athens, Piræus and Phalerum were fortified and joined together by the building of the long walls and were formed into a single city capable of containing a very large population. The result of these events was a rapid progress towards democracy: the council of the Areopagus was deprivedin 462B.C.of most of its powers161, the rules which had hitherto excluded citizens of the poorer classes from holding the archonship were repealed or disregarded162, pay was provided for the citizens whilst serving as judges or jurymen in the law courts163, and in various ways, twenty thousand—probably a majority—of the citizens were in the employ of the state and received from it salaries or wages sufficient to maintain them164.
The changes which have been mentioned, together with others which have been passed over, produced the constitution under which the Athenians lived during their contest with Sparta. In the description of it we must notice (1) the general assembly and the council of five hundred, (2) the executive officers, (3) the judicature, (4) instances illustrative of the working of the constitution.
(1) Theἐκκλησίαor general assembly had supreme power in all the most important matters: it consisted of all Athenian citizens who had attained the age of manhood: its meetings were held on the Pnyx, a hillside in the open air: four ordinarymeetings were held on fixed days in each prytany, and other meetings for special business could at any time be summoned by proclamation165. Though the assembly had supreme power to make laws and pass resolutions determining the policy of the city, it submitted to certain restraining formalities. No law could be proposed in the assembly till it had been considered and sanctioned by the council of five hundred166: and any resolution or any new law passed by the assembly might afterwards be indicted before a popular law-court on the ground that it violated or contradicted some existing law or was contrary to the Athenian constitution. If the law or resolution was condemned by the law-court it wasipso factocancelled. Moreover, if proceedings were taken within a year after the vote of the assembly, the proposer as well as the proposition might be indicted, and if the court decided against him he was subject to a heavy fine. The Greek name for the indictment was Graphê Paranomôn which may be translated literally Indictment for Illegality167. The Graphê Paranomôn was, beyond all doubt, the best bulwark of the Athenian constitution: though there were occasions, as we shall see, when it did not save the constitution from being violated.
The council consisted of five hundred citizens taken by lot. It was a committee to manage the details of the business of the assembly. It met on every day in the year except the religious festivals or holidays and it drew up the list of business for the assembly, determining what business ought and what ought notto be brought forward. All business intended for the assembly passed through the hands of the council; and sometimes, in cases that demanded immediate action, (as in the accusation brought against the commanders at Arginusæ which will be described further on,) it had to come to important provisional decisions. The fifty councillors belonging to a tribe were presidents during a tenth part of the year: and if, during their presidency, a special meeting of the assembly was required, it was their business to summon it168.
(2) The chief servants of the sovereign assembly were the ten generals and the nine archons. The generals were elected and not like the rest of the officers of the state taken by lot: this might be inferred from the constant occurrence among the generals of the names of distinguished men, but it is completely proved by the fact that in the year 430B.C.the Athenians though they were many of them angry with Pericles yet re-elected him general because his services could not be dispensed with169. The ten generals levied troops, managed the revenue allotted to military purposes, and named trierarchs to command the ships170. In the battle of Marathon and in an expedition to Samos in 440B.C.all ten generals acted as commanders: in most cases the assembly appointed a convenient number, usually three, of the generals to conduct an enterprise abroad, while the rest remained at home to manage the ordinary business of their office.
The nine archons, taken yearly by lot from among a number of men who had declared themselves to be candidates, and had submitted the respectability of their characters to a public examination, had duties of a ceremonial character and attended to the routine of some business of state, but had no political influence171. There were also some other functionaries for the supervision of markets and of the supply of corn, and for thepreservation of order, of whom it is not necessary to speak further.
(3) The judicial bodies alone at Athens were independent of the political assembly. Jurisdiction, except in those few cases which were still brought before the semi-religious court of the Areopagus or before the first Archon, belonged to the popular law-courts which had been first founded by Solon. A large number of citizens were taken every year to serve as jurymen: they were divided into bodies varying in number from two hundred to a thousand172, and each of these bodies sat collectively as judges to decide such cases as might be submitted to them. They sat without any professional judge to inform them about the condition of the law or the relevance of arguments: the advocate on either side cited such laws as favoured his contentions, and could use any reasoning which he thought likely to influence the court. The citizens were not only willing but eager to render their services as dicasts, partly because they received as daily pay three obols, a sum equal to half a modern franc, and partly because they enjoyed the business of the court and the importance which it conferred on them173.
(4) The records of some of the meetings of the assembly of citizens will serve to illustrate the nature of their business. Just before the Peloponnesian war the Corcyræans requested the Athenians to protect them with armed force: the body to whom the Corcyræan envoys made their request was the assembly of citizens; on the first day the Athenians heard the arguments of the Corcyræans and of their enemies the Corinthians: on the second day they debated what answer they should give; on the third they resolved to grant what the Corcyræans desired and thereby made the great war inevitable174. Again in 415B.C.the ambassadors from Egeste in Sicily, sent to ask aid from Athens, were heard in the assembly, and it wasagreed on the same day to send an expedition of sixty ships175. In the case of the Peace of Nicias in 423B.C.the negotiations were carried on by the ten generals, but the Treaty became binding on Athens only when it was ratified by the assembly of the people176.
In 428B.C.Mitylenê in Lesbos, a city allied to Athens under compulsion, broke loose from the alliance. This revolt was the work of the oligarchy, which ruled supreme in Mitylenê. In the summer of the next year Mitylenê had difficulty in withstanding the forces of the Athenians, and the rulers of the city found it desirable to give arms to the common folk. With arms went power. The common folk preferred to be ruled by Athens rather than by those among their fellow-citizens who happened to be wealthy, and declared they would surrender to Paches the Athenian commander. The surrender was effected, and the fate of the city was to be settled by the Athenians. The Athenian citizens were very angry that a city which had been in compulsory alliance with them had revolted, and, making no distinction between the oligarchical party who had led the revolt and the democrats who had restored the city to Athens, voted that every man in Mitylenê of military age should be put to death, and all the women and children sold into slavery; and they despatched a galley bearing their orders to Paches. After the vote they went home and repented of their cruelty: next day they met again, and after hearing Cleon on the side of severity and Diodotus for mercy they rescinded the order of the day before and despatched a second galley to carry the new orders. The crew of the first galley made no haste in rowing, because they disliked the work of conveying a cruel and unjust sentence: and the second galley arrived with the new orders before the first had taken any effect177.
Judicial work at Athens belonged to the dicasteries and not to the general assembly: but the assembly also if it wished to inflict a punishment on an offender against the state could do so by a special legislative act which might be called in Latin a privilegium, and in English an attainder or bill of pains andpenalties. Miltiades, after he had won the great victory of Marathon, was entrusted with the command of an expedition of which he did not disclose the object: he used it wrongfully and unsuccessfully against the Parians, and on his return Xanthippus proposed to the assembly that he should be put to death for having deceived the Athenians. The assembly showed mercy to him in gratitude for his services at Marathon, and let him off with a very heavy fine of fifty talents178.
In the year 406B.C.an Athenian fleet under the command of nineστρατηγοίor admirals won a great victory over a Spartan fleet at Arginusæ: several Athenian ships which had been disabled in the action were lost in a storm which came on afterwards, and it was suspected that the admirals had made no efforts to save them. The Athenians superseded all the admirals and summoned them to Athens. Six of the number obeyed the summons. One of them was first accused in a law-court of peculation and misconduct in his command, and the court ordered him to be kept in custody, with a view probably to any further proceedings which the general assembly might choose to take. The other five appeared before the council of five hundred, which acted as a sort of business committee to the assembly, and were committed to custody.
In a general assembly, held soon afterwards, a citizen who had himself held a subordinate command in the fleet complained of the conduct of the admirals and desired that they should be punished. They were allowed to speak briefly in their defence; and the assembly did not on that day pass any resolution except that the council of five hundred should consider what course the proceedings should take, and report their opinion at the next meeting. During the interval a festival occurred at which many citizens appeared ostentatiously in mourning for relatives who had been drowned in the neglected vessels. When the assembly met, the desire to punish the admirals had risen high: the council, bringing in its report, proposed that, as the accusation and the answers had beenalready heard, the assembly should proceed to an immediate vote whether or not the accused should be put to death. An objection was raised that the established practice required that a separate vote should be taken about each accused person: but it was met with a clamour that the people ought to be allowed to do what it likes. The objection based on established practice convinced some of the prytaneis or presiding councillors, but eventually all of them gave way to the clamour, except Socrates the philosopher. A formal proposal was then made by a citizen, who shared the views of Socrates, that a vote should be taken about each man separately. A division was taken on this proposal, and at first it was declared to be carried: but on a second scrutiny the proposal originally made by the council of five hundred was accepted. A vote was then taken on the proposal that the commanders should suffer death: the proposal was carried and the sentence executed on the six men who were in custody179.
The constitution, in the time of the Peloponnesian war, was arranged, in nearly all respects, according to the principles which the Greeks regarded as distinctive of ideal or extreme democracy, and tended to ensure firstly that all citizens should be equally treated in the distribution of offices, and secondly that the general assembly should be free to do as it liked. The exceptions to the prevailing tendency are to be found in the appointment of the ten generals by election, in the right of the five hundred to exclude a proposal from discussion, and in the provision that a resolution or new law might be indicted as unconstitutional before a law court. But the five hundred were not men of greater wisdom or experience than the other Athenians, being merely so many citizens taken at random by drawing lots: it does not appear from the descriptions which Thucydides gives of debates in the assembly that the generals or the five hundred exercised any commanding influence: and the illegal resolution against the admirals who commanded at Arginusæ took effect, just as if there had been no such thing as a regulation that it might be judicially indicted.
But it must be observed that what was an ideal democracy in the eyes of the Greeks was not an ideal democracy according to the views of our own time. When we speak of a democracy we generally mean a system of government in which the whole adult male population have some sort of control over public affairs. At Athens, a large part, it may have been half, or three-quarters or five-sixths, of the adult male population were slaves; and slaves, having lost their personal freedom, are of course incapable of political rights. If then we wish in speaking of the Athenian constitution to use terms in their modern sense and not in their Greek sense, we must say that the rulers of Athens were not a democracy but an aristocracy: it is true that they constituted a far larger part of the population than most aristocracies, but as compared with the whole they were but few. And further we may observe that without slavery there could never have been such a government as that which ruled Athens. The Athenian citizens gave a large part of their time to public business and attendance at public festivals: and they could not have done this unless there had been plenty of slaves to perform the industrial and menial work that the community required180.
Although Athens ought, according to the modern use of terms, to be called rather an aristocracy than a democracy, it seems to be certain that the men actually and habitually employed in the daily work of government bore numerically a larger proportion to the whole population in ancient Athens than they have done in any other state known to history. The whole population of Attica may have been a quarter of a million or it may have been nearly half-a-million: the citizens numbered about thirty thousand, and it is probable that at least ten thousand of them were habitually employed in the business of government: and these ten thousand may have been a twenty-fifth part and were not less than a fiftieth part of the whole population. In modern England those who are habitually employed in governing would include members ofParliament, of town councils, of county councils, and of school-boards, magistrates, judges, and the staff of all Government offices, except those persons who are mere clerks or servants: I cannot say how many they would muster, all told: but, judging from those parts of England that I know best, I should estimate them at something between a two-hundredth and a five-hundredth part of the inhabitants of the country.
In the period which followed the Peloponnesian war the poorer citizens who predominated in the assembly passed several votes to promote the pleasure and the pecuniary interests of their class. Pay was provided for every citizen who attended a meeting of the assembly or was a spectator at a religious festival and its dramatic performances. The pay was at first fixed at a low rate: before 392B.C.it had been raised to three obols, the same sum as was paid to a dicast for a day's attendance181. The pay for the law courts, the assemblies, the festivals and the council came to nearly two hundred talents yearly182. The whole revenue of the Athenian state in the fourth century is not known: but it can scarcely have exceeded eleven or twelve hundred talents183: and thus it seems that about one-sixth part of it was spent in providing citizens with religious spectacles or comfortable employment.
After the three obols had been decreed, a majority more overwhelming than ever was ensured in the assembly to the poorer class. The professional orators began to devote theirskill to the purpose of persuading the ecclesia, and thus obtained a control over Athenian policy. It was fortunate for the state that in Demosthenes it found not only an orator but a patriot and a statesman: and it says much for the good sense of the assembly that it followed his counsels, unless they interfered too much with the comfort of the individual citizens. The assembly governed on the whole with moderation, and no harsh measures against the property of the rich were ever passed in it: but it insisted that the poor citizens should have their three obols for the religious spectacles, even when the money was wanted for a most necessary war to defend Olynthus against Macedonia184. The very frequent assemblies of the whole body of citizens gave the poorer classes a decisive voice in all questions of policy and legislation: but they also ensured that all the citizens had some knowledge of what was being proposed, and gave them the habit of listening to arguments, and of deciding questions by voting and not by force. During the period from 404B.C.to 338B.C.Athens was never troubled with conspiracies or seditious violence.
The fall of Athens occurred at the end of the period of which I have been speaking, and no doubt the defects of the constitution and the unwillingness of the citizens to make any sacrifices were contributory causes. But it is not certain that, even if Athens had been as well governed and patriotic as ever, it would have been able so to unite the jealous Greek cities as to ensure their independence against the new and formidable power of Macedonia.
Our materials for forming an estimate of the nature of democracy in the Greek cities other than Athens are, as I have said, very scanty. But it seems clear that most of the democracies ruled with less moderation and self-control than the Athenian democracy, and had less stability. Revolutions from democracy to oligarchy or from oligarchy to democracy recurred at shorter intervals in many Greek cities than at Athens: and sometimes, as at Corcyra in 427B.C., and at Argos in 371B.C.or370B.C., an unsuccessful attempt at revolution was punished with wholesale massacre185. It is to be observed that the Greek writers, in speaking of democracy, generally seem to regard it with distrust and even dislike: and this could hardly have been the case, if all democratic governments had been as well conducted as the Athenian government. We know that at Athens the whole mass of the citizens were able at any moment to do whatever they liked, subject to no restraint except from the Graphê Paranomôn and from their own characters and inclinations: and it seems certain that in every Greek city mentioned by the Greek writers as democratically governed the citizens were still more free from restraint: for many of the best and most careful writers were great admirers of artificial restraints on democracy, and if any city had provided itself with such restraints the fact would have been recorded. It is clear that a government which allows the mass of the citizens to do whatever they choose must be beset with dangers, unless the citizens have learned habits of self-restraint and mutual forbearance from a long and gradual political education. The Athenians had learned such habits, but the other Greeks probably had not: for the Athenians alone among the Greeks had had the good fortune to live under the wise constitutions of a Solon and a Cleisthenes, which, by granting to the mass of the citizens at first a very small share and afterwards a larger share in the control of public affairs, provided them with such political training that eventually they were able with safety to expose themselves to the perils of complete self-government.
In the year 415B.C., the seventeenth year of the Peloponnesian war, the Athenians despatched a great naval and military expedition to the distant island of Sicily. The expedition encountered many difficulties: the Athenians sent strong reinforcements: but in the year 412B.C.their fleet suffered a crushing defeat in the Great Harbour of Syracuse, and theirarmy was afterwards completely destroyed. Athens itself was without any adequate defence of ships or sailors or soldiers186: the Athenians did their best to supply the deficiency, but there was grave reason to fear that their unaided efforts would not avail to save them, and they greatly desired to get support by making some new alliance. It was certain that no new allies could be found among the Greeks187, and they could look for no help unless it were from the king of Persia188.