CHAPTER V.. The Greek Cities.

THE GREEK CITIES.

I have already stated that between 650 B.C. and 338 B.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 650 B.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.

I. The early aristocracies and oligarchies.

Before the year 650 B.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 later date are absent except in regard to Corinth, Megara, Athens and Argos.

At Corinth it is said that in 745 B.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 655 B.C., after they had ruled for ninety years, their government was selfish and oppressive.

Herodotus V. 92. Diodorus Siculus VII. fragment 9. Diodorus wrote about 20-10 B.C.

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 them.

Aristotle, Politics V. 5. 9, Bekker. Welldon, Translation, p. 357.

At Athens the nobles gradually deprived the king of his power and prerogatives: and from a date somewhere between 700 B.C. and 650 B.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 council. The council consisted of those who were serving or had served the office of archons, 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 business. The nobles then from 650 B.C. or earlier were in exclusive possession of power: how they used it when first they got it, is not recorded: by 600 B.C. they were employing it selfishly for the interests of their class.

Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, ch. 8.

Plutarch, Solon, ch. 19, Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, ch. 3.

Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, ch. 3, calls them recorders of laws or customs for judgement. The chapter may be spurious, but the assertion is probable.

The first truly historical Athenian is Draco, who, about 620 B.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 government: but, as this passage was certainly either not known or not accepted as genuine by Plutarch in the first century A.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 work.

Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 4.

Mr R. Macan in Journ. of Hellenic Studies, April 1891, p. 27 notices the silence of Plutarch.

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 594 B.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 the δικαστήρια or popular law-courts, the ἐκκλησία or assembly of citizens, the βουλή or 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.

The δικαστήρια were 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 an ἀγορή of 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 his βουλή or 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 and kept 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 administration.

The description of Solon's constitution is taken from Aristotle's Constitution of Athens, ch. 5-13: except the statement that the members of the council of four hundred were selected by Solon. This is from Plutarch, Solon, ch. 19.

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 magistrates. 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.

Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 13.

The prevalence of oligarchical governments in the Greek cities of Sicily at an early stage of their career is noticed by Aristotle: 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.

Aristotle, Politics V. 12. 13. Welldon, p. 405.

It is to be noticed that none of the traditions about the governments of the nobles in the Greek cities of the seventh century B.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 their existence 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. Aristotle speaks of the oligarchy at Athens as οἱ πεδιακοί, or inhabitants of τὸ πεδίον, a little tract of level ground near Athens, Plutarch calls them πεδιεῖς in exactly the same sense, and the Etymologicum Magnum a 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 river:--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 a δῆμος or 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.

Politics V. 5. 9.

Solon, ch. 13.

Etymol. Mag., under the word εὐπατρίδαι.

Aristotle, Pol. V. 5. 9. Welldon, p. 357.

At Argos the course of events was not the same as in those cities of which I have spoken. The Argive monarchy, as we have seen, was not abolished but continued to exist so late as 480 B.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.

Above, pages 34, 35.

II. The Tyrannies.

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 655 B.C. to 585 B.C., and by the reigns of Pisistratus and his son.

The story of the origin of the Corinthian tyranny, as told by Herodotus, 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, as none 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 a κυψέλη or 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.

Herodotus V. 92 and III. 48-53.

The character of Periander's government is exemplified in the 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 practice among 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 560 B.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 make proclamation "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 family. At his death in 527 B.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 514 B.C. his rule became harsh and repressive.

Thucydides VI. 54.

Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, ch. 19.

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 510 B.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 desire.

The stories of Pisistratus and Hippias are told by Herodotus (I. 59-64 and V. 62): see also Aristotle, Const. Ath. 14, and Plutarch, Solon 30. The temple of Delphi was burnt in 548 B.C. Pausanias X. 5. 5, 'Ερξικλείδου ἄρχοντος.

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 century B.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 Leontini. 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 liberty: some of them however started with being hereditary kings possessing limited prerogatives, others were high officers of state, or were members of an oligarchy: but all alike were usurpers of absolute power and found it necessary eventually to maintain themselves in power by employing a body guard of foreign mercenaries. Pheidon of Argos, as I have already remarked, cannot properly be counted among the τύραννοι: 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 people. 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.

Grote, Part II. ch. XLIII.

Aristotle, Politics V. 10. 4; and V. 6. 1. Bekker. Welldon, pp. 381, 382, 358.

Ibid. V. 10. 6. Bekker. Welldon, pp. 381, 382.

Aristotle, Politics III. 14. 7. Welldon, p. 145.

For Pittacus see Aristotle, Politics III. 14. 9. Welldon, p. 146.

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 years.

Aristotle, Politics V. 12. 1. Welldon, p. 402.

The feelings with which the memory of the tyrants was regarded in the latter part of the fifth century B.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 510 B.C. and 490 B.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 shall have 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 declared." 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.

Herodotus V. 92.

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 assail their 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.

III. The Democracies and the Later Oligarchies.

By the year 500 B.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 338 B.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 411 B.C. and for eight months in 404 B.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 508 B.C.-480 B.C. (2) The changes between 480 B.C. and 432 B.C. (3) Democracy during the Peloponnesian war 432 B.C.-404 B.C. (4) Democracy after the Peloponnesian war 404 B.C.-338 B.C. (5) Oligarchies in 411 B.C. and in 404 B.C.

1. Moderate popular government under the Cleisthenean constitution 508 B.C.-480 B.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 three φρατρίαι or brotherhoods, and each φρατρία--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 members. 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 descent. It may be that each of the old tribes had formed a rallying point for one of those factions which had 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 shore.

The composition of the four Ionic tribes is from Pollux, 8. 111 (in Dindorf's or Bekker's edition). Pollux delivered his work in the form of lectures at Athens in the reign of Marcus Aurelius who died 180 A.D.

Aristotle, Politics III. 2. 3, πολλοὺς ἐφυλέτευσε ξένους καὶ δούλους μετοίκους. Probably the text is not quite correct, but the general meaning is clear.

For the geographical scattering of each tribe see Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, ch. 21.

The whole body of Athenian citizens, greatly enlarged by the inclusion of the new citizens, formed the ἐκκλησία, or general assembly in the constitution of Cleisthenes. The importance of the meetings of the assembly in the time before Marathon (490 B.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 500 B.C. and 490 B.C. to their newly acquired right of free and equal speech: for the right of free speech could not have produced such effects unless it were used in a general assembly.

Herodotus V. 78. ισηγορίη.

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 490 B.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 general.

Herodotus VI. 111, whence the words are taken. Ar. Const. Ath. ch. 22.

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 tribe. 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 general assembly: 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 of πρυτάνεις or presiding officers, both in the council and in the general assembly, and the name πρυτανεία was 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 490 B.C. the tribe Æantis was the presiding tribe in the assembly which resolved that the Athenians should march out to resist the invader Darius. It is probable that under the Cleisthenean constitution the assembly met once in each prytany.

Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, ch. 2.

Plutarch, Συμποσιακὰ προβλήματα I. 10.

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 hurt.

For the process of Ostracism see Grote, octavo edition, vol. III. p. 133, cabinet edition, vol. IV. p. 83.

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 discharged. 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 government and 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 memory. Moreover the Athenians even so late as the time of Pericles delighted in country life for its own enjoyments, and even then a majority of the citizens of Athens lived not in the city but in the country: 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 a half after Cleisthenes the assemblies of the demes were fully organised bodies and had plenty of business to employ them.

See Smith, Dictionary of Antiquities, third edition, 1891, article Naucraria. Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, ch. 20 κατέστησε δὲ καὶ δημάρχους τὴν αὐτὴν ἔχοντας ἐπιμέλειαν τοῖς πρότερον ναυκράροις· καὶ γὰρ τοὺς δήμους ἀντὶ τῶν ναυκραριῶν ἐποίησεν.

See p. 35.

Thucydides II. 14, 16.

Aristophanes, Acharnians, the whole play.

Thucydides II. 14, διὰ τὸ εἰωθέναι =τοὺς πολλοὺς= ἐν τοῖς ἀγροῖς διαιτᾶσθαι.

Smith, Dictionary of Antiquities, third edition, article Demus.

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 487 B.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 lots.

Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 22.

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.

2. The changes between 480 B.C. and 432 B.C.

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 years. 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 galleys. 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 deprived in 462 B.C. of most of its powers, the rules which had hitherto excluded citizens of the poorer classes from holding the archonship were repealed or disregarded, pay was provided for the citizens whilst serving as judges or jurymen in the law courts, 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 them.

Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 23. The drachma contained the same weight of silver as a modern franc.

For the effects of Salamis see Aristotle, Politics V. 4. 8. Welldon, p. 353.

The Areopagus was deprived of power in the archonship of Conon, i.e. 463-2 B.C. Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 25.

Plutarch (Aristides, 22) says that Aristides proposed to the assembly a resolution that the archonship should be thrown open to all Athenian citizens: and he seems to imply that the resolution was passed, and that thenceforth any Athenian citizen, whether he was a Pentacosiomedimnus, a Hippeus, a Zeugites, or a Thês, was legally qualified to hold the office. It is however certain that no such extensive change in the constitution was made in the lifetime of Aristides: for Aristides died about 468 B.C. (see Clinton, Fasti Hellenici under the years 469, 468, 429), and Aristotle, in his Constitution of Athens, chapter 26, tells us that it was not till 457 B.C. that the Zeugitæ were admitted to the archonship. If then Aristides carried any resolution that altered the law, it did not go beyond throwing open the office to the Hippeis or Horsemen. The Thêtes or Labourers were never formally declared eligible: but in Aristotle's time there was nothing to prevent a Thês from becoming an archon, provided that on announcing his candidature he did not declare that he belonged to the class of Thêtes. Aristotle, Constitution of Athens,