The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece
Page 24
In the long generation of consolidated tyrannical rule (546–510 BCE), the Athenian state developed a more elaborate material infrastructure (water supply, public monuments, temples) and a more robust and diversified economy. Particularly notable was the flowering of the Athenian ceramics industry. By the mid-sixth century, Athens had replaced Corinth as the primary Mediterranean center for production of painted pottery. Athenian vases were exported throughout the Greek world and beyond—some of the finest surviving examples of Athenian vase painting come from graves in Italy, where they were buried with wealthy Etruscans. Although ceramics can never have been a big part of Athens’ GDP, fired pottery is extremely durable and thus highly visible in archaeological contexts. The increasing prevalence of fine Athenian painted pottery at sites across the Mediterranean provides us with a proxy for the growth of Athens’ nonagricultural economic sector. Like most other Greek poleis, agriculture remained the largest single employer of Athenian labor—but it was no longer the only game in town.3
For most of their 36-year reign, Peisistratus and his sons were diligent in maintaining the appearance of ruling by the law. It was noted by the Athenians (and remembered by subsequent historians) that when Peisistratus was summoned to appear before a magistrate after being accused of a legal infraction, he dutifully arrived in the magistrate’s office as a private citizen and without his armed retainers or trappings of office. It was also noted that his accuser did not pursue the case. The tyrants sought to expand their coalition by allowing, perhaps encouraging, members of other elite families to hold the highest public magistracies—including the archonship, the office that had been the platform for Solon’s reforms. Looking beyond the elite, the tyrants sought to strengthen ordinary Athenians’ sense of civic identification with the state through promotion of new and reorganized festivals. In addition to the “all Athens” festival of the Panathenaia, these included the Dionysia, a multiday celebration of the wine god Dionysus that was the venue for the development of tragedy and comedy.
While the tyrants did not undertake imperial enterprises on the level of the fifth century Athenian state (ch. 8), Athenian control over disputed border territories was more effectively asserted, and members of prominent Athenian families became leading players in the northern Aegean. Like other major Greek states, Athens began building trireme warships and sought access to the timber and other resources necessary for their construction. overall, Athens seemed to be coming into its own under the tyrants, beginning to fulfill the potential of its large territory and population. Yet serious weaknesses persisted. Athens still lacked a true national army of the sort Sparta was already using to great effect. The tyrants had inaugurated their regime by disarming as many of their opponents as possible, and they continued to rely on a force of mercenary cavalrymen recruited from Thessaly. Meanwhile, sea raiders from the Saronic island-polis of Aigina remained a local threat to Athenian coastal settlements, and Sparta seemed interested in extending its Peloponnesian League north of the isthmus.4
A more distant but greater threat was the kingdom of Persia—which had emerged with startling rapidity as the dominant power in western Asia. By the end of the third quarter of the sixth century, the Iranian Persians had absorbed Lydia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Greek poleis of western Anatolia, and parts of central Asia into the largest and most cohesive empire the western world had ever known. The Achaemenid Persian Empire was run by and in the interest of its dominant ethnoelite, and most especially by a handful of elite families, “the Sons of the House,” closely associated with the Great King. Meanwhile, in North Africa, at the site of modern Tunis, the Phoenician colony of Carthage was now a dynamic and expansionist city-state, intent on controlling trade in the western Mediterranean. The larger world of which the Greek poleis were a part (map 2) was changing in ways that would soon threaten the independence of Greek states of the Anatolian coast, the Aegean islands, the mainland, and Sicily.5
Hipparchus, son of Peisistratus, was killed in 514 BCE at the Panathenaic festival. The assassins were two prominent Athenian citizens, Harmodius and Aristogeiton. This was the “tyrant killing” that the Athenians later celebrated as signaling their liberation. The historians Herodotus and Thucydides pointed out, however, that the killing actually arose from a personal quarrel: Harmodius and Aristogeiton were lovers. Hipparchus, whose amorous advances had been rebuffed by Harmodius, publicly insulted the young man’s sister. Moreover, the killing itself was bungled, in that Hipparchus’ brother, Hippias, the dominant figure in the tyrannical coalition, had escaped harm. Harmodius was cut down by the tyrants’ bodyguards; Aristogeiton died under harsh interrogation. The most notable immediate result of the assassination was the hardening of autocratic rule. Hippias consolidated his position as sole ruler, relied more heavily than before on mercenaries, and generally began to behave like a standard-issue despot. Some Athenian elites who had formerly been reconciled to the tyranny now went into exile.6
One prominent Athenian family in exile, the Alcmaeonids (descendants of the men who had killed the supporters of the would-be tyrant, Kylon, a century before: ch. 6), sought to build a wider base of support in the Greek world by conspicuously underbidding the contract for repairs of the temple of Apollo at Delphi—undertaking to build in marble for the price of limestone. Apollo was properly appreciative: The Spartans found that when they consulted Apollo’s oracle at Delphi about any matter of public import, they were told, “first free Athens.” They did not need much persuading. Athens would be a substantial addition to Sparta’s growing league, and the tyrant looked vulnerable. In the event, it took two invasions of Attica and a siege of the Acropolis that almost failed, but in 510 BCE, Hippias the tyrant was driven from Athens by a Spartan expeditionary force. He escaped to Persia, which offered a warm welcome to potentially useful exiles from countries that might some day be incorporated into the Persian Empire.7
ATHENIAN REVOLUTION
The Spartan army left Attica immediately after deposing the tyrant. Given that Athens had a population matching that of Sparta’s home territories and given their continual need to maintain control of the helots, the Spartans could not hope to rule Athens directly. They must, however, have expected that elite Athenians, like elites in the Peloponnesian poleis of the league, would see the value of being able to call on Sparta’s military might if faced by internal or external threats. Yet in the aftermath of tyranny, the Athenian elite were deeply fragmented. In the ensuing power struggle, Cleisthenes, the leader of the Alcmaeonid family, found his faction losing ground to Isagoras, a prominent aristocrat with particularly strong connections to the Spartan leadership. Nasty rumors claimed that Isagoras had pimped his wife to one of the two Spartan kings: Cleomenes, ominously nicknamed “The Mad.”
At this point, Cleisthenes made a bold play that precipitated a sequence of revolutionary events: According to Herodotus, he “brought the demos into his coalition” (Herodotus 5.66.2). Based on Cleisthenes’ later reforms, it appears that he promised to further the Solonian project of giving ordinary citizens a more substantial role in the affairs of the state. In 508 BCE, Isagoras, who held the archonship, responded by calling in the Spartans. Cleisthenes fled into exile, followed by his core supporters—700 families, according to Herodotus. When Cleomenes duly arrived from Sparta at the head of a smallish mixed-nationality (i.e., mostly mercenary) force, Isagoras attempted to install 300 of his own partisans as a new ruling coalition. Yet when Isagoras ordered the sitting council to disband, the councilors balked and “the rest of the Athenians, being of one mind,” rose up in arms (Herodotus 5.72.1–2). Cleomenes and Isagoras soon found themselves on the defensive and retreated to the Acropolis stronghold. After a three-day siege, Cleomenes surrendered on terms; he departed Athens for Sparta with Isagoras in tow, but he left some of his mercenaries behind, to be summarily executed by the victorious Athenians.
This revolutionary series of events signaled a sea change in Athenian politics. By the prerevolutionary norms of political fac
tionalism, when Cleisthenes and his closest allies fled Attica, the field should have been left open for Isagoras, supported by the Spartans, to reunite the rest of the Athenian elite around his own now-dominant coalition. But by “bringing the demos into his coalition,” Cleisthenes recognized that the game was changing. Civic identity and aspirations of ordinary citizens had become a determining factor in Athenian political struggles. Even the departure of Cleisthenes and his core group of partisans from Athens and the support of a Spartan-led mercenary force failed to pave the way for a smooth takeover by Isagoras because the Athenian people proved willing and able to act against him as a collectivity. In Cleisthenes’ absence and without organized elite leadership, the ordinary citizens rose up in arms and carried out the three-day siege. They evidently did so in response to a bright-line rule violation: Isagoras’ attempt to dissolve an existing council. Why did the violation trigger a mass revolt?
We cannot securely identify the council that Isagoras sought to overthrow, but it was certainly part of the existing Athenian constitutional system. By ordering its dissolution, Isagoras signaled (intentionally or not) his willingness to go further than had the Peisistratid tyrants in overturning the Solonian constitution. If Isagoras could chase citizens into exile en masse, as he had, and could dissolve state institutions at will, as he now sought to do, what was to prevent him from stripping citizens of both their legal immunities and participation rights? Among Solon’s earlier reforms was reportedly a law that required Athenians either to take sides when a civil conflict erupted or to lose their citizenship when it was over. At the moment that Isagoras sought to dissolve the council, most citizens clearly chose to side with the absent Cleisthenes. Moreover, contrary to Isagoras’ “elite politics as usual” expectations, the mass of ordinary citizens proved capable of coordinating their actions effectively enough to force the Spartan-led force to retreat to the sacred Acropolis. While besieged on the Acropolis, Cleomenes was said to have committed sacrilege. No doubt the rumor added fuel to the flames of collective fury against Isagoras, and to the people’s determination to continue the siege to its successful conclusion.8
DEMOCRATIC FEDERALISM
In the aftermath of the expulsion of Cleomenes and Isagoras by the citizen masses, there could be no quick return to prerevolutionary elite coalition politics. Recalled from his exile, Cleisthenes was now expected by the members of his hugely expanded coalition to make good on his promise to expand citizen rights. He had also to face the likelihood that the vengeful Spartans would soon return to Attica in force. Cleisthenes’ reforms, quickly enacted as emergency measures, built on the earlier laws of Solon, and on the growth of Athenian civic identity under the tyrants. The reforms also introduced novel features that reconceptualized Athenian citizenship on a federalist model. Like the American Founders in 1787, Cleisthenes invented democratic federalism as an experimental response to a postrevolutionary crisis that had no other obvious solution. And like the American Constitution, the new Athenian regime proved more successful than its inventors could have dared to hope.9
With its many substantial towns, the region of Attica was huge as a city-state, demographically comparable to Boeotia (region 10: 26 poleis, total fourth century BCE population ca. 200,000), Euboea (region 21: 14 poleis, 140,000), or Elis (region 13: 20 poleis, 140,000). Two Athenian towns, Aphidna (population ca. 8,000) and Acharnai (population ca. 11,000) would, if independent, have counted as size 3 poleis; another 18 would count as size 2 poleis (population of 3,500 or greater) (table 7.1).10 Among the challenges faced by Cleisthenes was, therefore, managing scale: building a strong state in a territory that might easily have supported a number of independent poleis (see map 5).
Under Cleisthenes’ reformed constitutional order, 139 villages, towns, and neighborhoods of Attica were designated “demes.” An average deme had a free adult male population of 150–250, although some were smaller, and others, notably Aphidna and Acharnai, much larger. The original Greek for the Anglicized term “deme” is demos. Just as the citizens of Athens were, collectively the Demos—the People of Athens, so too the native male citizens of each village and neighborhood were now acknowledged as the People of that place: Each Athenian was thus treated as a citizen at different levels: locally in his deme and at the federal level of the polis. All free adult males resident in Attica in the year of the reform were, in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, considered to be citizens of Athens and of their deme of residence. Moreover, the deme would hereafter be the fundamental unit of Athenian citizenship: To be a citizen of Athens, a male resident of Attica must be formally recognized by an assembly of citizens in his deme as having been born to an Athenian father who was himself a citizen of the deme, and as being at least 18 years of age.11
TABLE 7.1 Twenty Largest Athenian Demes
NOTES: Polis size 2 = average population of 3,500; polis size 3 = average population of 7,000. Deme populations are estimated based on a total population for Attica of about 250,000. Each deme’s council quota (the number of representatives sent annually to the Council of 500) was based on population (at the time of Cleisthenes); we thus assume that one member of the boule represents 500 persons (of all statuses). These numbers are necessarily stylized: In the time of Cleisthenes, the population was probably less than 250,000. By the fourth century BCE, because deme membership was hereditary and internal migration was a well-known phenomenon in Athens, some of any given deme’s members would not have lived in their ancestral demes. The basic point stands: There were, from the time of Cleisthenes on, a number of towns in Attica large enough to function as small or medium-sized poleis.
Fachard 2014 estimates the territorial extent of the Attic demes, concluding that 107 demes had territories of < 24 km2 (ergo polis size 1 or less); 18 are 24–48 km2; 5 are 66 km2, with the largest at about 85 km2. Thus, some 23 of the demes would achieve polis size 2 standing in territorial terms, but none would be size 3 in terms of its territorial extent. The disparity arises because of relative population density: Athens, with a population density of ca. 100 people/km2 was considerably more densely populated than the Greek world average of ca. 44 people per km2.
Two intermediate levels of belonging connected the demes to the federal state. Citizens of each deme were assigned to one of ten newly created artificial “tribes.” Each tribe enrolled roughly a tenth of the citizens, drawn from three distinct regions of Attica. Several geographically contiguous demes (or occasionally one very large deme) constituted a third of a given tribe. Each tribe was made up of three roughly equal-sized thirds located, respectively, in the coastal zone of Attica, the inland zone, and the city or its immediate suburbs. Each tribe was, therefore, regionally diverse in its membership. These mixed-region tribes were the basic unit for Athenian civic affairs: The Athenian army and its leadership were organized by tribes, as were civic festivals, and much else in Athenian public life.
Perhaps most importantly, the membership of the new central state Council of 500, which conducted Athens’ day-to-day public affairs and set the agenda for the legislative citizen assembly, was recruited through the new deme/tribe system. In later years, at least, councilors were aged 30 and older, were chosen by lot, and were paid for their service. Each of the 10 tribes annually provided 50 councilors. The members of each tribal contingent of 50 were chosen at the deme level, each deme sending a certain number of Councilors according to population. The deme of Prasiai, one of the four coastal demes of Tribe III Pandionis, for example, sent three councilors annually (figure 7.1 and map 5). A very small deme would send only one councilor each year; a very large deme might send a dozen or more. The 50-man tribal teams undertook much of the work of the Council, and took turns directing meetings of the Council and citizen assembly.
Each of the 10 tribal teams of 50, like the Council of 500 overall, was geographically representative of the population of Attica. But Cleisthenes had not introduced to Athens what we think of today as “representative government” because councilors were
not expected to represent the particularistic interests of their deme, regional third, or tribe. Nor were they accountable to local voters. Rather, the councilors served, collectively, as a microcosm of the Athenian citizenry. They represented what, in the aggregate, the Athenian people knew and the skills and information the Athenians could bring to bear on problems confronting the state.
Public and private incentives encouraged councilors to disclose potentially valuable private information in deliberations on public issues. Given the realities of ancient demographics, and because service was limited to two nonconsecutive years, serving on the Council was a common experience of mature Athenian men. Even the philosopher Socrates, famously uninterested in day-to-day politics, served for a year on the Council—albeit at the advanced age of 63—alongside nine of his fellow demesmen from the big deme of Alopeke (Tribe X Antiochis). Estimates vary, but within a generation after the reform probably at least one in three Athenians over age 30 had served a year as a councilor. As a result, not only was the aggregate “knowledge base” of the Council representative of that of the citizen body as a whole, but knowledge of the day-to-day workings of Athenian government was very widely distributed across the Athenian citizen population.12
FIGURE 7.1 Athenian tribe system, after 508 BCE.
NOTES: Adapted from Ober 2008: Figure 4.2. The chart features the example of Tribe III Pandionis and the coastal deme of Prasiai.
A second council, the Areopagus (named for the hill in central Athens on which it met), whose membership was drawn from ex-magistrates, continued to play a significant role for a long generation after the reforms.13 But the new Council of 500, with its unique control of both agenda setting and essential executive functions, quickly became the most important single body of Athenian government, after the citizen assembly itself. Given that the membership of the Council of 500 was, in any given year, broadly representative of the whole of the demos of Athens, and given that legislative authority lay with the citizen assembly, it is fair to say that in the immediate aftermath of the revolutionary uprising of 508 BCE, Athens had become, in practice if not yet in name, a democracy.14 This was among the first, if not the first, historical experiments with true collective self-governance by citizens in a community with a total population reaching six figures, and thus vastly too large to be regarded as a simple face-to-face society.15 The immediate question was whether the experiment would succeed.