THE ATHENIAN
DEMOCRACY IN
THE AGE OF
DEMOSTHENES
Structure, Principles, and Ideology
Mogens Herman Hansen
Translated by J.A. Crook
University of Oklahoma Press
Norman
Evidence
26
would it have been if the speeches for the prosecution, esp~ciaIly.that 01
h d
. d 162 But the prosecution of Socrates IS an Isolate
Anytos a surVIve. h .. d
, e I'n the history of Athens, and normaIly bot cltlzens an
occurrenc . f h hi dered
forei ners living in Athens could exerCIse freedom 0 speec un n f
It isgPlato and Aristotle who give most of the un~avour~bl~ analY~s~e
in eneral and Athenian democracy m partlcu ar, an
de.~o.c:c~f de~ocracy to be heard in Athenian sources is the strongest
~~s~~~le evidence that the Athenians' pride in their freedom of speech
was not unfounded.
162 PI. Ap. 36A, cf. 23E.
3
The Athenian Constitution down
to 403 BC: A Historical Sketch
The sketch that follows anticipates many important concepts, such as
democracy itself, citizenship, and the political geography of Attica, that
will only receive their proper treatment later. But, as explained in chapter
2, the principles of this book demand a chronological account of the
beginnings and first century of Athenian democracy before we embark
on the systematic study of its fourth-century form. What follows will also
deal with Athenian political and imperial history only in so far as they
are directly related to the constitution: for a brief account of the history
of Athens in a more general sense the reader is recommended to turn to
other books. I Some persistent controversies are also glossed over in this
sketch in what may seem a somewhat bland manner; that is because they
are of relatively minor importance for our purpose, for which it suffices
to follow, up to 403/2, the traditional account of Athenian democracy,
without too many 'ifs' and 'buts'. Four subjects, on the other hand, will
be treated at rather greater length in excursuses at the end of the chapter,
because full exposition of them is essential to all that follows: they concern
(1) the Solonian propertied classes; (2) the Kleisthenic divisions of Attica;
(3) the origins of selection by lot; and (4) the Periklean citizenship law.
THE ARCHAIC AGE
Democracy was introduced into Athens by Kleisthenes in 507 BC;2 but
in order to understand what he did we must go back more than a hundred
years to an age when Athens was governed by magistrates (archai) picked
by, and from, the Eupatridai (the 'well-born'), i.e. the leading clans.3 -fC
1 Murray (1980), on the archaic period; Hornblower (1983), on the classical period;
Schuller (1990), 'Forschungsbericht'.
2 See p. 4.
3 Arist. Ath. Pol. 3.1, cf. 13.2, 19.3; Poll. 8.111. Toepffer (1889); Wade-Gery (1958)
86-115; Roussel (1976) 55-8.
28 The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC
-tc The most powerful magistrates were the nine archons,4 of whom the
chief gave his name to the year.5 In the Athenia~wn memory of the
archon list - and perhaps it was accurate enough - that system went back
to the archonship of one Kreon in 683.6 An important political assembly
was the Board of Chairmen of the forty-eight naukrariai;7 but so limited
is our knowledge of Athens in the archaic age that we have no idea what
a naukraria was, nor even whether the word is connected with naus
('ship') or naos ('temple').8 We do know that the Athe:nians were divided
into four tribes,9 that at the head of each was a king' (phylobasileus),IO
and that each tribe was subdivided into three ridings (trittyes, 'third
parts')11 and twelve naukrariai. 12
There is no evidence that Athens in
that age had an assembly of the people: to claim that, we have to
extrapolate from later evidence. \3 And the Athenians did not know
themselves whether the Council of the Areopagos - composed of all exarchons
- had been instituted by Solonl4 or had existed long before his
time,15 originally as the king's council. 16 The laws remained unwritten,
but were enshrined in the memories of the magistrates, who had to
operate them so as to give judgement in lawsuits between citizensY
Economically also the Eupatridai were the ruling class. Most of them
were substantial landowners, and besides their own produce they received
annual contributions from a large and growing group of smallholders
-jc (called hektemoroi, 'sixth-parters', because a hektemoros was obliged to
make over a sIxth of his produce every year to the large landowner whose
dependant he was: if he failed in that obligation he could be sold into
slavery).18 There was a deepening gulf between rich and poor, perhaps
mainly due to population growth: 19 the number of Athenians may well
have doubled between 750 and 600, and, unlike other Greek states,
Athens did not get rid of its surplus population by the founding of
settlements abroad (apoikiai).20 Amongst the smaller landowners, the
rules of inheritance may have had the effect that the individual's plot
4 Thuc. 1.126.8; Arist. Alh. Pol. 13.3. S M&L 6 = Fornara (1977) no. 23.
6 Hieronymus p. 93 (ed. R. Helm, Berlin, 1956); Cadoux (1948) 88. For alternative dates
cf. Develin (1989) 27-8.
7 Hdt. 5.71.2. 8 Billigrneier and Dusing (1981); Gabrielsen (1985).
9 Hdt. 5.66.2.
10 Arist. Alh. Pol. 8.3. Hesperia 4 (1935) 19-32 no. 2.33-5 = Harding (1985) no. 9.
11 Arist. Alh. Pol. fro 3. Hesperia 4 (1935) 19-32 no. 2.37.36-7.
12 Arist. Alh. Pol. 8.3,21.5. 13 Solon fro 36.1-2. Andrewes (1982) 387.
14 Plut. Sol. 19; Arist. Pol. 1273b35-41. Wallace (l989a) 3-47.
IS Arist. Pol. 1273b41-1274a3. 16 Andrewes (1982) 365.
17 Busolt and Swoboda (1920-6) 488-9; Willetts (1967) 74.
18 Arist. Alh. Pol. 2.2; Plut. Sol. 13.4-5. Rhodes (198Ia) 90-7.
19 Snodgrass (1980) 23-4 [but Cl. Hansen (1982) 185 n. 8]; Morris (1987) 23.
20 Graham (1982) 157.
The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC 29
became so small that its holder had to rely on help, or loans, from the
big landowner in the neighbourhood; or that some sons had to leave their
father's plot of land and cultivate marginal land or become tenants.21
Population growth, however, is only one out of many possible explanations
of how poor Athenians became hektemoroi and eventually indebted
to the aristocrats.22 What we know is only that a hektemoros in the end
could end up as a slave, either in Attica or, by being sold, in some other
city,23 The impoverished smallholders began finally to agitate for the
abolition of debt enslavement and the liabilities of the hektemoroi, and
for a redistribution of the land. In the hundred years from about 630 to
530, those social and economic tensions produced a series of political
crises, of which the most important resulted in the coup of Kylon, the
laws of Drakon, the reforms of Solon and the tyranny of Peisistratos.
KYLON, DRAKON, SOLON
In 636 or 63224 an Athenian called Kylon attempted to set himself up as -I<
lyTannos of the city.25 (Tyrannos is not a Greek but probably a Phoenician ..
word in origin.26 At that time it just meant, neutrally, a 'ruler', and only
a century later did it begin to mean a 'tyrant'.)27 He was married to the
daughter of the tyrannos of neighbouring Megara, and with the help of
his father-in-law he and his friends attempted to lay siege to the Akropolis.
The coup failed, and Kylon fled and his followers were put to death.
A few years later, in 621,28 Athens acquired its first written code of
laws, as a result of which the Eupatridai no longer had a monopoly of
knowledge of the law and the convenience of remembering the clauses it
suited them to remember.29 The compiling of the laws was entrusted to
one ~.30 His law of homicide remained in force, with modifications, '*right down to the time of Demosthenes,31 but the rest of his laws, whose
penalties were said to have been 'written not in ink but in blood',32 were
superseded in the very next generation by those of Solon.33 «
Meanwhile, the socio-economic problems of the s~emained unresolved,
and only in 594 did rich and poor unite to give the archon Solon
plenary power to dictate a compromise.34 Solon was himself a Eupatrid,35
21 E.g. French (1956). 22 Cassola (1964). 23 Solon fro 36.8-15.
24 Develin (1989) 30.
2S Hdt. 5.71; Thuc. 1.126.3-12; Plut. Sol. 12; Schol. Ar. Eq. 445.
26 Murray (1980) 132. 27 Andrewes (1956) 20-30. 28 Develin (1989) 31.
29 Eur. Supp. 433-7; but see Eder (1986).
30 Arist. Alh. Pol. 7.1; Arist. Pol. 1274blS-16. Stroud (1968) 74-5; Gagarin (1981).
31 Andoc. 1.83; Dem. 20.158,23.51. 32 Plut. Sol. 17.3; Arist. Pol. 1274blS-18.
33 Arist. Alh. Pol. 7.1. 34 Diog. Laert. 1.62. Develin (1989) 37-8.
3S Davies (1971) 322-4.
30 The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC
and he was probably not much over thirty when he was invested with
power to reform his society. He began with a general amnesty,36 then
abolished enslavement for debt37 and gave freedom to those so enslaved,
even those who had been sold abroad38 (however he managed that). Next,
he freed the hektemoroi from the sixth-parts and allowed them to hold
their land free of obligations;39 but he set himself against a redistribution
of the land,40 and for ever after the archon on entering office had to
proclaim that he would uphold the existing distribution of property.41
Besides his economic reforms Solon also reformed the administration
of justice. According to later tradition he set up a people's court, called
the Heliaia,42 manned by sworn jurors,43 and gave every party to any
lawsuit the right to appeal to the Heliaia against the award of the
magistrates;44 two surviving laws prove, however, that the Heliaia was
not only a court of appeal but could also hear new casesY Solon also
expanded the right of legal accusation, hitherto confined to the injured
person, by giving every citizen the right to start a prosecution either on
behalf of the injured person or simply in the public interest.46
In Solon's time Athenians were divided into three property classes:
hippeis (cavalry), zeugitai (owners of a yoke of oxen) and thetes (literally
'menials', the day labourers). The fourth, top class, pentakosiomedimnoi
(men worth 500 'measures' of natural produce) may have been added by
SolonY The thetes were excluded from all state offices,48 and to the most
important offices the electors (probably the People's Assembly)49 could
chose only citizens from the top class50 or - as in the case of the nine
archons - from the top two classes. 51 Thus, election now depended on
wealth instead of birth, and by that means Solon created the conditions
for a shift in Athenian society from the rule of aristocrats to the rule of
the wealthy.
However, of Solon's constitutional reforms the most important, according
to the tradition, was his creation of a Council of Four Hundred, 100
from each of the four tribes.52 As to its functions nothing whatever is
heard until Plutarch, who says that the Council had the task of preparing
all matters to be decided by the Assembly,53 exactly as the later Council
36 Plut. Sol. 19.4. 37 Arist. Ath. Pol. 6.1. 38 Solon fro 36.8-15.
39 Arist. Ath. Pol. 6.1; Solon fro 36.3-6. 40 Solon fro 34; Arist. Ath. Pol. 11.2.
41 Arist. Ath. Pol. 56.2. 42 Arist. Pol. 1373b35-a3; Arist. Ath. Pol. 7.3, 9.1.
43 Arist. Pol. 1274a3. Hansen (1983a) 153-5; (1989a) 242-9, 258-61, pace Ostwald (1986)
10-11.
44 Arist. Ath. Pol. 9.1. 45 Oem. 23.28, 24.105. Hansen (1989a) 259-60.
46 Arist. Ath. Pol. 9.1. Ruschenbusch (1968) 47-53; but see Hansen (1976) 115.
47 Arist. Ath. Pol. 7.3. Rhodes (1981a) 137. 48 Arist. Ath. Pol. 7.3-4.
49 Solon fro 5.1-2. 50 Arist. Ath. Pol. 8.1,47.1.
51 Arist. Ath. Pol. 26.2. Hignett (1952) 101-2. 52 Arist. Ath. Pol. 8.4.
53 Plut. Sol. 19.1-2.
The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC 31
of Five Hundred had; and it is worrying that the earliest trace at all of
Solon's Council in the sources is to be found in the revolutionary situation
of 411, when the Athenians went over to an 'oligarchical' Council of Four
Hundred and abolished the Council of Five Hundred.54 There can be no
doubt that the oligarchs in 411 claimed Solon's alleged Council as their
paradigm,55 and thus it is impossible to tell for certain whether the whole
thing was just a propaganda invention that got taken afterwards as history
or whether it really did once exist.56
Last but not least, Solon carried out a new codification of the laws,57
and for hundreds of years 'the laws of Solon' were the juridical foundation
of Athenian society:58 they were not revised till 410-399,59 when they
were recodified;60 and in that form they remained in force until the
abolition of the democracy, Solon's law-code was, of course, not a comprehensive
and systematic code in the modern sense, but a collection of
laws, divided into sections not according to content but according to
which magistrates were to administer them.61 Moreover, like other codes,
that of Solon most likely contained provisions only about what we would
nowadays call private law, criminal law and the law of procedure;62 only
in the revision after the restoration of democracy in 403 were there added
to the code provisions about the powers of the organs of state and detailed
regulations about administration.63 Hence the extreme difficulty of deciding
whether particular constitutional reforms that were later attributed
to Solon really do go back to the early sixth century.64
Solon's reforms underwent the usual fate of all sensible compromises:
neither side was satisfied.65 He tried to get the Athenians to maintain his
laws unchanged for ten years,66 and defended himself in verse pamphlets
(prose being as yet unknown for literary purposes), of which substantial
parts have come down to us, the first surviving reflections of a European
statesman. He went abroad voluntarily for the ten years during which he
hoped his laws would be respected,67 and on his travels he is supposed
to have visited King Kroisos of Lydia (560-546) and King Amasis of
Egypt (570-526).68 (The reigns of these monarchs are certain, which
raises doubts as to whether the Athenians were remembering their archon
list properly when they put Solon's archonship in 594.69) But the citizen
54 Arist. Ath. Pol. 31.1. 55 Hansen (1989c) 88-9.
56 Pro: Cloche (1924) 1-26; Andrewes (1982) 387. Contra: Hignett (1952) 92-6.
57 Solon fro 36.18-20; Hdt. 1.29.1; Arist. Ath. Pol. 7.1. Rhodes (1981a) 130-5. Fragments
in Ruschenbusch (1966).
58 Schreiner (1913). 59 Ruschenbusch (1966) 32-7. 60 See p. 162.
61 Stroud (1968) 32-3, pace Ruschenbusch (1966) 27-31.
62 Von Fritz (1977); Hansen (l989c) 83-4. 63 See p. 165.
64 See p. 164. 65 Solon frr. 34, 37. 66 Hdt. 1.29.2.
67Hdt. 1.29.1; Arist. Ath. Pol. 11.1. 68 Hdt. 1.30.1. 69Plommer (1969).
32 The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC
body was soon split into three competing factions: the 'Men of the Plain'
(i.e. the plain around Athens), led by Lykourgos; the 'Men beyond the
Mountains' (i.e. beyond Hymettos and Pentelikon), led by Peisistratos;
and the 'Men of the Coast', led by the Alkrnaionid Megakles.70 All these
leaders were, of course, themselves aristocrats, and now there happened
at Athens, rather late, what had happened in many city-states in the
previous hundred years: a leader of subsistence farmers got the upper
hand over his fellow aristocrats and made himself tyrant. 71
In Athens, as elsewhere in Greece, changes in the constitution were
probably a corollary of changes in the fighting-forces. In most states the
core of the army had ceased to be the mounted aristocrats and was now
the foot soldiers with lance, shield, helmet, breastplate and greaves: the
-If so-called hoplitai, mainly recruited from the farmers (i.e. in Athens the
zeugitai). Military power led naturally to political power, so it was usually
a commander of hoplites who turned against his peers and, with the help
of the farmers, set himself up as tyrantJ2
PEISISTRATOS AND HIPPIAS
.., In 561 Peisistratos became tyrant in a COUp.73 Formally, Solon's constitution
remained unaltered:74 Peisistratos merely saw to it that his supporters
were elected archons75 and kept a mercenary bodyguard about
him aiwaysJ6 He was tyrant, barring two periods of exile, from 561 to
527;77 his exiles were both due to the Men of the Coast allying themselves
with the Men of the Plain to oust him,78 but for most of the time he
succeeded in obtaining the collaboration of the Men of the Coast under
Megakles and of many of the aristocrats. The fourth-century Athenians
also believed that Peisistratos championed the poor and so solved the
land problem.79 In any case he founded emigre communities in northern
Asia Minor and the Hellespont,80 and after his death there was never a
movement for land reform.
it Peisistratos was succeeded by his son Hippias (527-510), who met
gradually increasing opposition from the aristocrats, and many of them
were forced into exile.81 Two of those who remained attempted a coup
70 Hdt. 1.59.3; Arist. Ath. Pol. 13.4. Andrewes (1982) 393-8.
71 Arist. Pol. 1305a21-4. Welwei (1983) 80--2, 164-6.
72 Arist. Pol. 13lObI2-31. Murray (1980) 120--52.
73 Hdt. 1.59.4-6; Arist. Ath. Pol. 14.1. 74 Hdt. 1.59.6; Arist. Ath. Pol. 16.8.
75 Thue. 6.54.6. 76 Hdt. 1.59.5; Thue. 6.57.1; Ar. Eq. 447.
77 Rhodes (l98Ia) 191-9. 78 Hdt. 1.60.1,61.2; Arist. Ath. Pol. 14.3-15.5.
79 Arist. Ath Pol. 16.2-3, 9. 80 Hdt. 6.35-6.
81 Hdt. 5.62.2; Thue. 6.59.4; Arist. Ath Pol. 19.3. Lewis (1988) 299.
The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC 33
in 514: the young Harmodios and his lover Aristogeiton tried to murder -Ie
Hippias at the Panathenaic festival, but only succeeded in killing Hippias'
younger brother, Hipparchos. They were instantly put to death,82 and
were later regarded as democratic heroes, as martyrs and freedom-fighters:
statues of the Tyrant-slayers were put up in 509 and again in 477,83 a
cult for Harmodios and Aristogeiton was instituted84 and their descendants
had dining-rights at public expense in the Prytaneion;85 and many
in later times were convinced that it was they who had unseated the
tyrants and made Athens safe for democracy.86 But the tyranny of Hippias
lasted for four more years and was only really overthrown by the intervention
of the Spartans: the aristocrats who had fled Athens had as their
leader the Alkmaionid Kleisthenes, and he, with the help of Delphi,
induced the Spartans to send a force into Attica under King Kleomenes.
In 510 Athens was taken and Hippias and his associates besieged on the
Akropolis: he soon capitulated on the promise of unhindered departure,
and he and his family went into exile in Sigeion.87
ISAGORAS
No sooner was the tyrant driven out than a split developed between the
newly returned aristocrats under Kleisthenes and those who had stayed .,.
behind, led by Isagoras who had been a supporter of Hippias until he *joined the revolt.88 Isagoras was elected archon for 508/7,89 and Kleisthenes,
finding that he had no hope of success with only his aristocratic
faction to help him, 'took into his faction the ordinary people'.90 Supported
by the demos he successfully opposed Isagoras, whose name,
ironically, signifies 'freedom of speech' (isegoria), the very ideal advocated
by Kleisthenes and his supporters.91 But Isagoras had a guest-friendship
with King Kleomenes, and with the help of a Spartan army forced
Kleisthenes and his followers into exile, whereupon the Athenian people
rose in revolt. They booted the Spartans out, recalled Kleisthenes and
condemned Isagoras to death in his absence.92 In 507, only three years
after the expulsion of the tyrants, the domination of the aristocrats, too,
82 Hdt. 5.55-7; Thue. 6.54-8; Arist. Ath. Pol. 18. Lewis (1988) 299-300.
83 Plinius Naturalis Histaria 34.17 (509); Mal71lOT Parium, FGrHist. 239 A 54 (477).
Brunnsaker (1955).
84 Arist. Ath. Pol. 58.1. Kearns (1989) 55, 150.
85IG P 131.5-9 = Miller (1978) 139-40. no. 26; Is. 5.47.
86 Thue. 1.20.2, 6.53.3; Ath. 695B.
87 Hdt. 5.62-5; Thue. 6.59; Arist. Ath. Pol. 19.
88 Hdt. 5.66.1; Arist. Ath. Pol. 20.1. Wade-Gery (1958) 136-9.
89 Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.74.6. Develin (1989) 51. 90 Hdt. 5.66.2.
91 Hdt. 5.78. 92 Hdt. 5.66,69-70,72; Arist. Ath. Pol. 20.2-3. Ostwald (1988) 305-8.
34 The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC
f .. 'd ' 93was abolished in favour of a new form 0 constItutIon, emocracy ,
which was actually arising in several Greek city-states at the time.94
KLEISTHENES
In order to break up the old social structure95 and create a new, homo-
I
geneous one, Kleisthenes instituted a new organ of state, the .Counci~ of
Five Hundred,96 based on a new division of Attica into ten tnbes, thIrty
ridings (tritryes) and 139 demes,97 a new 'bouleutic' calendar based on
the solar year,98 and new cult associations based on the ten trib:s.99
,It
is worth comparing these innovations with the French RevolutIon, m
which amongst the most wide-ranging reforms were the creation of an
elected legislative assembly based on a new division of France into eightyeight
departements and over 500 districts, the introduction of a new
religion, and a new calendar with new names for all the month~. ~he
religion and the calendar were speedily given up, but the leglsla.tIve
assembly and the divisions of France were permanent and far-reachmg.
Just so at Athens in 507: a hundred years later the new calendar had to
be adjusted back to fit the old, lunar one,100 and the new cult organizations
never caught on, but the Council became one of the principal organs
of state alongside the Assembly and the People's Court throughout the
classical period, and the redistribution of Attica was the basis of a political
structure that lasted, with modifications, for more than 700 years. 101
That redivision is described in more detail below; here it is more
important to list a series of reforms whose purpose was to secure the new
democracy from enemies inside and out. Kleisthenes saw to it that many
non-Athenians and even freed slaves were inscribed in the new demes,
thus becoming Athenian citizens and firm adherents of the new regime. 102
The redivision of Attica was also probably undertaken at least in part
with an eye to aNew Model Army,103 for each of the ten tribes was to
supply a hoplite regiment; and not long afterwards, in 501,104 the Board
of Generals (strategoi) was first introduced, elected annually by the people
93 See p. 69. 94 Hdt. 3.142.2-5 [but see Raaflaub (1985) 139-40],4.137.2,6.43.
9' Leveque and Vidal-Naquet (1963) 13--24.
96 Arist. Ath. Pol. 21.3. Rhodes (1972) 1-14.
97 Hdt. 5.69; Arist. Ath. Pol. 21.2-4; Arist. Pol. 1319bl9--27. Traill (1975, 1986).
98 Ant. 6.44-5. Meritt (1928) 121-2.
99 Hdt. 5.66.2; Arist. A/h. Pol. 21.6. Kron (1976); Kearns (1989) 80--92.
100 Rhodes (1972) 224. 101 Hansen et al. (1990) 30--2.
102 Arist. Pol. 1275b34-7; Arist. A/h. Pol. 21.4. Newman (1887-1902) III 145-7.
103 Effenterre (1976); Siewert (1982). 104 Rhodes (1981a) 262-3.
The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC 35
and with ten members: lOS they commanded the army, 106 in the first
period jointly with the polemarch,107 and were the most important board
of magistrates all through the fifth century. Finally, there was ostracism.
Ostracism is the best-known of all Kleisthenes' novelties.108 In the *
years 510-507 he had had personal experience of how the rivalries of
political leaders could split the state: to obviate such stasis in the futurelO9
he introduced a procedure by which a leader could be sent into banishment
(but not penal exile, with no loss of status or property) for ten
years. 110 It was called ostrakismos because voting was by means of ostraka,
potsherds; but it was in fact a two-stage process. Each year the people
voted in an Assembly meeting, by ordinary show of hands, whether they
wanted an ostracism,III and if (and only if) they voted in favour of having
one the ostracism took place some two months later in the Agora. The
citizens went by tribes into an enclosure and there each cast a potsherd
on which he had scratched the name of the leader he wanted to see
banished. 112 The potsherds were counted, and if (and only if) there were
at least 6000 they were then sorted by names, and that person whose
name appeared most times (i.e. by a simple, not an overall, majority)
had automatically, within ten days, to go into banishment for ten years. 113
The law of ostracism is correctly attributed to Kleisthenes,114 but it
was twenty years before the Athenians actually used it, in order to banish
Hipparchos, a relative of the former tyrant, in 487.115 The following
year the Alkmaionid Megakles was banished, and two years after that
Xanthippos, the father of Perikles, and then, in 482, Aristeides, 116 whom
people called 'the Just'.117 Banishment by ostracism was used some fifteen
times during the fifth century,118 the last occasion being in one of the
years 417-5,119 when the victim was the 'demagogue' Hyperbolos. l2O
The procedure was never abolished, but was a dead letter in the fourth
century.
The reason for so many cases of ostracism in the 480s was connected
with two especial dangers faced by the Athenians: the wish of the tyrants
to get Athens back and that of the king of Persia to conquer the Greeks.
10' Arist. Ath. Pol. 22.2; Hdt. 6.104.1. 106 Hdt. 6.103.1.
107Hdt. 6.109.1-2,111.1; M&L 18 = Fornara (1977) no. 49. 108 See p. 21.
109 Ostwald (1988) 344-6. II°Philoch. fr. 30. III Arist. Ath. Pol. 43.5.
112 Philoch. fr. 30. 113 Plut. Arist. 7.6. 114 Dover (1963); Thomsen (1972) 11-60.
115 Arist. A/h. Pol. 22.3-4 = Androt. fr. 6. 116 Arist. Ath. Pol. 22.5-7.
117 Plut. Arist. 7.7.
118 Rhodes (1981a) 271. Add Lys. 14.39: Megakles and Alkibiades were probably ostracized
twice; see p. 5.
119 Theophr. Nomoi fr. 18 (Szegedy-Maszak).
120 Thuc. 8.73.3; Theop. fr. 96; Plut. Nic. 11.1-10; Ale. 13.4-9. Andoc. 4 is spurious;
see p. 18.
*
36 The Athenian Constitution dawn to 403 BC
The two threats were two sides of the same coin, because Hippias and
his family and adherents had taken refuge in Sigeion and had powerful
influence at the Persian Court.
121
In 490 the Athenian army under Miltiades defeated the P~ at
Marathon; a year later Miltiades was struck down in a poli~ical prosecution
and di~ in prison. 122 In the following decade Theffilstokles ~as the
leading figure at Athens, and his hand may well have be~n behmd the
ostracisms of the 480s by which his rivals were successIvely removed
from the game.123 Themistokles may also have been behind the reform
of 487/6 by which the method of selection of the nine archons was
changed from election to selection by lot (though from an e.lected sho~tlist).124
Already in 493/2, as archon, he had got ~he Athema~s to ~Ulld
a fortified harbour in the Piraeus,125 and when m 483/2 a nch vem of
silver was found at Maronciain""southern Attica he persuaded them to
use the windfall to build a hundred naval vessels instead of distribut~g
it equally among the citizens.126 When King Xerxes in~aded Greece m
480, Themistokles persuaded the people to evacuat~ AttIC~ and meet. ~e
Persian onslaught at sea,127 and the reward for hIS far-sIghted polIcIes
came in late summer that year, when he led the Athenian contingent at
the battle of Salamis. Yet, for all the honours Themistokles won, he soon
shared the fate of Miltiades and was forced out by new leaders, Aristeides
and Kimon, the son of Miltiades. About 471 he was ostracized,128 a~d a
few years later he was condemned to death in absentia for treason, s~ce
he, like Hippias, had become an honoured pensioner of the great king
of Persia. 129
EPHIALTES
By defeating the Persians and ostracizing the s~pp~rters of tyrann~, and
by creating the Delian League in 478 and consol~daun~ the predoffiJDance
of the Athenian fleet in the Aegean, the Athemans laId the groundwork
for a further advance of democracy. The transformation of Athens from
a land power to a sea power led to a shift in the internal balance of
power, because the land forces (the hoplites) were recruited from the
121 Ostwald (1988) 337-9. 122 Hdt. 6.136. Hansen (1975) cat. no. 2; Ostwald (1986) 29.
123 Ostwald (1988) 342-3. 124 Arist. Alh. Pol. 22.5. Badian (1971) 21-6.
I25 Thuc. 1.93.3. Dickie (1973) 758-9. 126 Arist. Alh. Pol. 22.7. Labarbe (1957).
127 Hdt. 7.143-4; M&L 23 = Fornara (1977) no. 55. 128 Thuc. 1.135.3. Lenardon
(1959).
129 Thuc. 1.135.2, 137.3ff; Krateros frr. 11-2. Hansen (1975) cat. no. 4; Carawan (1987)
196-200.
The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC 37
middle class130 whereas the navy was manned by the poor (the thetes).13l
Furthermore, now that Athens had to lead and administer the League
the Assembly and Council and courts had far more and greater tasks t~
fulfil, so that the role of all three must have been significantly enlarged.132
The.result of these developments was the passing, on the motion of one
Ephialtes, of a law transferring the political powers of the Areopagos to
the democratic decision-making bodies.
The archaic Areopagos had had oversight of the laws, the magistrates ..
the politically active citizens, and the general conduct of all Athenians'
and it could pronounce judgement, not excluding the death sentence i~
f>l~tical trials. 1~3.Kleisthenes had made no change in its powers exdept
mdirectly, by glVlng the Assembly too the right to hear political trials134
and by allowing his new Council a hand in the control of the magistrates.
But a group of democrats, led by Ephialtesl3S and his henchmen the ....&.
P ·kl 136 ' "young en es and Archestratos137
(otherwise unknown), were keen
to remove altogether the island of aristocratic power in the midst of a
democr~tizing stat~, and in ~62 they succeeded in reducing the Areopagos
to the smgle functIOn of bemg the court for homicide in cases where the
deceased was an Athenian citizen. J38 It happened that just at that moment
4000 hoplites under Kimon were in the Peloponnese, where they had
~ sent to help the Spartans overcome a helot revolt,139 so the poor
CItIzens were in the majority in the Assembly.140 Also, as we have seen,
in 487/6 the Athenians had gone over to selecting the nine archons by
lot from an elected short-list, and the result was that over a generation
that body had ceased to be an assembly of leading political figures and
turned into a more random cross-section of the upper class (for archons
still had to be chosen from the richest citizens and zeugitai became eligible
only after Ephialtes' reforms, in 45817).141 Thus, in 462 the perfect
chance presented itself to curtail the powers of the Areopagos in order
to make it correspond to its changed composition; the powers that it lost
were divided between the Assembly, the Council and the People's -«
Court. 142 On his return KimoIitrIed to get ther;; law reversed, but he
dreW the short straw and was himself ostracized in 461. 143
130 See p. 116. 131 Arist. Alh. Pol. 24, 26.1; Ps. Xen. Alh. Pol. 1.2.
132 Schuller (1984).
133 Arist. Alh. Pol. 8.4. Hansen (1975) 19; Wallace (l989a) 64-9.
134 Hansen (1975) 19; but see Sealey (1981). 135 Arist. Alh. Pol. 25.1, 28.2, 41.2.
136 Arist. Alh. Pol. 27.1; Plut. Cim. 15.2; Per. 9.5. 137 Arist. Alh. Ppl. 35.2.
138 Arist. Alh. Pol. 25.2; Philoch. fr. 64.
139 Thuc. 1.102; Ar. Lys. 1138-44; Plut. Cim. 16.8-17.4.
140 Plut. Cim. 15.2. Cole (1974) 373-8; Martin (1974) 39.
141 Arist. Alh. Pol. 26.2. 142 Arist. Alh. Pol. 25.2.
143 Plut. Cim. 15.3,17.3; Per. 9.5.
38 The Alhenian Conslilulion down to 403 BC
PERIKLES
Ephialtes was, however, murderedl44 about the same time, an~ was
succeeded as 'leader of the people' by P~ the son of Xanthlppos,
who was connected with the Alkmaionids through his mother. 145 For the
next thirty-two years Perikles was the acknowledged but not ~ncontested
leader of Athens' a brief period of opposition led by Thucydldes the son
of Melesias end~d when the latter was ostracized in 443.
146
Year after
year Perikles was elected general,147 and as spea~er a?d proposer he so
dominated the Assembly that Thucydides the hlstonan was ,~oved to
coin the famous apophthegm that in those years Athens was In name a
democracy but in fact under the rule of the first ~an';148 bu~ it w~s
through, and as champion of, democracy that Penkles exercised. hiS
power. Under him democratic develop~ent was ~~shed f~r~he~~;speclallY
on two fronts: citizens began to be paId for pohucal actIvity, and the
criteria for citizenship were made more severe. . ,
The first of those reforms was a natural consequence of Ephlaltes law.
The new pressure of business, especially on the Council .a.nd courts,
involved an increase in the number of meetings, but many C1tlZe~S co.uld
only afford to participate if they received compens~tion fO.r workIng-t~e
lost. Perikles introduced daily pay, first for the Jurors 1~ the P~~fle S
Courtl50 and then for councillors and the rest of the ma~l~trates:
The second reform, the tightening of conditions for clUzensh1p, followed
naturally from the first: in 451/50 Perikles had a law passed
confining citizenship for the future to those wh?se parents were both
Athenian, i.e. the legitimate sons of an Athema~ mother as :-V~ll as
father.I52 It is tempting to see Perikles' law in relatlon to the deCISiOn of
the Athenians to give pay for jury service: once citizens had got an
advantage out of political activity they were glad not to have too many
others to share it with.I53 By Perikles' reforms the gulf that separated
citizens from non-citizens was made deeper, and the citizenry became a
closed population with a very limited potentiality for growth.
I54
'44 Ant. 5.68; Arist. Ath. Pol. 25.4, pace Stockton (1982).
'45 Hdt. 6.131.2. Davies (1971) 379, 455-6. '46 Plut. Per. 14.
'47 Plut. Per. 16.3. Develin (1989) records twenty-two generalships.
14B Thuc. 2.65.9. ,49 Arist. Ath. Pol. 1274a8-9; PI. Grg. 515E.
150 Arist. Ath. Pol. 27.3.
15' IG P 82.20; Thuc. 8.69.4; Ps. Xen. Ath. Pol. 1.3. Hansen (l979a) 12-4.
'52 Arist. Ath. Pol. 26.4. See pp. 52-4. '53 Walker (1927) 102-3.
154 See p. 90.
The Alhenian Conslilulion down lo 403 BC 39
THE SUCCESSORS OF PERIKLES
J"'f~"\The
growth of the Athenian Empire and the fear of it amongst the other 'iO~
states led to the Peloponnesian War. The major contestants were, of
course, Athens and Sparta. Sparta was the land power, representing and
supporting oligarchy; Athens the sea power, supporting democracy and
exporting her own constitution to the allied states:ISS the ideological
aspect was as important in the conflict as that of power politics. The war
lasted twenty-seven years, 431-404; in the first two years Perikles still
led Athens, but as a result particularly of the plague in 430-429 he for
the first time failed to persuade the people to follow his policies, and was
actually sentenced to a big fine in a political trial (429).156 True enough,
the Athenians elected him again to the generalship, but he died soon
after entering office, perhaps a victim of the plague.157
His death brought a great change into Athenian politics;158 historians
have sometimes made too much of it, but it is authentic enough. Down
to and including Perikles all Athenian leaders (except, perhaps, Ephialtes)
had been aristocrats and landowners;159 after him they were often of
lower birth - just as wealthy, but their wealth based more on slavemanned
workshops. The new leaders could still be elected generals,160
but their power was based much more on their ability to persuade the
people in the Assembly.161 The best-known of them are the tanneryowner
Kleon,162 who fell at Amphipolis in 422, the lamp-manufacturer
Hyperbolos,163 the last Athenian leader to be ostracized, and the lyremaker
Kleophon,l64 condemned and executed in a political trial in the
last year of the war. 165 They competed for power, and that was bad for
the Athenian conduct of the war: the philosophers disdainfully called
them 'demagogues'.166 But the remaining leaders of the old type, Nikias
and Alkibiades, also competed, and their competition was also disastrous.
167 In 415 Alkibiades persuaded the Athenians into an expedition
against Syracuse in the grand manner under his own leadership; but just
as the fleet was due to sail he was denounced for having parodied and
'" Thuc. 3.82.1; Ps. Xen. Ath. Pol. 1.14-6; Isoc. 4.104-6; Arist. Ath. Pol. 1307b22-4.
156 Thuc. 2.65.3; Plut. Per. 32, 35. Hansen (1975) cat. no. 6.
157 Thuc. 2.65.5; Plut. Per. 38. 158 Thuc. 2.65.8-10.
'59 Eupolis fr. 103. Connor (1971) 10-2; Bicknell (1972).
160 Hansen (l989a) 17 with n. 46.
'6' Connor (1971) ISS, 159. 162 Schol. Ar. Eq. 44; Critias DK 88 fro 45.
163 Schol. Ar. Pax 692 (= Cratinus fr. 196). 164 Andoc. 1.146; Aeschin. 2.76.
165 Lys. 30.10-3, 13.12. Hansen (1975) cat. no. 139.
,66 Arist. Ath. Pol. 41.2; Pol. 1313b40; Isoc. 8.129; Xen. Hell. 2.3.27.
,67 Connor (1971) 14Off.
40 The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC
profaned the Mysteries in nocturnal orgies,168 and friends of his were
denounced for mutilating the statues of Hermes that stood about the
streets of Athens. 169 The culprits were found and sentenced to death,
and several were executed: it is remarkable how many of them belonged
to the circle of Sokrates.17o The trial of Alkibiades was put off till after
the campaign, but hardly had he departed with the fleet than he was
summoned back to Athens. He escaped, instead, to Sparta and was
condemned to death in his absence.l7l
OLIGARCHICAL REVOLUTIONS
The Sicilian expedition, 415-413, imposed on the Athenians by the
persuasion of Alkibiades but commanded in his absence by Nikias, who
had been against it, ended in catastrophe, and the effect was the rise of
oligarchical opposition, putting all the blame on the leaders who had
persuaded the people and on the people themselves for being cozened by
them. l72
The leaders of the opposition were Peisander and Theramenes
(with the general Phrynichos in command of the fleet at Samos and the
orator Antiphon in the background);173 the faction was organized through
the clubs of the upper-class, the hetaireiai,174 its programme a 'return to
the constitution of Solon',17S its method terrorism. 176 Contact was made
with Alkibiades, now in exile in Persian territory, and he promised he
could get an alliance with Persia if Athens would give up democracy and
reverse his death sentence. The result was a constitutional somersault in
411: at an irregular meeting the Assembly voted to abolish the democracy
* and put the government in the hands of a Council of Four Hundred
chosen by the oligarchs. 177
Why did the Assembly do such a thing? No
doubt because the Athenians were weary of the war, the democratic
leaders were intimidated by the terror, and many of the lower classes
were with the naval forces stationed off Samos.
The rule of the Four Hundred lasted only four months: 178 Alkibiades
could not deliver the promised alliance, and the fleet at Samos stuck to
democracy; we, they said, are the people of Athens, and we do not
16SAndoc. 1.11-14,27; Thuc. 6.28-9. Hansen (1975) cat. no. II.
169 Andoc. 1.3~9; Thuc. 6.27-8,60-1. Hansen (1975) cat. nos 43-60.
170 Hansen (1980e) 73-5.
171 Thuc. 6.53.1,61.1.7; Plut. Ale. 19,21-2. Hansen (1975) cat. no. 12.
172 Thuc. 8.1.1. 173 Thuc. 8.68; Arist. Ath. Pol. 32.2. Rhodes (1981a) 407-9.
174 Thuc. 8.48.3-4, 65.2, 92.4; Xen. Hell. 2.3.46. Calhoun (1913) 97-147.
175 Arist. Ath. Pol. 29.3. Hansen (1989c) 88-9. 176 Thuc. 8.65.2.
177 Thuc. 8.67.2-69.1; Arist. Ath. Pol. 29.4-5. 178 Arist. Ath. Pol. 33.1.
The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC 41
recognize .the regime at home. 179 Hoped-for peace with Spara failed and
the Atheruans were h~rd-pressed; so in autumn 411 the moderate oligarchs
under Thera~enes tned another constitutional switch: full political rights
were to be gIven to all who could afford hoplite equipment _ nominally
5000 ~;n,180 actually a good many more than that, perhaps more like
900~; an~ they. w?uld form the Assembly. 182 The Four Hundred were
purushed WIth allmta,183 Peisander fled to Sparta,184 and Antiphon was
condemne~ and executed. 18s But the 5000 also only lasted a few months: -Ie
the Atheruans w~n a badly needed naval victory, and, with morale
res~o~ed, re-estabhshed democracy in spring 410186 and started on the
revIsIon. of .the laws of Drakon and Solon (which was only to reach
completIon In 399).187
On the whole, however, Athens' difficulties in the war grew steadily
grea~er. She wo? some more naval victories under Alkibiades, but after
a ~nor de!~at In 407 he went into exile. A naval battle in 406 off the
ArgInOUSSaI Islands was a further victory for the Athenian fleet but its
consequences~ parado~ically, were a shattering blow to political'morale;
for the Atheman surVIvors were not picked up, and many drowned. The
generals w.ere held responsible, and eight of them were impeached for
treason, tned (unconstitutionally) all together in the Assembly, and conde~ed:
two were absent, the other six were executed forthwith. 18B The
Tnal of the Generals was cited by contemporaries as evidence that
assembly dem.o~racy was a bad form of government. 189 The Athenians
suffered defimtIve naval ~e~eat at Aigos Potamoi in the following year,
and. endured four m?nths sIege .by th~ Spartans; and in spring 404 they
capI~ulated, on ~anous terms IncludIng the dissolution of the naval
e~plre, t~e pullIng down of the Long Walls and an amnesty for all
exIles (whIch allowed the survivors of the 400 exiled oligarchs to return
home). 190 The cons~itutiQnal consequences were then spelt out:
dem?c~a~i~2 people saId, was bankrupt. The oligarchs,191 organized in
hetazrel~l~ came to the fore once again, this time under Theramenes193
and KntIas, the uncle of Plato's mother. 194 They had the help of the
Spartans, who by their naval presence under Lysander forced the people
179 Thuc. 8.75-6. ISO Thuc. 8.97.1-2; Arist. Ath. Pol. 33.1-2.
181 Lys. 20.13. IS2 Rhodes (1981a) 412, pace Ste Croix (1956).
IS3 Andoc. 1.78. IS4 Thuc. 8.98.1; Lys. 7.4.
13~:7~huc. 8.68.2; Ant. fro 3 (Bude); Plut. Mar. 833D-834B. Hansen (1975) cat. no.
IS6 Arist. Ath. Pol. 34.1; Andoc. 1.96-8. 187 See pp. 162-4
IS8X .
en. Hell. 1.7.1-35. Hansen (1975) cat. no. 66. See p. 6.
IS9 Anst. Ath. Pol. 34.1; Diod. 13.102.5.
:: Xen. Hell. 2.2.20; Arist. Ath. Pol. 34.2-3; Diod. 14.3.2-7. Bengtson (1962) no. 211.
193 Whitehead (1982) 106 with n. 4. 192 Lys. 12.55; Arist. Ath. Pol. 34.3.
Xen. Hell. 2.3.15ff; Lys. 12.72-8. 194 Xen. Hell. 2.3.15ff; Aeschin. 1.173.
42 The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC
to pass a decree appointing a Commission of Thirty to ~ov~rn ~;hens
and by a revision of the laws to restore the ancestral con~ututlOn.. The
Thirty were duly appointed and acquired a short populanty by theIr. stern
measures against sycophants,196 but they soon turned themselves mto a
ruling junta and fully earned the name th.ey h~ve always ~one by, the
ir 'Thirty Tyrants'.197 Kritias led the extremIst ~mg of t~e oh~archs, and
when Theramenes protested against the seventy of theIr acuo~s ~; was
executed on the spot. 198 A Spartan garrison held the Akropohs, and
more than 1500 citizens were put to death,20o while the Eleven in charge
of the prison, a board of ten in charge of the Piraeus, and a ~orps2~; 300
whip-bearers were all the law there was for those who remamed; and
they were eventually reduced to 3000 full citizens,202 while all the other
Athenians were disfranchised, disarmed203 and expelled from Athens.
204
Of course, many loyal democrats had fled; and it was they who ga~ered
and organized the resistance.2os Early in 403 they entered the Puaeus
again under their leader Thrasyboulos,206 and in a pitched b~ttle at
Mounichia near the ruins of the Long Walls the forces of the ol.lgarchs
were defeated and Kritias fell.207 The oligarchs tried a final slelght-ofhand
by substituting a Commission of Ten for the Thirty:208 they were
supposed to mediate between oligarchs and democrats, but they merely
stepped into the shoes of the Thirty. The~ a.ppeal:d to Sparta, an~
Lysander was prepared to invade Athens agam m theu su~port,. but ~s
king, Pausanias, took things into his own hands, appear~d m AttIca wIth
a Spartan force, and brought the stasis to. an end wIth an e~forced
compromise: the Athenians could have theIr der.n0cracy b~c~ If they
would let the oligarchs create their own little polzs at Eleusls m northwest
Attica.209 In autumn 403 the democrats returned in triumphant
procession to Athens and an amnesty was proclaimed;2lO two years later
Eleusis was recovered and the remaining oligarchic leaders executed,
195 Xen. Hell. 2.3.2; Lys. 12.72-5; Arist. Alh. Pol. 34.3. Fuks (1953) 52-83; Krentz
(1982) 49-50.
196 Lys. 25.19; Xen. Hell. 2.3.12; Arist. Alh. Pol. 35.2-3. 197 Arist. Alh. Pol. 41.2.
198 Xen. Hell. 2.3.23-56; Arist. Alh. Pol. 37.1.
199Xen. Hell. 2.3.13-14; Arist. Alh. Pol. 37.2.
200 Isoc. 20.11; Aeschin. 3.235; Arist. Alh. Pol. 35.4.
201 Xen. Hell. 2.3.54-5; PI. Ep. 7 324C; Arist. Alh. Pol. 35.1.
202 Xen. Hell. 2.3.18; Arist. Alh. Pol. 36. I.
203 Xen. Hell. 2.3.20; Arist. Alh. Pol. 37.2.
204 Isoc. 7.67; Diod. 14.5.6-7.
205 Xen. Hell. 2.4.2-7.
206 Xen. Hell. 2.4.10; Arist. Alh. Pol. 38. I.
207 Xen. Hell. 2.4.10-19; Arist. Alh. Pol. 38.1.
208 Xen. Hell. 2.4.23-4; Arist. Alh. Pol. 38.1; Lys. 12.53-4.
209 Xen. Hell. 2.4.38; Arist. Alh. Pol. 39. 210 Lys. 13.80; Xen. Hell. 2.4.39.
The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC 43
without intervention by the Spartans.211 A new amnesty was proclaimed
- and this time it was largely respected.212 Democracy was restored and
even deified: in the fourth century offerings were made to the goddess
Demokratia in Boedromion213 - probably on the 12th of that month, i.e.
on the anniversary of the restoration of democracy.214 The date suggests
that the cult of Demokratia, though not attested before the 330s, was .in
fact set up in 403, when the democrats returned to Athens after the civil
war.
EXCURSUS 1 SOLON AND THE PROPERTY CLASSES
By Solon's reforms the Athenians were divided into four classes (tele) by
property. The citizen who produced annually at least 500 'measures'
(metra) of corn, wine or olives counted amongst the pentakosiomedimnoi;
if he produced between 300 and 500 measures he was among the hippeis;
if he produced between 200 and 300 he belonged to the zeugitai; and if
he produced less than 200 he belonged to the thetes.215 The first striking
thing about this system is that wealth is measured in produce, not in
capital, and the second is that the only relevant produce is crops. The
word 'measures' (metra) covered both liquid and dry measures, i.e. medimnoi
of 52 litres, by which corn was measured, and metretai of 39 litres,
by which wine and olives were measured. The fact that Solon's first class
were called pentakosiomedimnoi implies that his reform was brought in at
a time when Attic farmers mainly grew corn and not wine or olives.
Income from trade or manufacture was not taken into account, and there
is no sign that the amounts were converted into a money value - which
would have been absurd given that a measure of corn and a measure of
wine or oil had different monetary values.216 The division into classes
must have been based on some kind of self-assessment. But was the basis
a good year or a bad year? We do not know; and it is also impossible to
say anything, on the evidence of the product, about the size of the estate
it came from. For 200 measures of olives would have taken up a much
greater area than the corresponding quantity of wine, though, on the
other hand, the Athenians would have planted corn between olive-trees
and got two crops off the same area. 217
Historians have never reached agreement as to the purpose of Solon's
211 Xen. Hell. 2.4.43; Arist. Alh. Pol. 40.4. 212 Xen. Hell. 2.4.43.
213IG IF 1496.131-2, 140-1. 214 Plut. MOT. 349F; Palagia (1982) Ill.
215 Arist. Alh. Pol. 7.3-4. 216 Zimmermann (1974) 101-3.
217 Skydsgaard (1988).
44 The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC
reforms and the significance of the four terms. The significance of the
first term is plain enough. Hippeus is a 'horseman' and, according to
Aristotle, means a man who can afford to keep a horseY8 The lexicographers
thought that zeugites came from zeugos, a span of oxen, and that
zeugites was a citizen who owned such a span.219 The etymology of thes
is unknown, but in archaic and classical Greece it meant a day labourer,
a propertyless man who had to work for another.220
In antiquity itself the Solonian property classes were always interpreted
as a class division based on economic criteria; but many modern historians
have wanted to connect the property classes with the organization of the
army,221 and for that reason have translated zeugitai differently. Both
zeugites and zeugos are connected with zygon, a word that normally means
a 'yoke' but can also mean a line of men in the hoplite phalanx/22 so
zeugites, it is held, could mean a man who serves in the ranks as a
hoplite.223 That fits in well, of course, with the interpretation of hippeus
as a cavalryman. So the real purpose of the Solonian division, it is
claimed, was as a basis for a new army organization resting no longer on
cavalry but on hoplites. The theory finds support in the fact that in the
fifth century the property classes were indeed the basis of conscription
for military service; nevertheless it is dubious. First of all, the other two
terms, pentakosiomedimnoi and theres, are purely economic, with no verbal
connection with military structure whatsoever. Secondly, whatever
archaic, aristocratic cavalry force the Athenians may have had, the corps
of hippeis as we know it was set up only in the middle of the fifth
century,224 so there is no evidence that the Solonian hippeis had anything
to do with an archaic military structure.225 As for the proposed etymology
of zeugites, it is based on the erroneous assumption that the verbal
substantive has to be interpreted as passive ('people who are all gathered
under a yoke') rather than as active ('possessor of a zeugos'): the ancient
etymology may perfectly well be right.226 Finally, we have not the least
evidence that Solon initiated any army reform at all.
What he surely did aim at was to add the wealthy to the well-born in
the running of the state, by permitting only the well-off to hold office.
Some offices, such as those of the Treasurers of Athena, could be held
only by pentakosiomedimnoi.227 The highest magistrates, the nine archons,
were chosen from the two top classes;228 zeugitai only got access to the
21B Arist. Arh. Pol. 7.4. Bugh (1988) 21-5. 219 Poll. 8.132.
220 Hom. Od. 11.489; PI; Eurhphr. 4C; Arist. Pol. 1278aI2-13; Isoc. 14.48. Wyse (1904)
464-5.
221 Whitehead (1981); Rhodes (1981a) 138; Andrewes (1982) 385. 222 Thuc. 5.68.3.
223 P1ut. Pelopidas 23.4. 224 Bugh (1988) 39-52. 22S Bugh (1988) 20-34.
226 Hansen (1985c) 56, pace Rhodes (1981a) 138. 227 Arist. Arh. Pol. 47.1.
22B Arist. Arh. Pol. 7.3, 26.2. Hignett (1952) 101-2.
The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC 45
archonships in 457/6,229 thirty years after that magistracy had lost its
predominance by being chosen by lot instead of election. Thetes were
excluded from office altogether.230 New offices, however, such as the
Board of Generals (from 501) and the Hellenotamiai (from 478) were not,
as far as we know, confined to the top two classes, which, taken with
the fact that access to the archonships was extended in 457, suggests that
the property classes began to lose some of their importance for officeholding
after the introduction of democracy in 507.231 Yet two dedications
postdating 480 show that an Athenian might still think it important what
property class he belonged to. One is a statue of Anthemion discussed
by Aristotle, who also quotes the inscription: 'Anthemion son of Diphilos
dedicated this statue to the gods having changed his status from thes to
hippeus.'232 The other is a fragmentary dedication on stone to Athena
and if the text is correctly restored it is a thank-offering from one of th~
thetes who had advanced to the status of zeugites.233
Moreover, in the fifth century there is evidence that the Solonian
classes were still relevant to colonization and to military service. A decree
of about 450 establishing a colony lays down that the colonists shall be
drawn from ~eugit~i and thetes - i.e. not from the plousioi (the wealthy);234
and the relauonshlp of the classes to military service emerges from several
passages in Thucydides about the Peloponnesian War. The Athenian
army had three arms: the cavalry (hippeis), the heavy infantry (hoplitai)
and the light infantry (peltastai or psiloi). Much the most important
element were the hoplites, and for their call-up on each occasion a special
. muster-roll (katalogos) was drawn Up235 based on the population registers
of the demes.
236
We know from Thucydides that a hoplite katalogos did
not include thetes;237 and Harpokration also says that thetes did not serve
h I· 238 Simil' I . has op Ites. ar y wit naval service: apart from trierarchs and
officers (hyperesia), the naval vessels were manned by marines (epibatai)
d ( ~ 239 d' " han oarsmen nautaz): an In connection wit the despatch of a fleet
. to Lesbos in 428 we learn that pentakosiomedimnoi and hippeis were not
called up for naval service.240 Epibatai may have had hoplite equipment,
but two passages in Thucydides show that they were normally recruited
from the thetes,241 and received their equipment from the state.242 Thus,
social groups and types of national service corresponded: the upper class
229 Arist. Arh. Pol. 26.2. 230 Arist. Arh. Pol. 7.3-4. 231 See pp. 107-8.
232 Arist. Arh. Pol. 7.4. Rhodes (1981a) 145-6.
233 Raubitschek (1949) no. 372 = no. 269 (P. A. Hansen).
234IG I' 46.43-6 = M&L 49.39-42 and Fomara (1977) no. 100.
mAr. Eq. 1369-71; Thuc. 7.16.1; Lys. 9.4. Hansen (1985a) 83-9.
236IG I' 138; Meritt (1962) 22-34. 237 Thuc. 6.43.1.
238 Harp. s.v. rheres kai rhetikon. 239 Morrison (1984). 240 Thuc. 3.16.1.
241 Thuc. 6.43.1, 8.24.2. 242 Gomme, Andrewes and Dover (1970) 310.
46 The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC
served in the cavalry, the middle class were the core of the army as
hoplites, and the lower class, the thetes, dominated the fleet and served
as light armed soldiers in the army.243 In the fifth century and the first
decades of the fourth the Solonian property classes went on playing this
important role in the structure of Athenian society.
EXCURSUS 2 KLEISTHENES' REDIVISION OF ATTICA
We have seen that before Kleisthenes the Athenians were divided into
four tribes (phyiai), and each tribe into three ridings (trittyes) and twelve
naukrariai.244
There was also a quite different set of divisions: the tribes
were divided into a number of phratries (phratriai), and the phratries
were subdivided into a number of gene.245
A genos was a clan,246 but not
necessarily an aristocratic kinship group, though that has been the ~
accepted view until recently.247 Perhaps the phratries were in origin
military comrades' associations,248 but in the classical period the Athenians
preferred to regard them as groups of people very distantly related
to each other,249 centred round the cult of Zeus Phratrios, Athena Phratria,250
Zeus Herkeios and Apollo Patroos. 251 They all celebrated the
festival of Apatouria,252 common to all Ionians,253 and on the third day
of the festival fathers had their three- to four-year old sons inscribed in
their phratry.254 A passage in Drakon's homicide law implies that every
Athenian citizen was a member of a phratry.255 A preserved list of
phratry members records only twenty names256 and another list indicates a
membership of about 120.257 Thus there must have been at least a
hundred phratries, perhaps even several hundred. This whole archaic
social structure was allowed to survive in classical times258 (except the
naukrariai, which were abolished either by Kleisthenes or at the beginning
of the fifth century);259 but the old tribes were reduced by Kleisthenes' •
reform to cult societies without significance for politics, and the condition
for becoming a citizen was no longer membership of a phratry alone but
registration in a Deme as well.260
243 Arist. Pol. 132Ia5-15. 244 Arist. Ath. Pol. 8.3. Roussel (1976) 193-204.
245 Arist. Alh. Pol. fr. 3. 246 Bourriot (1976). 247 Andrewes (l96Ia).
24& Hom. II. B 362-6. Andrewes (l96IB) 140; Roussel (1976) 121.
249 Philoch. fr. 35; Arist. Pol. 1252bl6-18. Nilsson (1951) 65ff. 250 fG IF 2344.1.
251 PI. EUlhydemus. 302I3-D; Arist. Ath. Pol. 55.3.
m Schol. Ar. Ach. 146. Deubner (1932) 232-4; Parke (1977) 88-92. 253 Hdt. 1.147.2.
254 fG IF 1237.26-9; P. Oxy. 2538 col. ii 2S-7 (Lys).
255 fG P 104.18 = M&L 86 and Fornara (1977) no. 15B. 256 fG IF 2344. Flower
(1985).
257 fG IF 2345.
258 Arist. Ath. Pol. 21.6; Hesperia 4 (1935) 19-32 no. 2 = Harding (1985) no. 9.
259 Arist. Alh. Pol. 21.5; Clid. fr. 8. 260 Isoc. 8.88; Dem. 57.46.
The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC 47
~eisthenes' reform is described in two sources, Herodotos 5.69 and
Anstotle, Constitution ofAthens 21.2-6. Attica was divided first into three
regions, the city (as~), the inland region Cmesogeios) and the coast
fJ!a:alia); eac? region was divided into ten ridings Ctrit~es);261 and each
nding compnsed a number of demes, in the fourth century from one to
ten demes per riding.262
The demes were the foundation of Kleisthenes' reform. A deme was
anatural geographical entity: a country village plus its surrounding fields;
a stretch of coast centred on a harbour; a valley at the foot of a mountain'
a quarter in Athens itself, which was the only large conurbation.263 Bu;
a deme was also a political entity, in that all the citizens living within
the area of the deme were made members of it.264 In fact, a deme was
a society rather than a locality. Geographically speaking, it was first and
fore~ost the pl~ce where its members met for purposes of politics and
cult: It was a pomt rather than an area, and Strabo is evidence that there
~ere ~o lite~al 'parish boundaries' between demes,265 though accumulatmg
discovenes of boundary stones between demes266 are a warning that
the~e must, h.ave ?een numerous exceptions to what Strabo says. In
Kleisthenes tlme, mdeed, .the members of a deme were all those citizens
living in the neigh?ourhoo? of the place where the deme held its assembly,
but prosopographlCal studIes show that Kleisthenes made deme-membership
hereditary,267 thus building into his reform a feature that in the
course of time was bound to break up the politico-geographical unity of
the demes.
There is no evidence that any new demes were created before the
Hellenistic age, and it is still universally believed that Kleisthenes created
139 demes in all.
268
The demes varied in size, but not until the fourth
century do we acquire, from lists of the prytaneis and the Council
evidence for their representation on the Council and so for their relativ~
. 269 Th
SIZeS. ere must have been changes between the end of the sixth
century and the beginning of the fourth;270 but by cautious extrapolation
we can conclude that several demes even in Kleisthenes' time were so
261 Arist. Alh. Pol. 21.4. Hansen (1990d), pace Kinzl (1987), (1989) 348.
262 The inland ridings of Oineis (VI) and Aiantis (IX) consisted of one deme only, i.e.
Acharnai (VI) and Aphidna (IX), whereas the city riding of Aigeis (II) consisted of ten
small demes.
26' Traill (1986) 123-49. 264 Arist. Ath. Pol. 21.4. Whitehead (1986) 16-38.
26S Strabo 1.65. Thompson (1971) 72-9. 266 Traill (1986) 116-22.
267 E.g. Megakles Hippokratous of Alopeke (fG J2 908; Hdt. 6.131.2), father of Megakles
Megakleous of Alopeke (fG P 322-4).
268 Traill (1975) 73-6; Whitehead (1986) 21. 269 Agora XV 2-56.
270 Hansen et al. (1990) 30.
The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC
48 '1 hil thers
. that they only sent one representative to the Counc1 , w e 0
tmy . 1 er 271
were ten or twenty tune~ ~rg'd on 30 ridings: we have no evidence
The 139 demes wer.e d1str~ul~ t ~;uti;n but it is reasonable to suppose
as to Kleisthenes' basIs for t e IS n
l
. pop'ulation and that a riding was
. . oughly equa m ' . . .
that the ndmgs were r . h 'derable geographicalrrregulantles
h'cal umt· t e conSl . be
originally a geograp 1 .d' ' . the fourth century are likely to
in the make-up of the n mgs m . 403/2 when so much else was
due to adjustments made, perhaps, m ,
redrawn.
272
. es to tribes and ridings that Kleisthenes
It was by the assIgnment of de~ 1 tures and create new political
b k the old SOCIa stfUC li
sought to rea up f Attica for example, lay the Tetrapo s
entities. In the north-east.comer 0 probalinthos, Oinoe and Marathon,
(the 'Four Towns') of TnkOryn~hos, had supported Peisistratos; so
which, in the stasis of the sixt r centu~~ken up by Kleisthenes: Probalit
is no chance that the Tetrapo IS was f one tribe (Pandionis, tribe Ill),
inthos was rem~v~d and became part a~t of another (Aiantis, tribe IX),
while the remammg three became : th which had a quite different
along with the deme Rhamnous to tenor ,
di' 273
background and tra tIOn. h Kl' thenes who was a member of the
b gested t at e1S, . f his
It has een sug . di 'b t'on to privilege the mterest 0
"d ged by hIS stn u 1 . 274
AlkmaIOm s, arran f aining too great political influence:
own clan and prevent others robm
l
~ that we are not by and large, m a
11 b o· the trou e IS ' Kl .
That may we e s:. 1'" the structure go back to e1S.
. k h1ch 1rregu antles m .
posltlon to now w h bable later revision, WhICh we may
thenes and which are due to t e pro
date about 403/2.. osed of three ridings, one from
Each of the ten new. tnbes wa~ comP
d
one from the coast. According
. f the mland regIon an . 1 275
the CIty, one ro~.. 'din s into tribes was decIded by ot,
to Aristotle the distnbutlon of th~ n
h
· g If we suppose that Kleisthenes'
and we have no reason to dou t ~. 276 that purpose was sufficiently
desire was to break up the old gro~~mgs, of secondary importance if it
served by the use of. the 1~~, ~n ~~wf~sr example, an inland riding and
occasionally resulted m a ~n lIe ~dv b' sl'de Precisely that situation can
'd' raph1ca y Sl e Y . f '00
a coastal n mg geog f Attica where the coastal ridings 0 tn
be detected on the east coast ~. 1 ~n the inland ridings of the same
IX, 11, III and V bordered 1rect Yf t1 well have been the outcome
tribes. That configuration mayf per ec y be excluded that Kleisthenes
of the 10t;277 but it cannot,.o cours~ay With that reservation, howgerrymandered
the allotment m some .
271 See p 102.
271 H ns~n (l990d) 53. 273 Lewis (1963) 30-1. I 4 276 Arist. A/h. Pol. 21.2.
a (1984) 275 Arist. A/h. Pol. 2 ..
274 Lewis (1963); Stanton .
277 Hansen (l987b), pace Siewert (1982) 26.
The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC 49
ever, in general the system ensured that each tribe would consist of
citizens from different parts of Attica.
The tribes were named after the heroes of Athens. The story is that
Kleisthenes picked the names of 100 heroes and sent them to Delphi,
and the Delphic oracle picked the ten heroes after whom the tribes were
to be named: Erechtheis (1), Aigeis (II), Pandionis (Ill), Leontis (IV),
Akamantis (V), Oineis (VI), Kekropis (VII), Hippothontis (VIII), Aiantis
(IX) and Antiochis (X).278 That order was official and was used, for
example, in lists of councillors, citizens fallen in battle, and boards of
magistrates.279
What, then, to sum up, was the purpose of these complexities? For
what purposes of political organization was it needful to break up the old
groupings and invent new ones that smack so strongly of the abstract
drawing-board? What practical matters were artificial space and artificial
time supposed to influence? For we can hardly suppose that Kleisthenes
did it all, and that the Athenians accepted it, for merely academic
satisfaction. Reflection suggests that two Athenian institutions above all
were intended to be put beyond the reach of the old aristocratic influences:
the army and the Council. The army was divided into ten regiments, of
which each tribe supplied one, and the citizens of a tribe - coming from
all over Attica - would henceforward fight side-by-side in the ranks,
commanded by officers from their own tribe. 280 But still more important
was the politico-geographical reform of Kleisthenes for the structure of
his Council of Five Hundred, organized by tribes but related to the sizes
of the demes, the basic unit of the whole democracy.28J
EXCURSUS 3 SELECTION OF MAGISTRATES BY LOT
Deep disunity prevails amongst historians as to when the Athenians first
began to select their magistrates by lot. The disunity has its roots in our
principal source, the Constitution of Athens, where Aristotle sets out the
development in five stages: selection by lot of minor magistrates (Drakon's
. alleged constitution of c.621);282 selection of all magistrates by lot from
. an elected short-list (Solon, c.594);283 election of archons (from the sixth
century to 487);284 selection by lot of archons from an elected short-list
(487-403);285 selection by lot of archons and other magistrates (403
m Arist. A/h. Pol. 21.6. Kearns (1989) 80-92.
279 Agora XV 42; Agora XVII 23; IG IF 1388.1-12.
"0 Arist. A/h. Pol. 61.3; Thuc. 6.98.4. 181 Traill (1975) 64-72.
282 Arist. A/h. Pol. 4.3. 283 Arist. A/h. Pol. 8.1.
2" Arist. A/h. Pol. 22.5.
2.5 Arist. A/h. Pol. 22.5.
50
The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC
onwards).286 Aristotle's account exhibits a. curious. symmetry ~A-~-C~~A)
which may delight a structuralist but IS worrymg to the hlstonan, It
takes one aback that the use of the lot, which is supposed to be par
excellence the 'democratic' way of doing things,287 sh.ould ha~e been
introduced as early as the end of the seventh century.(~mor ma.glstrates)
and the beginning of the sixth (archons). A~istotle, It IS true, l~e many
of his contemporaries, believed that Athe~lan democracy w~s mven~~~
by Solon, abolished by Peisistratos and remtroduced by Klels.thenes,
but alleged pre-Peisistratean democracy can onl~ be a reflectIon of the
constitutional conflicts between democrats and ohgarch~ at the e,nd of the
fifth century, when both factions claimed to be restormg the ,ancestral
constitution'.289 There can really be no doubt that D~a~on s alleged
constitution must be rejected as a reminiscence of a pohtIcal pamphlet
that has crept into history by mistake.290 And can one rely to any greater
degree on Aristotle's second stage, where he carries selectio~ .by lot back
to Solon? He quotes, indeed, a law of Solon for the propOSItIOn that the
Treasurers of Athena, one from each tribe, must be selected by lo~ from
the pentakosiomedimnoi;291 but the law in question can only have saId that
they must be chosen from that cla.ss: that .they ~ad to be chosen by lot
and one from each tribe must be enher Anstotle s own paraphrase. of a
genuine Solonian law (quite correctly unde~stood from t~e st~dpomt2~~
his own day) or a quotation from the Soloman law as revl~ed m 403/2..
Now, whether one believes or disbelieves that the Athemans were ~~mg
the lot as early as Solon really depends on one's conception of the ongmal
purpose of the lot as a process of selection. So~e think.t~at it was.onl~
secondarily a democratic procedure, and that It was ongl~allY an mstltution
reflecting the nexus of state and religion in archaIC Greece: by
using the lot you left to the gods the decision about who should run the
community.293 Only in the fifth centu.ry ~~s it reinterp.reted as the
supremely democratic procedure for mamtammg the equahty of all and
their equal right to rule. . .
Seeking the advice of the gods by means of the lot IS, mdeed, an ageold
device in every country all over the world. If you wante~ th: gods
to give sentence in a difficult case you could use the lot, o~ dIce, Just as
well as ordeal; and, if you wanted to ask them for advIce abo~t the
future one well-known method was to offer them a set of alternatIves ~o, . 294 0 G
choose from by a drawing of lots by oracular pnests. n ermamc
2S6 Arist. Arh. Pol. 8.1, 55.1, 62.1. Hansen (l986b), pace Abel (1983).
287 Hdt. 3.80.6; Ps. Xen. Arh. Pol. 1.2-3; Arist. Pol. 1294b8-9.
288 Arist. Arh. Pol. 41.2. 289 See p. 40. 290 See p. 19.
291 Arise. Arh. Pol. 8.1,47.1. 292 Hansen (l990e) 57-8.
293 Coulanges (1878) 613ff; Glotz (1907) 1401-8; Andrewes (1982) 386.
294 Lane (1939) 831ff.
The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC 51
~0i1 th~ ordeal was widespread but the lot oracle little used; by contrast,
m anCIent Greece there are only a few traces of ordeal,295 whereas
cleromancy, the lot oracle, flourished in archaic, classical and Hellenistic
. 296 I .. rthurnes. n a IOU -century decree of the Athenian Assembly there is a
minute description of the procedure of drawing lots where a matter is to
be. put to the Delphic oracle.297 Priests were often selected by lot:298
pnests are the servants of the god; let him choose. Now, it is on that
analogy that historians speculate that the lot was also used in archaic
times in the choice of magistrates: archons had, after all, wide-ranging
responsibilities in relation to cult. Aristotle, it is said, was quite right in
his information that the archons were selected by lot in Solon's time,
only wrong in his interpretation of it as a 'democratic' institution.
The theo~y is exciting, but weakly based. For one thing, the only text
that unambIguously states that priests were selected by lot so as to leave
the choice to. ~e g~ds is a passage in Plato's Laws;299 but in that very
work Plato distmgmshes between selection by lot of priests and election
of magistrates300 and insists on the distinction between sortition and
divine decision.301 What is more, those lot-chosen priests were subject
to dokimasia, the scrutiny of qualifications before entry into office302 hardly
a compliment to divine omniscience. All in all, there is not a
single good source that straightforwardly testifies to the selection of
magistrates by lot as having a religious character or origin,303 Whereas
the connection of lot and democracy is a commonplace in the sources.
Now, that could be simply due to the fact that the sources only begin to
be abundant at a time when the lot had already come to be seen as a
democratic procedure: the shortage of sources prior to 403 is so marked
that the theory about the religious significance of sortition of officials can
certainly n?t be ruled out by an argument from silence. More significant,
however~ IS that other sources actually contradict the Constitution of
Athens: m book 2 of the Politics Aristotle himself writes that Solon
introduced the 'ancestral democracy' as a 'mixed' constitution in which
election (as opposed to sortition) of magistrates was retained as the
'aristocratic' element;304 and election was praised by Isokrates as just
su~h an element in the 'original' democracy, introduced by Solon and
remtroduced by Kleisthenes,305 while in a forensic speech from the fourth
295 Hom. II. 3.316ff, 7.16lff. Glotz (1904); Ehrenberg (1921) 73ff; (1927) 1452.
296 Lane (1939). 297IG IF 204.23--54 = Harding (1985) no. 78.
298IG P 35.3--8 = M&L 44 and Fornara (1977) no. 93; SEG 12 80; Dem. 57.46ff.
Feaver (1957).
299 PI. Lg 759B, cf. 741B. 300 Morrow (1960) 159--62.
301 PI. Lg. 757B.
302 PI. Lg. 759C.
303 Headlam (1891) 78-87; Ehrenberg (1927) 1461-4; Staveley (1972) 34--6.
304 Arise. Pol. 1273b35-41. 305 Isoc. 12.145, 153--4.
52 The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC
century it is asserted that the king archon under the 'ancestral democracy'
was chosen by election from an elected short-list - double election and
no lot at all. 306
The sources are in conflict, which shows that the Athenians themselves
had no clear knowledge how the archons were chosen in the seventh and
sixth centuries; and the only form of selection by lot that can with any
plausibility be thought to go back to Solon is the annual sortition of
jurors for the People's Court. Against that, there is absolutely no doubt
that the selection of the archons by lot in the classical age was a 'democratic'
procedure, introduced twenty years after the reforms of Kleisthenes;
and, if we ask how it was done before that, it can be said that
archons were chosen by direct election in the period 501-487, while
before that the evidence is contradictory.
But there is one powerful indication ofelection as the original procedure
for choosing magistrates: in the classical age the Athenians held absolutely
fast to the principle that military magistrates must be elected and not
selected by lot. It is hardly conceivable that in the seventh and sixth
centuries they put themselves in a position of fighting under commanders
chosen by 10t.307 The Board of Generals was instituted in 502/1;308 from
then down to 487 the army was commanded by the polemarch and the
generals together,309 whereas before 501 it had been commanded by the
polemarch alone. It is just possible that the nine elected archons in the
period 501-487 drew lots for which of them should be archon and which
king archon and which polemarch;310 but it is extremely unlikely that
Solon introduced the procedure by which the polemarch was chosen by
lot from an elected short-list of forty, of whom only a few would have
been likely to possess the necessary military experience.
These considerations should be sufficient to put out of court the notion
that in the archaic age the Athenian magistrates were selected by lot.
EXCURSUS 4 PERIKLES' CITIZENSHIP LAW
By means of the democratic reform of 507 Kleisthenes had got a large
number of meties and foreigners naturalized,311 and down to the middle
of the fifth century citizenship was given without question to metToxenoi,
those whose fathers were citizens but their mothers not: Kleisthenes' own
306 Dem. 59.75. Hansen (1986b) 225. 307 Meyer (1937) 608 n. 2.
308 Arist. Arh. Pol. 22.2. Rhodes (198Ia) 262. 309 Hdt. 6.109.2.
310 Lang (1959) 88; Bicknell (1971) 147-9.
311 Arist. Pol. 1275b35-7; Arist. Arh. Pol. 21.4.
The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC 53
mother was a daughter of Kleisthenes of Sikyon 312 and both Th ._
t kl 313 d Kim 314 . ' enus
~. es an on . had ~hraclan mothers. It is even possible that
~luze~s could have thelr offsprmg from slave women inscribed as citizens
ill thelr dem~. In the ~rst half of the fifth century the citizen population
must have risen steadlly, partly by natural increase (but that was never
more than a ~ew tenths of a percentage point a year), partly because of
the metrox~, and partly, it must be concluded, because Athens attracted
~any metics, who s~meh~w had no great difficulty in becoming citizens
if they settled, especlally lf they married a citizen woman.315 The result
wa~ .th.at Athens simply had too many citizens to function properly as a
P?~lS. m31!50 there may have been something like 60,000 adult male
c!Uzens.. . One reme~y employed by Perikles was to send thousands of
poorer CitlZens, sometlIDes to start emigre communities as colonists but
more frequently to various subject cities, where they received plo~s of
land ~d ~:re cal!e~1!lerouchoi (possessors of a. kleros), retaining their
Atheman cltizenshlP: But a more important remedy was the citizenship
law o~ 451, by WhlCh Athenian citizenship was made to depend on
Atheman ~arentage on both sides, and the son of an Athenian citizen
and a forelgn woman could no longer be registered in his father's deme
f II .. 318 h .
as a.u CitlZen; w at lS more, at least by Demosthenes' time, mixed
ma~nag:s were actually heavily penalized.319 Aristotle says explicitly that
Perikles law was enacted 'because of the number of citizens' 320
Per~les' citizenship law was not made retroactive, but tho~e born of
nOn-Cit.l~en m~th;;~ and not yet adult in 451/50 were probably excluded
from citlZ~nship. When Prince Psammetichos of Egypt in 445/4 sent
the Atheman.s.30,000 (or 40,000) medimnoi of corn to be distributed free
among the c~~zens, .0Pportu~ity was taken to look into who really possessed.
the citlZenshlp, and it appears that the investigation led to the
expulslO~ o~ no less than 5??0 pe~ple from the registers. 322 This large
nu~ber mdicates th~t the citlzenshlp law was at that time being applied
?s ngorously ~s posslble. The Peloponnesian War, however, brought with
lt such a dr~stic reduction in citizen numbers that for a time the Athenians
tume~ a bhnd eye to the Periklean law323 and, what is more, on several
occaslOns. best?wed ;itizenship on larger groups of foreigners, for example
the Platalans m 427 24 and the Samians in 405.325 Upon the restoration
312 Hdt. 6.130-1. 3J3 Plut. Them. 1.1.
::: Hdt. 6.39.2; Plut. Cim. 4.1. 315 Davies (1977-8) 107; Patterson (1981) 70.
Rhodes (1988) 275; Hansen (l988a) 14-28. 317 Jones (1957) 167-73
318 Arist. Arh. Pol. 26.4. 319 Dem. 59.16. 320 Arist. Arh. Pol. 26.4. .
321 Hignett (1952) 345; Humphreys (1974) 92-3. 322 Philoch. fro 119; Plut. Per. 37.2.
323 Isoc. 8.88. Humphreys (1974) 93-4.
32' Dem. 59.104-5. Osborne (1981) D 1.
mIG IF 1.51-5 = Tod 97 and Fornara (1977) no. 166. Osborne (1981) D 4.
54 The Athenian Constitution down to 403 BC
of democracy in 403/2, however, the law of Perikles was reintroduced by
Aristophon and Nikomenes;326 it remained unmodified all through the
fourth century327 and the Athenians no longer passed block grants of
citizenship,328 only individual grants, mostly as honours to foreigners
who would not dream of taking up residence in Attica.329
Perikles' citizenship law had wide-ranging consequences, ideologically
as well as demographically. The citizen population was, even more than
before, a closed circle, deliberately isolated from the rest of the population;
and demographically it had an effect perhaps much more drastic
than had been foreseen: namely, that the natural increase in the citizen
numbers was curtailed and at some periods could not even balance the
numbers who left Attica to live elsewhere as metics or klerouchoi.330
The
citizen population of Athens had probably been halved in the Peloponnesian
War,331 and it never again approached the size it had been under
Perikles, no doubt mainly because a juridically defined group, such as
the Athenian citizen body was after 451, was incapable of recovering
from the losses from the war (431-404), the plague (430--426), and the
famine during the siege of 405/4. Thoughout the fourth century, citizen
numbers were stationary at about 30,000. 332
The decline in citizen numbers must have affected all aspects of
Athenian society. For one thing, in the fourth century there must, on
average, have been twice as much land per citizen, and that may well be
one of the reasons why redistribution of land, a major question in other
democratic city-states, is never heard of as a problem at Athens. The
introduction of pay for attending the Assembly in about 400 may have
been another consequence: the Athenians upheld the requirement of a
quorum of 6000 for certain types of decree and in the course of the
century extended it, for example to citizenship decrees.333 But, although,
after the Peloponnesian War, it became more difficult to collect 6000
citizens, instead of lowering the quorum they preferred to stimulate
attendance by paying for participation.334
It is often remarked that Spartan society suffered from lack of citizens
(oliganthropia),335 but it has not been often enough pointed out that
fourth-century Athens also suffered from oliganthropia, which, though.
less severe than in Sparta, affected the democratic institutions and the
society as a whole.
326 Ath. 577B; Schol. Aeschin. 1.39. 327 Hansen (1982) 177.
32S Hansen (1982) 178. 329 Osborne (1983) 147-50.
330 Hansen (1982) 179-84; (1985) 8-9. 331 Hansen (1988a) 26--8.
332 See p. 92. 333 See p. 130. 334 See p. 150.
331 Cartledge (1979) 307-18.
4
Athens as a City-State and
as a Democracy
ATHENS AS A CITY-STATE
Polis
Classical Greece was divided . .
· people like to call them. To th~t~5~ome 750 polezs
1
or 'city-states', as
· founded by the Greeks as' " must be added at least 300 more
. emIgre commun't ' . ,
mostly 10 the archaic age.2 thus h' . 1 Ies o~tslde Greece proper,
· poleis in Thrace alone bet~een the ;;tonans have Identified seventy-two
the coasts of the Mediterranean d ryhmoB
n
and the Danube.
3
All round
'lik f an t e lack Sea t G k .
e rogs round a pond' in PI t' .. sa ree cIty-states
' . , a 0 s VIVId phrase 4 M f
Uny, w~th an average territory of less than 100 . ost 0 them.~ere
populatIon of fewer than 1000 adult males' sq. km and a CItIZen
hundred were larger than that d ' not mOre than a couple of
Co . th ' an even a powe fl'
· rm only covered 900 sq km with a . r.u CIty-state such as
of about 10,000-15 000 adu'lt ' I .. populatIon 10 the classical period
th ' rna e CltIzens 5 A h .
· e largest of all the pole's I'n G . . t ens was 10 population
I • reece Itself and . .
argest next to Lakedaimon' d h ' 10 terntory the second
· along with the harbour town 'ofatnh tp.e town of Athens proper (the asty)
. th . e Iraeus was the I I .
m e terrItory of Attica which h d on y arge conurbatIon
size of the population as 'a whol .a aknnarea of about 2500 sq. km.6 The
th . e IS un own b t' b
e eVIdence that there were some 60 00 ' u IE: ~an e deduced from
was the leader of Athens in th fif h' 0 male CItIZens when Perikles
Demosthenes was its leader aga~st tph~~ntU?7 and about 30,000 when
later.8 In fact, in some Greek e es A hI Ip 0 Macedon a hundred years
proper polis. y , t ens was actually too large to be a
1 Ruschenbusch (1978a) 3-17; (1985b) 253-63
: ~~: (:09:
B
2) I~O-S21 (the best selection). 3' Isaac (1986) xii 283
6 · • . a mon (1984) 165-9 ' .
Busolt and Swoboda (192~) 758 7 H'
8 See p. 92. . ansen 0988a) 14-28.