Download Greek CS Athens

ATHENS Athens was a town in central Greece, which was settled very early because it has a good seaport nearby (at Piraeus) and a steep hill which makes Athens easy to defend. Athens was already an important city in the Late Bronze Age, and appears in Homer's Iliad as the kingdom of Theseus. There was almost certainly a Mycenaean palace on the Acropolis, and lots of Mycenaean pottery has been found in Athens. During the Dark Ages, Athens declined like other Greek towns, and the old palace was abandoned, but the Athenians were proud to say that unlike Sparta or Corinth, Athens had never been sacked by invaders. In the early Archaic period, around 900 BC, Athens began to grow again. When we first see the Athenians after the Dark Age, they have an oligarchic government. A group of rich men (but not women) got together to make the laws and decide everything. During the Archaic period, the system of government seems to have been pretty severe for ordinary people, and to have favored rich men and women. In 621 BC Draco was serving in the government of Athens as an archon. Draco was a rich man, part of the oligarchy. He ordered his slaves to write down the laws, so that everybody would know what the laws were and the rich men in the oligarchy wouldn't be able to just make up laws to suit themselves. These laws said that poor people could be killed for even small crimes like stealing a cabbage. The laws also had different punishments for poor people and for rich people. If a poor woman owed money to a rich man, she would be sold into From: http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/greeks/government/athens.htm slavery to pay the debt. But if a rich man owed money to a poor woman, he only had to pay a fine. But most people in Athens weren't happy when they saw the laws written down -­‐ they were angry! They thought these laws weren't fair. They complained especially about debt bondage -­‐ being sold into slavery because you owed somebody money. So in 594 BC the Athenian oligarchy chose another rich man, Solon, to fix the government. They told him, "Do something so everyone won't be so mad at us, but let us keep all the power." (We know about Draco and Solon mainly from the Greek historian Herodotus). Solon changed the law so that poor people could not be sold into slavery just because they owed people money. He cancelled debts and redistributed land so people got a fresh start. He changed the law so that people couldn't be killed except for any crime except murder. Under Solon's rules, the rich men in the oligarchy kept most of their land and most of their power. But he did start an Assembly, that any citizen could come to and vote on important questions. And he decided that judges would be chosen through a lottery, so that even poor men might be judges. He did not allow women to be in the Assembly or to be judges. He did make it illegal for parents to abuse their children. For a while, this worked. The ordinary people weren't so angry, and the rich men got to stay in power. At first people were happy with Solon's changes. They had their farms back, and they didn't owe any money, and they weren't being killed for little things. They could (if they were free men) be judges and vote in the Assembly. But the people of Athens didn't stay happy very long. They began to lose their land again and fall back into debt. When the Athenians lost a couple of battles against their enemies, that was the last straw. In 560 BC, one rich man, Pisistratus, told the ordinary people that if they supported him as tyrant, he would help them with all their problems and keep the other rich men off their backs. People thought that sounded good, and so Pisistratus managed to get power over the other rich men of Athens and get control of the city. Pisistratus did a good job as tyrant, even though the other rich men kept trying to get rid of him so they could have their oligarchy back again. Pisistratus taxed everybody equally (instead of taxing the rich less than everyone else), and he organized ways for the government to lend money at fair rates to farmers so they wouldn't have to borrow money from rich people. From: http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/greeks/government/athens.htm Pisistratus (pie-­‐SISS-­‐trat-­‐uss) used the tax money to build roads and new public water fountains and new temples for the gods and many other useful things. He fought successfully against Thebes to the north and Corinth to the south. When Pisistratus died in 528 BC, his son Hippias (and possibly his brother Hipparchus) took over as tyrant (you can see that they are rich men because their names mean "Horse-­‐guys", and only rich men could afford horses). Two young rich guys named Harmodius and Aristogeiton (arr-­‐iss-­‐toe-­‐GUY-­‐tahn), maybe trying to get the oligarchy back into power, tried to kill Hippias and Hipparchus at a religious festival celebrating Athena's birthday in 514 BC. They only managed to kill Hipparchus, but Hippias got more and more suspicious and nasty, and by 508 the Athenians decided to get rid of Hippias too. The Alcmaeonids bribed the priestess at Delphi to tell the Spartans to help them throw out Hippias. The Spartans did help, and Hippias fled to Persia. That was the end of tyranny in Athens. With Hippias gone and the tyranny over, the leader of the Alcmaeonid family, Cleisthenes, began to put his own political system into power. Cleisthenes wanted power for himself, but he didn't want another tyranny. Instead, he wanted the ordinary men (though not women) of Athens to feel that this was their government, and that they could change things they didn't like by voting instead of by fighting wars. He decided to create a democracy in Athens -­‐ the first democracy anywhere. Cleisthenes (KLY-­‐sthen-­‐eez) even had to make up the word! In the Athenian democracy, ordinary men could make all the most important decisions, like whether to go to war. They just went to meetings of the Assembly (Greek Ekklesia), on a hill in Athens called the Pnyx (slaves, women, children, and foreigners could not go, though). You had to have 6000 men at a meeting of the Ekklesia (ek-­‐LAYZ-­‐ee-­‐ah) before they could decide anything. It met about once a month, unless there was some sort of emergency. The Athenians also chose five hundred men every year through a lottery to be in the Council of Five Hundred, or Boule, which met more often and decided things that weren't as important. The Boule (boo-­‐LAY) suggested new laws to the Assembly, made sure the laws were being enforced, and took care of things like street repair, fixing public stoas and temples, and building ships for the Athenian navy. From: http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/greeks/government/athens.htm The Athenians also had some elected officials who took care of specific things. There were nine men were called archons (AR-­‐kons). Archons were also chosen by a lottery. In the time of Cleisthenes and later, archons mostly took care of religious things like organizing public sacrifices. There were also ten strategoi (generals), who were elected by the Assembly. These strategoi (STRAT-­‐eh-­‐goy) were often elected year after year, and although at first they just commanded the Athenian army and navy, by the time of the Peloponnesian War the strategoi were basically running the government, like the United States President. Pericles is the most famous strategos; others include Themistocles and Alcibiades. The fourth part of Athenian democratic government was the justice system -­‐ the judges and courts. Men (women couldn't serve) volunteered to be on juries. They needed six thousand volunteers every year. Then for each day, they picked about five hundred men to be on that day's jury and hear cases. The jury decided cases by a simple majority -­‐ whichever side got more votes won. You could not appeal. If the jury convicted you, then they would hold another vote to decide on a sentence, as in the trial of Socrates. Athenian juries not only decided criminal and property cases, but also decided whether laws passed by the Assembly were legal or not. Athenian democracy was badly shaken by the Peloponnesian War, which started in 441 BC. As the Athenians began to lose the war to the Spartans, some people, including men like Socrates and Plato, thought they should abandon the democracy and go back to an oligarchy. Alcibiades, whose relative Cleisthenes had started the democracy, wanted them to stick with the democracy. When they were desperate, the Athenians tried oligarchy, but it didn't help, and in 404 BC they lost the war anyway. After the war was over, the Athenians did go back to their democracy, and the new democracy soon convicted Socrates of "corrupting the youth" and sentenced him to death. During the 300s BC, Athens was still a democracy, but not as powerful as during the Classical period. When Philip of Macedon came south from Macedon and attacked Athens, the Athenian army could not defend their city, and Athens fell under the control of Macedon. From: http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/greeks/government/athens.htm From this time on, Athens was under the control of a monarchy. First the king was Philip, then his son Alexander, and then there were a lot of Hellenistic kings. Inside the city of Athens, the Assembly and the Council of 500 kept meeting, and the juries kept deciding cases, and the Assembly kept electing strategoi, but these groups could only decide things inside the city, and only so long as the king approved. Only a hundred and fifty years later, the Roman army arrived and conquered Greece. Then Athens fell under the control of the Roman Republic. The democracy kept meeting inside Athens, but again they could only do what the Roman governors of Greece allowed. And after the time of Augustus, the Athenians were part of an empire -­‐ under the Roman emperors, and then, from the 1400s AD on, under the Ottoman Empire. From: http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/greeks/government/athens.htm