Download Was Athens a Democracy?

Arete, Spartan Style:
Military Preparedness and Austerity
By the sixth century B.C.E. Sparta and Athens were the two most powerful city-states in the Hellenic world. They
demonstrate two different ways of life. Spartans set an example of military superiority. Athenians excelled in politics and
intellectual activities. In both city-states, people gave their loyalty to the polis rather than to their families. Both honored
human excellence (arete), but they defined it differently.
We have already noted that the Dorians who settled Sparta, like their Aryan cousins in India, tried to keep totally
separate from the farmers who had been living there. Sparta used military might to control the helots (non-Spartans) and
was perhaps the only place in Greece where Dorian invaders continued to stay completely segregated from the earlier
inhabitants.
Lycurgus was a legendary early leader of Sparta. Tradition claims that when people asked him to establish a democracy,
he replied, “Begin by setting it up in your own family.” Lycurgus is credited with writing a constitution that provided for
two kings who shared power, performed the sacrifices, supervised justice, and commanded the army. A senate of older men
passed whatever laws were needed, served as a supreme court, and formulated public policy. An assembly, composed of all
male citizens over thirty, met when the moon was full to consent to the laws and elect five overseers. Sparta also had a
powerful secret police that spied on helots and had the right to kill any helot who might be a threat to the polis.
STRATEGIES TO CREATE BRAVE WARRIORS
The ideal Spartan was a totally dedicated and selflessly brave warrior. Men boasted that their city did not need walls,
claiming they were its defense. Elders examined newborn babies, and those that were too weak or deformed to make good
soldiers or become mothers of good soldiers were left exposed to die or thrown to their death.
To encourage loyalty to the group rather than to one’s family, young Spartan boys left their homes when they were seven
years old and lived in barracks, training with other youths until they were thirty. For thirty more years, they shared one
meal a day with the other men. Men started serving in the army when they were twenty and remained until they were sixty.
A Spartan soldier was to “come home carrying his shield or on it,” but he was never to surrender. In fact, to die in battle
was considered the highest honor. Only Spartan men who died in battle and women who died in childbirth had their names
on their graves.
The goal of Spartan education for boys was to train ideal fighters. Reading and writing were unimportant; laws were
shared orally. Spartans considered art and literature worse than a waste of time because they might weaken one’s resolve.
Health was a virtue, while sickness was a crime. It was acceptable to be cunning as long as one did not get caught. Boys
fought and shunned those who showed pain or cowardliness. Most young boys had male lovers but men were also
encouraged to marry, and celibacy was a crime. The usual age for marriage was eighteen, even though young men did not
live with their wives until they were thirty. Bachelors could not vote, and women made fun of them and even beat them up.
Spartans did not welcome visitors from other city-states who might bring disquieting new ideas. Few Spartans wanted to
travel because they did not believe they had anything to learn from the out side world. To limit the number of outsiders who
might bring new ideas, Spartans prohibited Importing gold and silver and required merchants to use iron currency in all
transactions. The iron bars were too heavy to store or use easily as a means of exchange, so not much trade took place.
Spartan men had little personal wealth, and they gave each boy only one shirt. (When we say someone lives a Spartan life,
we usually mean he or she has few possessions.)
Spartans told about a youth who had befriended a baby fox and raised it secretly as a pet. Because boys were forbidden to
have personal possessions and were not supposed to feel sentiment, he told no one about his companion. One day, while
playing with his pet, the boy was called to drill. Caught unaware, he quickly hid the animal in his shirt as he stood at
attention. In the confusion and noise of the drill procedure, the fox became frightened and began to claw the boy’s chest.
The lad, true to Spartan values, did not even flinch until he fell over dead, his stomach torn open by the claws of the
terrified animal.
WHAT ABOUT SPARTAN WOMEN?
Spartan women were taught to take pride in being mothers of heroes. Elders encouraged young girls to participate in the
games so they would develop strong bodies, and they were well fed so they would give birth to healthy babies. Their
education included training in gymnastics and music as well as in household management and child rearing. Hoping the
wives of its citizens would have lots of babies, Spartans over-looked extra-marital affairs as long as both partners were
healthy Spartans. If a woman were childless, she could get a divorce and marry again in the hopes that she and her new
partner would have a son.
Stories reflect the values women were expected to have. Imagine a Spartan woman who, having sent five sons off to war,
waits anxiously for news of the battle. She asks a returning soldier how things have gone, and he tells her that all five of her
sons have been killed. She replies, “I did not ask about that! How fares the country?” When she hears that Sparta has been
victorious, she replies, “Then I accept gladly also the death of my sons.” Another mother, we are told, was burying her son
when an old woman said to her: “Ah, the bad luck of it. Poor woman.” But the mother replied, “No; by heaven, hut good
luck; for I bore him that he might die for Sparta and this is the very thing that has come to pass for me.’’ (Quotations from
Plutarch) We can ponder whether mothers were really this anxious for their sons to die in battle. As Sappho wrote:
Death is our evil. The gods believe this,
or else by now they themselves would be dead.
Spartan women had the reputation in the rest of Greece for being strong, beautiful, and outspoken, and they may have
fared better than women in other city-states. Since Spartans did not intermarry with helots, Spartan men had little reason to
distrust the women they married. That may help explain the higher status and greater independence of Spartan women
compared with the rest of Greece. In addition, because their husbands had to spend so much of their lives in the barracks,
Spartan women had almost total control of their lives and households.
Arete, Athenian Style:
Direct Democracy by the Citizens
Athens is in Attica on a southeastern edge of the Balkan Peninsula. Athens also emerged from the Dark Age as an oligarchy
dominated by a hereditary aristocracy, a group of landowners whose status and wealth came from their land. The aristocrats
made up the Council of Elders that passed laws governing the city.
Athens had no helots, so wealthy landowners hired other Athenians to do the farm work. Poor Athenian farmers who had
no political rights and little chance to improve their lives soon began to resent working for landowners who had all the
political power. Why not, litany asked, pack up and emigrate to a new settlement along the Black Sea or the southern coast
of the Italian Peninsula where they could get land and have a say in the government? As colonists, they might become the
aristocrats.
Merchants also envied the aristocracy. Trade was important in Athens, and the number of rich, urban, self-made
businessmen was increasing. They resented the fact that even though they were wealthy, they had little social status or
authority. They began to challenge the aristocracy’s hereditary claim to political power.
While merchants were getting richer, many farmers were getting poorer and sinking into debt. When (hey were unable to
pay hack their loans, they lost their land. A few found work in Athens; many wandered around as unemployed or
underemployed laborers. Some even put themselves and their families up as collateral for loans, and when they could not
pay back the loans, they became the moneylenders’ debt-slaves. These formerly self-sufficient farmers were left with no
land, work, or income.
Revolt and even revolution threatened the aristocrats who ruled Athens. In other city-states where similar situations
existed, the poor were turning to tyrants. (Although these tyrants ruled with absolute power, their supporters thought they
were reformers who would reduce the power of the wealthy landowners.) Fearing Athens would also turn to a popular
tyrant, in 591 B.C.E. the Council of Elders asked Solon to make whatever reforms he thought were necessary to prevent
trouble. Although Solon had become a rich businessman, his sympathies were with the poor, so each class grudgingly
accepted him as the best hope.
What Were Solon’s Economic and Political Reforms?
Solon quickly introduced a sweeping set of reforms in an effort to prevent class conflict and make the government more
responsive to the will of all citizens. Solon first tried to reduce the gap between rich and poor and give merchants more
power. He did not redistribute land, which the poor classes desperately wanted, but he did cancel all public and private
debts and overnight wiped out debt-slavery, freeing those who had become slaves because they could not pay hack their
loans. Solon then established a graduated income tax, taxing the rich more than he taxed the poor. (The United States did
not introduce an income tax until 1913.) He also devalued the currency so it would cost less to borrow money.
Solon wrote a constitution in which he reduced the power of the hereditary aristocracy by permitting more men to hold
public office. He divided the people into four classes based on wealth, not on birth or one’s clan. He kept the ruling council,
but allowed anyone in the richest class to become a member. He also created a Council of Four Hundred made up of
merchants and other citizens, even some in the poorest class. This council decided which issues should come before the
Assembly, composed of all the male citizens. All citizens, even the lowest class, could participate as jurors, 6,000 of whom
were selected by lot annually. The citizens’ names were placed in a jar and the men whose names were pulled out served as
jurors. (We follow a similar way of selecting jurors today.)
These political reforms mainly affected men, because only males had political power and could be Athenian citizens.
Solon did not establish a democracy, rule by the people, but men in all classes were represented in major political decisions,
and there was some special mobility, that is, people could move from one class to another.
How Did Solon’s Reforms Affect Women?
Women were not considered citizens and had no direct say in the government, so politically all women were inferior to
men, even men in the lowest class. However, some of Solon’s reforms were directed it women. For example, he put a limit
on what people could spend for ceremonies and funerals. Because women were responsible for taking care of the dead and
were hired as mourners who grieved publicly, this reform reduced those jobs.
Solon made laws about dowries that brides brought when they married. Her dowry helped pay the wife’s expenses and
neither her husband nor members of his family could touch it. Solon reduced the size of dowries, including limiting the
number of outfits a woman could have to three. Perhaps he hoped that this would help ensure that poorer girls could find
husbands, but restricting dowries also reduced what a girl inherited from her family.
Solon wanted to lessen tensions among the various social classes and institute reforms aimed at both men and women.
Once he had put his reforms in place, he relinquished power, retired, and devoted him self to writing poetry. Not many
leaders voluntarily give up power as Solon did. Perhaps he was attentive to his own counsel: “Mark a man by his end.”
Peisistratus Rules as a Tyrant
Although Solon’s reforms prevented civil war, he may have heightened tensions among factions (groups with special
interests, such as merchants and aristocrats), especially aristocrats on the Plain and merchants on the coast. All classes were
still dissatisfied, but the poorest most of all. Landless people and poor farmers soon rallied around Peisistratus — a new
leader who promised to redistribute land — who ruled Athens from 560 to 541 B.C.E. He used the military to stay in
power, maintaining his own mercenary bodyguard.
Peisistratus redistributed government agricultural lands to the poor. If aristocrats protested too much, he redistributed
their land as well, but he did not take land from aristocrats who supported him. He gave government loans to encourage
farmers to cultivate olive trees, and he established commercial treaties with numerous other city-states. He promoted new
colonies, especially along the Dardanelles, to help siphon off dissatisfied people, and provided public jobs such as building
aqueducts, roads, and temples.
To unite all classes in a common culture, Peisistratus promoted the worship of Athena as the city’s major deity and
supported the Panathenaea, the yearly festival in her honor. He also established the Festival of Dionysus, where rich patrons
sponsored tragedies and other plays that all citizens could watch. Athens became a prominent city and a center of cultural
activities, attracting people from other city-states to its theatrical and poetic competitions.
Cleisthenes Reorganizes Athenians into Tribes
Cleisthenes, the third of the major Athenian reformers — often called the “father of Athenian democracy” — came to
power in 507 B.C.E. To further reduce factions, Cleisthenes reorganized everyone into ten geographic areas he called
tribes. Each tribe included members from the various factions: aristocrats who lived on the plains, rich merchants who lived
near the shore, and poor farmers from the rocky hillsides. Each tribe held its own festivals.
A Council of 500 determined the agenda for the Assembly, supervised officials, and administered the polis. Each of the
newly created tribes selected fifty members by lot to serve on the Council. The Assembly, composed of all citizens over
eighteen — probably between 30,000 and 40,000 men — met four times every 36 days. Government officials, except for
generals, were selected by lot from all citizens over 30. The Assembly elected ten generals annually and could elect the
same general a number of times.
Cleisthenes also introduced the concept of ostracism, using banishment as punishment instead of the death penalty or
keeping guilty persons in jail. A quorum (the minimum number of people who must attend a meeting in order to conduct
business) of citizens of the Assembly (6,000) could vote to banish any person whom they believed was a danger to the
polis. If a majority of the members pre sent wrote his name on a piece of pottery known as an ostraka, that person was
ostracized and could not return to Athens for ten years. No one, however, could touch his property while he was banished.
In the first ten years, Athenians ostracized only ten men, but the principle helped keep citizens responsible.
Why Did Athens Give More Men Political Power?
The reforms of Solon, Peisistratus, and Cleisthenes greatly expanded the rights of male citizens so Athens became more
democratic. Clearly, extending citizen participation in the government helped reduce the possibility of revolts and kept
many poor from emigrating to other areas. Another reason for spreading political rights may have been the new military
strategy known as the phalanx.
The phalanx was a group of several thousand soldiers, lined shoulder to shoulder, so close that each man’s shield helped
protect his neighbor. Men marched in tight formation, charging the enemy like a human tank. The phalanx gave foot
soldiers an advantage over chariots. Horses could not penetrate it, and arrows were more or less use less against the shields
men held. If one man fell, the man behind was trained to fill his place.
Greeks first used the phalanx in 570 B.C.E., drastically changing the nature of warfare, in part because aristocrats no
longer had a monopoly in the army. Unlike horses, the iron weapons that phalanx soldiers used were cheap. Soldiers had to
pay for their own arms and armor, and now even merchants and small farmers could afford to fight.
In fact, farmers were needed in the phalanx. But why, they must have asked, should we fight for a city-state that denies
us political rights? We have little incentive to risk our lives for landowners who have all the power and can even take our
land away. One way to encourage the merchants and farmers to fight was to grant them some political power. Political
rights give men a stake in society and should make them eager to defend the polis.
Was Athens a Democracy?
Many historians have glorified ancient Athenian democracy, and modern political leaders still refer to the reforms of Solon
and Cleisthenes as the birth of democracy. However, we should remember that citizens were a very small minority of all the
people who lived in
Attica, and political rights were limited to those citizens. Women, approximately half the population, were never citizens.
Slaves had no political rights, and a very large group of merchants and other resident foreigners were also denied
citizenship. Athenians saw no contradiction in granting political rights to only a few and building their economy on slavery
and thousands of non-citizen merchants and traders.