It is understandable why Plato would despise democracy, considering that his friend and mentor, Socrates, was condemned to death by the policy makers of Athens in 399 BCE. It was too much. Athenion promised that Mithridates would restore democracy to Athensan apparent reference to the archons violation of the constitutions one-term limit. And its denouement is the Roman sack of Athens, a bloody day that effectively marked the end of Athens as an independent state. Athenion struts on stage before the crowd, then displays the sloganeering skills of a modern politician, saying: Now you command yourselves, and I am your commander in chief. The third important institution was the popular courts, or dikasteria. An early example of the Greek genius for applied critical theory was their invention of political theory Three of the seven noble conspirators are given set speeches to deliver, the first in favour of democracy (though he does not actually call it that), the second in favour of aristocracy (a nice form of oligarchy), the third - delivered by Darius, who in historical fact will succeed to the throne - in favour, naturally, of constitutional monarchy, which in practice meant autocracy. In Athens, it was a noble named Solon who laid the foundations for democracy, and introduced a . With few military resources of its own, the city turned for help to the Roman Republic, the rising power of the day. The generals' collective crime, so it was alleged by Theramenes (formerly one of the 400) and others with suspiciously un- or anti-democratic credentials, was to have failed to rescue several thousands of Athenian citizen survivors. https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-greece/ancient-greece-democracy. He and his allies then retreated to the Acropolis, which the Romans promptly surrounded. Because of his reforming compromises and other legislation, posterity refers to him as Solon the lawgiver. Greek myths explained everything from religious rituals to the weather, and read more, The term Ancient, or Archaic, Greece refers to the years 700-480 B.C., not the Classical Age (480-323 B.C.) Fighting ensued, and the Athenians then took steps that explicitly violated the Thirty Years' Treaty. Yet his plans hit a snag when Delos refused to break from Rome. In 621 BCE Draco wrote the law code in order to ease discontent in . Another is theory (from the Greek word meaning contemplation, itself based on the root for seeing). In around 450 B.C., the Athenian general Pericles tried to consolidate his power by using public money, the dues paid to Athens by its allies in the Delian League coalition, to support the city-states artists and thinkers. When a Roman ram breached part of the walls of Piraeus, Sulla directed fire-bearing missiles against a nearby Pontic tower, sending it up in flames like a monstrous torch. Some Rights Reserved (2009-2023) under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license unless otherwise noted. However, in reality, it was actually Persia who had won the war. In 399 he was charged with impiety (through not duly recognising the gods the city recognised, and introducing new, unrecognised divinities) and, a separate alleged offence, corrupting the young. Not only do we pay for our servers, but also for related services such as our content delivery network, Google Workspace, email, and much more. As the Pontic general Archelaus persuaded other Greek cities to turn against Romeincluding Thebes to the northwest of AthensAristion established a new regime in Athens. Sulla arrived in Greece early in 87 with five legions (approximately 25,000 men) and some mounted auxiliaries. 'What', asks the teenage Alcibiades pseudo-innocently, is 'law'? Its economy, heavily dependent on trade and resources from overseas, crashed when in the 4th century instability in the region began to affect the arterial routes through which those supplies flowed. Sulla circulated among his men and cheered them on, promising that their ordeal was almost over. Instead, Dr. Scott argues that the strains and stresses of the 4th century BC, which our own times seem to echo, proved too much for the Athenian democratic system and ultimately caused it to destroy itself. I wish to receive a weekly Cambridge research news summary by email. READ MORE: Why Greece Is Considered the Birthplace of Democracy. Athenion had the mob eating out of his hand. The effect on the citys model democracy was also staggering. Becoming more desperate, they gathered wild plants on the slopes of the Acropolis and boiled shoes and leather oil-flasks. Athens in the early first century had energy and culture. Nine presidents (proedroi), elected by lot and holding the office one time only, organised the proceedings and assessed the voting. Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. This, fortunately, did not last long; even Sparta felt unable to prop up such a hugely unpopular regime, nicknamed the '30 Tyrants', and the restoration of democracy was surprisingly speedy and smooth - on the whole. In these intellectuals' view, government was an art, craft or skill, and should be entrusted only to the skilled and intelligent, who were by definition a minority. 'Why', answers his guardian Pericles, who was then at the height of his influence, 'it is whatever the people decides and decrees'. Athenian democracy was short-lived Around 550BC, democracy was established in Athens, marking a clear shift from previous ruling systems. While Eli Sagan believes Athenian democracy can be divided into seven chapters, classicist and political scientist Josiah Ober has a different view. In ancient Athens, the birthplace of democracy, not only were children denied the vote (an exception we still consider acceptable), but so were women, foreigners, and enslaved people. After all, at the time of writing, Athens was the greatest single power in the entire Greek world, and that fact could not be totally unconnected with the fact that Athens was a democracy. Nevertheless, in one sense the condemnation of Socrates was disastrous for the reputation of the Athenian democracy, because it helped decisively to form one of democracy's - all democracy's, not just the Athenian democracy's - most formidable critics: Plato. The Athenian Democracy existed from the early 7th century BC up until Athens was conquered by the Macedonians in 322 BC. Athens was forced to destroy its main defenses, abolish the Delian League and its fleet was handed over to the Spartans. However, historians argue that selection to the boule was not always just a matter of chance. Athens, therefore, had a direct democracy. In a new history of the 4th century BC, Cambridge University Classicist Dr. Michael Scott reveals how the implosion of Ancient Athens occurred amid a crippling economic downturn, while politicians committed financial misdemeanours, sent its army to fight unpopular foreign wars and struggled to cope with a surge in immigration. This was a democratic form of government where the people or 'demos' had real political power. (Only about 5,000 men attended each session of the Assembly; the rest were serving in the army or navy or working to support their families.). "There are grounds to consider whether we want to go down the same route that Athens did. Some 2,000 of Archelauss men were killed. BBC 2014 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Centuries later, archaeologists discovered some of these in the ruins of the Pompeion, a gathering place for the start of processions. By the end, it was hailing its latest ruler, Demetrius, as both a king and a living God. An important element in the debates was freedom of speech (parrhsia) which became, perhaps, the citizen's most valued privilege. Demagogue meant literally 'leader of the demos' ('demos' means people); but democracy's critics took it to mean mis-leaders of the people, mere rabble-rousers. In the meantime, Mithridates used the respite to rebuild his strength. 500 BC Athens decided to share decision making. With winter coming on, Sulla established his camp at Eleusis, 14 miles west of Athens, where a ditch running to the sea protected his men. Out of all those people, only male citizens who were older than 18 were a part of the demos, meaning only about 40,000 people could participate in the democratic process. The Thirty Tyrants ( ) is a term first used Cleisthenes (b. late 570s BCE) was an Athenian statesman who famously Ostracism was a political process used in 5th-century BCE Athens Pericles (l. 495429 BCE) was a prominent Greek statesman, orator Themistocles (c. 524 - c. 460 BCE) was an Athenian statesman and Solon (c. 640 c. 560 BCE) was an Athenian statesman, lawmaker What did democracy really mean in Athens? Of this group, perhaps as few as 100 citizens - the wealthiest, most influential, and the best speakers - dominated the political arena both in front of the assembly and behind the scenes in private conspiratorial political meetings (xynomosiai) and groups (hetaireiai). "It shows how an earlier generation of people responded to similar challenges and which strategies succeeded. The assembly could also vote to ostracise from Athens any citizen who had become too powerful and dangerous for the polis. The tyranny had been a terrible and. Once near his target, Sulla moved to isolate Athens from Piraeus and besiege each separately. The mass involvement of all male citizens and the expectation that they should participate actively in the running of the polis is clear in this quote from Thucydides: We alone consider a citizen who does not partake in politics not only one who minds his own business but useless. "It is profoundly dangerous when a politician takes a step to undercut or ignore a political norm, it's extremely dangerous whenever anyone introduces violent rhetoric or actual violence into a. People of power or influence weren't concerned with the rights of such non-citizens. Our word demagogue -- that is, an irresponsible "rabble rousing" populist politician -- is lifted directly from Athenian debates about the nature of democracy. According to the writer's dramatic scenario, we are in what we would now call the year 522 BC. Gloating over Roman misfortunes, he declared that Mithridates controlled all of Anatolia. The first concrete evidence for this crucial invention comes in the Histories of Herodotus, a brilliant work composed over several years, delivered orally to a variety of audiences all round the enormously extended Greek world, and published in some sense as a whole perhaps in the 420s BC. The Romans built a huge mobile siege tower that reached higher than the citys walls, and placed catapults in its upper reaches to fire down upon the defenders. The book, entitled From Democrats To Kings, aims to overhaul Athens' traditional image as the ancient world's "golden city", arguing that its early successes have obscured a darker history of blood-lust and mob rule. Re-enactment of fighting 'hoplites' Intellectual anti-democrats such as Socrates and Plato, for instance, argued that the majority of the people, because they were by and large ignorant and unskilled, would always get it wrong. Originally published in the Spring 2011 issue of Military History Quarterly. 2023 A&E Television Networks, LLC. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. With Athens under his thumb, Sulla turned back to Piraeus. But what did the development of Athenian democracy actually involve? The Romans drove the rest back into Piraeus so swiftly that Archelaus was left outside the walls and had to be hauled up by rope. Modern representative democracies, in contrast to direct democracies, have citizens who vote for representatives who create and enact laws on their behalf. Any citizen could speak to the assembly and vote on decisions by simply holding up their hands. After all, at the time of writing, Athens was the greatest single power in the entire Greek world By 413, however, the argument from success in favour of radical democracy was beginning to collapse, as Athens' fortunes in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta began seriously to decline. Plutarch also claims that Aristion took to dancing on the walls and shouting insults at Sulla. Running a website with millions of readers every month is expensive. Since the 19th-century read more, The term classical Greece refers to the period between the Persian Wars at the beginning of the fifth century B.C. In Athenian democracy, not only did citizens participate in a direct democracy whereby they themselves made the decisions by which they lived, but they also actively served in the institutions that governed them, and so they directly controlled all parts of the political process. Hes just returned to the city-state from a mission across the Aegean Sea to Anatolia, where he forged an alliance with a great king. Though Mithridates had to withdraw from territories he had conquered and pay an indemnity, he remained in power in Pontus. Sparta had won the war. Nor did he do anything to help defend his own cause, so that more of the 501 jurors voted for the death penalty than had voted him guilty as charged in the first place. Chiefly because of a fatal ambiguity: to its opponents democracy was no more, and no better, than mob-rule, since for them it meant the political power of the masses exercised over and at the expense of the elite. Archaeologists have found no inscriptions with decrees from the Assembly that date within 40 years of the end of the siege. To the Persians, he emphasized his descent from ancient Persian kings. This complex system was, no doubt, to ensure a suitable degree of checks and balances to any potential abuse of power, and to ensure each traditional region was equally represented and given equal powers. In the dark early morning of March 1, 86 BC, the Romans opened an attack there, launching large catapult stones. Immediately following the Bronze Age collapse and at the start of the Dark . Sulla ordered another retreat, and turned his attention to Athens, which by now was a softer target than Piraeus. Regardless, Sulla benefited greatly. Rome would have to fight the Pontic king again before his final defeat and deathpurportedly by suicidein 63. This executive of the executive had a chairman (epistates) who was chosen by lot each day. World History Encyclopedia, 03 Apr 2018. Soon after, Roman soldiers overheard men in the Athenian neighborhood of the Kerameikos, northwest of the Acropolis, grousing about the neglected defenses there. One night Sulla personally reconnoitered that stretch of wall, which was near the Dipylon Gate, the citys main entrance. What he failed to realize, however, is that crowding the population of Athens behind its Long Walls would be deadly if disease ever broke out in Athens while Sparta had it besieged. Other city-states had, at one time or another, systems of democracy, notably Argos, Syracuse, Rhodes, and Erythrai. Our latest articles delivered to your inbox, once a week: Our mission is to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide. Many of its economic problems were gradually solved by attracting wealthy immigrants to Athens - which as a name still carried considerable prestige. More loosely, it alludes to the entire range of democratic reforms that proceeded alongside the Jacksonians read more, The Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C. Draco writing the first written law code in Athens was the initiating event that brought democracy to Athens. Then there was also an executive committee of the boul which consisted of one tribe of the ten which participated in the boul (i.e., 50 citizens, known as prytaneis) elected on a rotation basis, so each tribe composed the executive once each year. The evidence comes in the form of what is known as the Persian Debate in Book 3. His short and vehement pamphlet was produced probably in the 420s, during the first decade of the Peloponnesian War, and makes the following case: democracy is appalling, since it represents the rule of the poor, ignorant, fickle and stupid majority over the socially and intellectually superior minority, the world turned upside down. In an effort to cope, Athens began to create a system of self-regulation, described as a "giant Neighbourhood Watch", asking citizens not to trouble its overstretched bureaucracy with non-urgent, petty crimes. Athenian democracy refers to the system of democratic government used in Athens, Greece from the 5th to 4th century BCE. World History Foundation is a non-profit organization registered in Canada. A small number of families came to dominate the leading political offices and ruled almost as an oligarchyone that was careful not to provoke the Romans. 'Certainly', says Pericles. Our publication has been reviewed for educational use by Common Sense Education, Internet Scout (University of Wisconsin), Merlot (California State University), OER Commons and the School Library Journal. As the year 87 drew on, Mithridates sent additional troops. Positions on the boule were chosen by lot and not by election. Any member of the demosany one of those 40,000 adult male citizenswas welcome to attend the meetings of the ekklesia, which were held 40 times per year in a hillside auditorium west of the Acropolis called the Pnyx. Athens declared the Delos harbor duty-free, and the island prospered as a major trading center. Web. Others brought up rams and entered the breach theyd made in the walls earlier. Realizing the citys defenses were broken, Aristion burned the Odeon of Pericles, on the south side of the Acropolis, to prevent the Romans from using its timbers to construct more siege engines. Yet, with the advent of new technology, it would actually be possible to reinvent today a form of indirect but participatory tele-democracy. Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. The capital would be sending no more reinforcements or money. At the kings order, the locals slaughtered tens of thousands of Romans and Italians who lived among them. It was from the creation of this empire that the sovereign Athenian demos gained the authority to exercise the will of Athens over other Greek states and not just her own. Jurors were paid a wage for their work, so that the job could be accessible to everyone and not just the wealthy (but, since the wage was less than what the average worker earned in a day, the typical juror was an elderly retiree). When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Athenian democracy refers to the system of democratic government used in Athens, Greece from the 5th to 4th century BCE. To protect their money, some Athenians buried coin hoards. With the help of bodyguards, Athenion pushed through the crowd to the front of the Stoa of Attalos, a long, colonnaded commercial building among the most impressive in the Agora. Actor posing as Socrates S2 ep2: What did the future look like in the past? Indeed, there was a specially designed machine of coloured tokens (kleroterion) to ensure those selected were chosen randomly, a process magistrates had to go through twice. War between Pontus and Romethe First Mithridatic Warbroke out in 89 BC over the petty state of Bithynia in northwestern Anatolia. The terms of the 85 BC peace agreement with Sulla were surprisingly mild considering that Mithridates had slaughtered thousands of Romans. If we are all democrats today, we are not - and it is importantly because we are not - Athenian-style democrats. Why Greece Is Considered the Birthplace of Democracy. democratic system failed to be effective. Mark is a full-time author, researcher, historian, and editor. Athenian democracy developed around the fifth century B.C.E. But this was all before the powerful Athens of the fifth century BC, when the city had been at its zenith. He detached a force to surround Athens, then struck at Piraeus, where Archelaus and his troops were stationed. Any male citizen could, then, participate in the main democratic body of Athens, the assembly (ekklsia). Archelaus was to seize Delos, then solidify Pontic control of Athens and as much of Greece as possible. Inside homes, the Romans discovered a sight that must have horrified even the most hardened among them: human flesh prepared as food. S2 ep4: What would a more just future look like? It was here in the courts that laws made by the assembly could be challenged and decisions were made regarding ostracism, naturalization, and remission of debt. Democracy inevitably fails because it is predicated not on merit but on popularity. The Romans placed a proxy on the Bithynian throne and encouraged him to raid Pontic territory. Neither side gained an advantage until a group of Romans who had been gathering wood returned and charged into battle. Direct involvement in the politics of the polis also meant that the Athenians developed a unique collective identity and probably too, a certain pride in their system, as shown in Pericles' famous Funeral Oration for the Athenian dead in 431 BCE, the first year of the Peloponnesian War: Athens' constitution is called a democracy because it respects the interests not of a minority but of the whole people. Not all the Anatolian Greeks wanted to do the dirty work: the citizens of the inland town of Tralles hired an outsidera man named Theophilusto kill for them. Sulla also moved north, however, and defeated Archelaus in two pitched battles in Boeotia, at Chaeronea and Orchomenos. Archelauss men, Sulla discovered, had dug a tunnel and undermined it. Thank you for your help! Now all citizens could participate in government, not just aristocrats. In this case there was a secret ballot where voters wrote a name on a piece of broken pottery (ostrakon). In hard practical fact there was no alternative, and no alternative to hereditary autocracy, the system laid down by Cyrus, could seriously have been contemplated. The famous Long Walls that had connected the two cities during the Peloponnesian War had since fallen into disrepair. Illustrating the esteem in which democratic government was held, there was even a divine personification of the ideal of democracy, the goddess Demokratia. Into this dangerous situation stepped Solon, a moderate man the Athenians trusted to bring justice for all. Such brutality may have been carried out with a design; Athenians fearing a Roman military intervention were growing restless under Aristion. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. Less than two years separate these scenes. That was one, class-based sort of objection to Greek-style direct democracy. But - a big 'but' - it works: that is, it delivers the goods - for the masses. Terrified Romans fled to temples for sanctuary, but to no avail; they were butchered anyway. The . Then there was the view that the mob, the poor majority, were nothing but a collective tyrant. The classical period was an era of war and conflictfirst between the Greeks and the Persians, then between the read more. Men on both towers discharged all kinds of missiles, according to Appian. Macedonians under Philip IIfather of Alexander the Greathad defeated Athens in 338 BC and installed a garrison in the Athenian port city of Piraeus. The war had one last act to play out. He also said that the ability to govern and participate in government was more important than one's class. Sparta and its allies accused Athens of aggression and threatened war. The first, rather obvious, strike against Athenian democracy is that there was a tendency for people to be casually executed. The lottery system also prevented the establishment of a permanent class of civil servants who might be tempted to use the government to advance or enrich themselves. When the fleet reached the city, Aristion quickly seized power, thanks in part to a personal guard of 2,000 Pontic soldiers. The Athenian defenders, weakened by hunger, fled. A demagogue, a treacherous ally, and a brutal Roman general destroyed the city-stateand democracyin the first-century BC, https://www.historynet.com/the-end-of-athens/, Jerrie Mock: Record-Breaking American Female Pilot, When 21 Sikh Soldiers Fought the Odds Against 10,000 Pashtun Warriors, Few Red Tails Remain: Tuskegee Airman Dies at 96. During the 600s B.C., Athens was a small city-state. Under Macedonian control, Athens had dwindled to a third-rank power, with no independence in foreign affairs and an insignificant military. It is a period of history that we would do well to think about a little more right now - and we ignore it at our peril.". For more details about how Ober came to . In 146, they ruthlessly destroyed the city-state of Corinth and established their authority over much of Greece. Athenion at first feigned a reluctance to speak because of the sheer scale of what is to be said, according to Posidonius. A further variant on this view was that the masses or the mob, being ignorant and stupid for the most part, were easily swayed by specious rhetoric - so easily swayed that they were incapable of taking longer views or of sticking resolutely to one, good view once that had been adopted. In 229, when the Macedonian King Demetrius II died, leaving nine-year-old Philip V as his heir, the Athenians took advantage of the power vacuum and negotiated the removal of the garrison at Piraeus. During the night, Archelaus sealed the breaches in the walls by building lunettes, or crescent-shaped fieldworks, inside. Why, to start with, does he not use the word democracy, when democracy of an Athenian radical kind is clearly what he's advocating? In 83 BC, Sulla and his army returned to Italy, kicking off the Roman Republics first all-out civil war, which he won. The Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Body, Report on the allegations and matters raised in the BUAV report, Non-human primates (marmosets and rhesus macaques). Aristion didnt hold out long: He surrendered when he ran out of drinking water. It only hastened Athens' eventual defeat in the war, which was followed by the installation at Sparta's behest of an even narrower oligarchy than that of the 400 - that of the 30. About the same time that the Pontic army was sweeping across the province of Asia, Athens dispatched the philosopher Athenion as an envoy to Mithridates. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. In tandem with all these political institutions were the law courts (dikasteria) which were composed of 6,000 jurors and a body of chief magistrates (archai) chosen annually by lot. Indeed, the failure to make badly needed changes in such key areas as pensions and health (under PASOK) and education (under ND) became the most striking feature of all governments in Greece's. Instead, Dr. Scott argues that this period is fundamental to understanding what really happened to Athenian democracy. Throughout the siege, Sulla got regular reports from spies inside Piraeustwo Athenian slaves who inscribed notes on lead balls that they shot with slings into the Roman lines. So what we have in Herodotus is a Greek debate in Persian dress. Pericles knew Athens' strength was in their navy, so his strategy was to avoid Sparta on land, because he knew that on land, Athens would be no match for Sparta.