Tours: Democracy in Athens

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Delve further into the workings of ancient Greek democracy.

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The Athenian assembly was known as the ekklesia. It met at the Pnyx forty times a year to discuss various civic matters, and each session usually lasted a few hours.

The word pnyx is believed to mean something close to "packed together".

This was probably a reference to the fact that during meetings of the ekklesia, the location would be filled to its capacity, with citizens packed in practically shoulder-to-shoulder.

All male citizens were allowed to directly participate in the democratic process.

Those over twenty years old had the right to speak and vote, while those over thirty could be elected to the higher position of magistrate.

In total, there were approximately 30,000 citizens in Athens in the classical period. To draft and adopt decrees, 6,000 of them had to attend the meeting.

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Not every Ancient Greek city was a democracy. In fact, most cities in the Classical period functioned under two other forms of government: oligarchy or tyranny.

Oligarchies were ruled by a small group of people. One example of an oligarchy is Sparta, where a council of 28 elders controlled the majority of the political process.

Tyranny, meanwhile, involved the ruling of a popular leader known as a tyrant. Tyrants would often seize control of cities in the face of external threats.

Athens has experienced all three of these forms of government. Until 546 BCE, it was an oligarchy controlled by a few important families competing for political power. In 546 BCE, the aristocrat Peisistratos seized complete power in the city with the help of a private army, and his family ruled as tyrants until their expulsion from Athens in 510 BCE. Democracy was established shortly afterward in order to avoid strife between aristocrats and prevent the rise of another tyrant.

Citizens came from all over Attika's ten districts to attend the meetings of the ekklesia.

The meeting was presided over by an executive council called the prytaneis.

Every session began with a sacrifice to Zeus Agoraios, the patron of the assembly.

During the meeting, citizens delivered speeches from the Pnyx•s platform on whatever issues the city faced.

Afterwards, the issue was voted on with a show of hands from the gathered assembly.

The ekklesia made important decisions about subjects like grain importation, expenses, and declarations of war.

While they could not directly enact laws, they had a say in appointing Athens's legislators, which gave them a large role in shaping the city's daily operations.

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In Aristophanes's comedy "Assemblywomen", the playwright imagines a scenario in which the women of Athens seize control of the city's government and enact two major reforms: the abolition of private property, and enforced sexual equality for old and unattractive women.

Aristophanes's play treats the idea of women in the assembly as a joke, which is not surprising given that women were not allowed to be part of the assembly. However, women still played a public role in Athens in the form of religious rituals.

Women were priestesses in over 40 major public cults, including the cult of Athena Polias, the Athens's patron deity. Some festivals - Such as the Thesmophoria, which was held in honor of Demeter - were also reserved exclusively for women.

While some citizens only participated in the sessions of the ekklesia, others could become more involved in democracy as magistrates.

Magistrates were elected from among Athenian citizens over thirty.

They were often successful orators and charismatic politicians, and they held much more sway over important decisions than the average citizen.

One of the most famous magistrates was Perikles, who was so popular he held his position for fifteen years.

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In theory, the Athenian democracy was supposed to give laborers as much power as aristocrats, but in practice, the influence of the nobility remained strong. This is mostly because aristocrats had more resources available to them when it came to forging political alliances and maintaining their prestige.

As a result, many elected officials from the 5th century BCE belonged to the aristocracy. For example, even though the statesmen Perikles championed many reforms that limited the power of aristocrats, he himself belonged to the Alkmaionidai - a powerful family that claimed to be descended from the Homeric hero Nestor.

After the death of Perikles in 429 BCE, a new breed of leaders emerged who did not belong to old nobility. Instead, they were wealthy merchants who earned their fortunes from trade or small factories rather than from land, Their opponents called these new leaders "demagogues", meaning leaders of the common people.

One of the earliest and most well-known demagogues was Kleon, who gained popularity by advocating for policies that benefited the general population, such as paying people for jury duty. He was also famous for taking a very aggressive stance against Sparta during the Peloponnesian War, and for attempting to remove his opponents from office by accusing them of false charges.

In theory, every Athenian citizen over the age of twenty had the right to participate in the assembly.

However, some of them lived far from the city, and others could not financially afford to miss a day of work to attend meetings.

For these reasons, the city introduced a special allowance called a misthos ekklesiastikos in the 4th century BCE, meant to encourage participation.

Originally, it was two obols, but the politician Kleon raised it to three.

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In Aristophanes's play "Acharnians", Athenian citizens were so disinterested in democracy that they deserted the Pnyx to loiter in the Agora. To combat this complacency, a group of slaves wandered the city, herding the citizens back to the Pnyx using ropes dyed with red paint. Any citizen who tried to escape was marked with the paint and then fined for refusing to participate in democracy.

While the story is an exaggeration, the city did actually close its shops and attempt to funnel people to the Pnyx on days when the assembly was meeting. This is because in the 5th century BCE, Athens had great difficulty convincing its citizens to attend the assembly.

However, the situation changed in the 4th century BCE when citizens started getting paid for attending meetings, which helped compensate for any lost working hours. The Pnyx was also enlarged to include up to 8,500 citizens, and was later enlarged again to fit around 13,000 citizens. Clearly, money was a better motivator than red rope.

Athens introduced several innovations that heavily influenced modern society, including theater, architecture, and philosophy.

However, their greatest contribution was their democratic government, which introduced the concept of a city ruled by its citizens.

The decision to adopt democracy as a government - a choice made in 508 BCE - shaped civilization as we know it, and continues to affect us today.

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In 1792, American revolutionary Thomas Paine wrote in "The Rights of Man" that "what Athens was in miniature, America will be in magnitude". While modern democracies are much larger and more complex than that of Athens, they both share many qualities.

For example, just as Athens's democracy was born out of a reaction to the tyranny of Peisistratos and his sons, most influential Western democracies were also reactions against perceived tyranny, such as the American colonies revolting against the British, or the French revolutionaries fighting against the Old Regime.

But perhaps the most enduring part of Athens's democracy is the idea that political power rests with the people. This central concept was preserved by Greek philosophers and historians under Roman rule, passed on to medieval scholars, and championed by the modern political activists who laid the foundations for our current systems of government.

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Tours: Democracy in Athens

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