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. Ostracism, in which a citizen could be expelled from Athens for 10 years, was among the powers of the ekklesia. People rushed to greet him as he was carried into the city on a scarlet-covered couch, wearing a ring with Mithridatess portrait. This being the case, the following remarks on democracy are focussed on the Athenians. In 590 BCE Athenians were suffering from debt and famine throughout Athens. Passions ran high and at one point during a crucial Assembly meeting, over which Socrates may have presided, the cry went up that it would be monstrous if the people were prevented from doing its will, even at the expense of strict legality. 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. 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. They note that wealthy and influential peopleand their relativesserved on the Council much more frequently than would be likely in a truly random lottery. World History Encyclopedia. Then he recounted events in the east. Cleisthenes issued reforms in 508 and 507 BC that undermined the domination of the aristocratic families and connected every Athenian to the city's rule. Once near his target, Sulla moved to isolate Athens from Piraeus and besiege each separately. Sulla had siege engines built on the spot, cutting down the groves of trees in the Athenian suburb of the Academy, where Plato had taught some three centuries earlier. The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes: Structure, Principles Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. Persuasive speakers who seemed to offer solutions - such as Demosthenes - came to the fore but ultimately took it closer to military defeat and submission to Macedonia. The University of Cambridge will use your email address to send you our weekly research news email. Buildings in the Agora and on the south side of the Acropolis remained damaged for decades, monuments to the poverty in postwar Athens. People of power or influence weren't concerned with the rights of such non-citizens. democratic system failed to be effective. Not all anti-democrats, however, saw only democracy's weaknesses and were entirely blind to democracy's strengths. In 411 and again in 404 Athens experienced two, equally radical counter-coups and the establishment of narrow oligarchic regimes, first of the 400 led by the formidable intellectual Antiphon, and then of the 30, led by Plato's relative Critias. Athenian Democracy. Men on both towers discharged all kinds of missiles, according to Appian. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so. Under this system, all male citizens - the dmos - had equal political rights, freedom of speech, and the opportunity to participate directly in the political arena. Perhaps the most notoriously bad decisions taken by the Athenian dmos were the execution of six generals after they had actually won the battle of Arginousai in 406 BCE and the death sentence given to the philosopher Socrates in 399 BCE. was part of the first Persian invasion of Greece. He also helped himself to a stash of gold and silver found on the Acropolis. "It shows how an earlier generation of people responded to similar challenges and which strategies succeeded. Regardless, Sulla benefited greatly. Related Content Sullas solution: rob the Greek temples of their treasures. While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. Athens transformed ancient warfare and became one of the ancient world's superpowers. Thank you for your help! Ostrakon for PericlesMark Cartwright (CC BY-NC-SA). Actor posing as Socrates The Romans placed a proxy on the Bithynian throne and encouraged him to raid Pontic territory. 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? Archelaus was to seize Delos, then solidify Pontic control of Athens and as much of Greece as possible. So what we have in Herodotus is a Greek debate in Persian dress. Some Rights Reserved (2009-2023) under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license unless otherwise noted. 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. The Athenians: Another warning from history? The majority won the day and the decision was final. In 129 BC, after Rome established its province of Asia, in western Anatolia across the Aegean, Delos became a trade hub for goods shipped between Anatolia and Italy. Mithridates, who came from a Persian dynasty, ruled a culturally mixed kingdom that included both Persians and Greeks. However, historians argue that selection to the boule was not always just a matter of chance. However, in reality, it was actually Persia who had won the war. It was in the courts that laws made by the assembly could be challenged & decisions were made regarding. This time, they burst through Archelauss hastily constructed lunette. The tyranny had been a terrible and. It was this body which supervised any administrative committees and officials on behalf of the assembly. There were 3 classes in the society of ancient Athens. Soon after, Roman soldiers overheard men in the Athenian neighborhood of the Kerameikos, northwest of the Acropolis, grousing about the neglected defenses there. The two either supported the Romans or were currying favor with the side that they expected to win. The Pontic king sent his Greek mercenary, General Archelaus, into the Aegean with a fleet. In the meantime, Mithridates used the respite to rebuild his strength. https://www.worldhistory.org/Athenian_Democracy/. We contribute a share of our revenue to remove carbon from the atmosphere and we offset our team's carbon footprint. Democracy itself, however, buckled under the strain. Illustrating the esteem in which democratic government was held, there was even a divine personification of the ideal of democracy, the goddess Demokratia. Now all citizens could participate in government, not just aristocrats. The one exception to this rule was the leitourgia, or liturgy, which was a kind of tax that wealthy people volunteered to pay to sponsor major civic undertakings such as the maintenance of a navy ship (this liturgy was called the trierarchia) or the production of a play or choral performance at the citys annual festival. By the end, it was hailing its latest ruler, Demetrius, as both a king and a living God. Archelauss men, Sulla discovered, had dug a tunnel and undermined it. The boule was a group of 500 men, 50 from each of ten Athenian tribes, who served on the Council for one year. The city held festivals and presented nine plays each year, both comedies and tragedies. Ancient Greece saw a lot of philosophical and political changes soon after the end of the Bronze Age. An artillery duel developed. Sulla had the tyrant and his bodyguard executed. The Romans then fractured a nearby portion of the wall and launched an all-out attack. We care about our planet! Thanks to Sullas ruthlessness, Athenions demagoguery, and the Athenians manic enthusiasm for the proposed alliance with Mithridates, Athenss days as an autonomous city-state were all but over. The war had one last act to play out. Athens' democracy in fact recovered from these injuries within years. 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. When Athenion returned home in the early summer of 88, citizens gave him a rapturous reception. We would much rather spend this money on producing more free history content for the world. 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. In the later parts of the Republic, Plato suggests that democracy is one of the later stages in the decline of the ideal state. 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. Many tried to flee, but Aristion placed guards at the gates. In this case there was a secret ballot where voters wrote a name on a piece of broken pottery (ostrakon). They didnt act immediately; a fight over who would lead the army against Mithridates was settled only when Consul Lucius Cornelius Sulla secured the command by marching on Rome, an unprecedented move. Paul Cartledge is Professor of Greek History at the University of Cambridge. That at any rate is the assumed situation. The result was a series of domestic problems, including an inability to fund the traditional police force. 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. Into this dangerous situation stepped Solon, a moderate man the Athenians trusted to bring justice for all. 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. In 83 BC, Sulla and his army returned to Italy, kicking off the Roman Republics first all-out civil war, which he won. Athenion at first feigned a reluctance to speak because of the sheer scale of what is to be said, according to Posidonius. According to a fragmentary account by the historian Posidonius, Athenion's letters persuaded Athens that "the Roman supremacy was broken." The prospect of the Anatolian Greeks throwing off Roman rule also sparked pan-Hellenic solidarity. Sulla ordered another retreat, and turned his attention to Athens, which by now was a softer target than Piraeus. Macedonians under Philip IIfather of Alexander the Greathad defeated Athens in 338 BC and installed a garrison in the Athenian port city of Piraeus. Then there was the view that the mob, the poor majority, were nothing but a collective tyrant. By Professor Paul Cartledge He also said that the ability to govern and participate in government was more important than one's class. 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 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. Thank you! (Thuc. The majority won the day and the decision was final. In despair, many Athenians kill themselves. There is a strong case that democracy was a major reason for this success. The Greek idea of democracy was different from present-day democracy because, in Athens, all adult citizens were required to take an active part in the government. Other city-states had, at one time or another, systems of democracy, notably Argos, Syracuse, Rhodes, and Erythrai. Cleisthenes introduced democracy in Athen (500c BCE) Democracy of Athens. What mattered was whether or not the unusual system was any good. Those defeats persuaded Mithridates to end the war. As the new Alexander, he may also have seen the conquest of Greece as a natural move. Cartwright, Mark. This system was comprised of three separate institutions: the ekklesia, a sovereign governing body that wrote laws and dictated foreign policy; the boule, a council of representatives from the ten Athenian tribes and the dikasteria, the popular courts in which citizens argued cases before a group of lottery-selected jurors. The boul or council was composed of 500 citizens who were chosen by lot and who served for one year with the limitation that they could serve no more than two non-consecutive years. 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. Neither side gained an advantage until a group of Romans who had been gathering wood returned and charged into battle. Canada, The United States and South Africa are all examples of modern-day representative democracies. The Greek emissary became an enthusiastic booster of the king and sent letters home advocating an alliance. Please read our email privacy notice for details. "Athenian Democracy." Why, to start with, does he not use the word democracy, when democracy of an Athenian radical kind is clearly what he's advocating? 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. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. The Romans quickly got to work on their own tunnel, and when the diggers from both sides met, a savage fight broke out underground, the miners hacking at each other with spears and swords as well as they could in the darkness, according to Appian. Because of his reforming compromises and other legislation, posterity refers to him as Solon the lawgiver. I was not sent to Athens by the Romans to learn its history, but to subdue its rebels, he declared. To the Persians, he emphasized his descent from ancient Persian kings. For example, in Athens in the middle of the 4th century there were about 100,000 citizens (Athenian citizenship was limited to men and women whose parents had also been Athenian citizens), about 10,000 metoikoi, or resident foreigners, and 150,000 slaves. Sulla called a halt to the pillage and slaughter. Chronological order of government in ancient Athens. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Archaeologists have found no inscriptions with decrees from the Assembly that date within 40 years of the end of the siege. The heart of this story is a months-long battle featuring treachery and clever siege warfare. The Athenian statesman Pericles defined democracy as a system which protects the interests of all the people, not just a minority. He sent out another convoy carrying food for Athens, and when the Romans attacked it, his men dashed from hiding inside the gates and torched some of the Roman siege engines. In the furious fighting that followed, he kept his army close to Piraeus to ensure that his archers and slingers on the wall could still wreak havoc on the Romans. Unfortunately, sources on the other democratic governments in ancient Greece are few and far between. In practice, this assembly usually involved a maximum of 6000 citizens. Seven noble Persians conspire to overthrow the usurper and restore legitimate government. 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. Rome responded, rushing 20 warships and 1,000 troops to Piraeus to keep Philip V at bay. 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). and the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. World History Encyclopedia is a non-profit organization. Originally Answered: Did Athenian democracy failed because of its democratic nature? Yet the religious views of Socrates were deeply unorthodox, his political sympathies were far from radically democratic, and he had been the teacher of at least two notorious traitors, Alcibiades and Critias. If you join your strength to me, my power shall reach the combined power of all of you. Then March 86 BC, shouts and trumpet blasts rend the night air as Roman soldiers, swords drawn, run through the city. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/Athenian_Democracy/. Instead, Dr. Scott argues that this period is fundamental to understanding what really happened to Athenian democracy. 'What? When the Romans destroyed the Macedonian Kingdom in 168, the Senate awarded Athens the Aegean island of Delos. In addition, sometimes even oligarchic systems could involve a high degree of political equality, but the Athenian version, starting from c. 460 BCE and ending c. 320 BCE and involving all male citizens, was certainly the most developed. Now, Roman senators and Athenian exiles in Sullas entourage asked him to show mercy for the city. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. Sulla attacked again the next morning with his entire army, hoping the wet mortar of the lunettes would not hold. His election as hoplite general quickly followed. Athens remains a posterchild for democracies worldwide, but it was not a pure democracy. A very clever example of this line of oligarchic attack is contained in a fictitious dialogue included by Xenophon - a former pupil of Socrates, and, like Plato, an anti-democrat - in his work entitled 'Memoirs of Socrates'. 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. Sulla circulated among his men and cheered them on, promising that their ordeal was almost over. Any citizen could speak to the assembly and vote on decisions by simply holding up their hands. Special interests include art, architecture, and discovering the ideas that all civilizations share. 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. This demokratia, as it became known, was a direct democracy that gave political power to free male Athenian citizens rather than a ruling aristocratic read more, The amazing works of art and architecture known as the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World serve as a testament to the ingenuity, imagination and sheer hard work of which human beings are capable. - Melissa Schwartzberg. How did Athens swing so quickly from euphoria to catastrophe? Of all the democratic institutions, Aristotle argued that the dikasteria contributed most to the strength of democracy because the jury had almost unlimited power. Gloating over Roman misfortunes, he declared that Mithridates controlled all of Anatolia. 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. Then there was the view that the mob, the poor majority, were nothing but a collective tyrant. But when one of the Athenian delegates began a grand speech about their citys great past, Sulla abruptly dismissed them. 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. After defeating the Bithynians, Mithridates drove into the Roman province of Asia. Democracy, however, was found in other areas as well and after the conquests of Alexander the Great and the process of Hellenization, it became the norm for both the liberated cities in Asia Minor as well as new . But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! There were no police in Athens, so it was the demos themselves who brought court cases, argued for the prosecution and the defense and delivered verdicts and sentences by majority rule. The Roman leaders, he said, were prisoners, and ordinary Romans were hiding in temples, prostrate before the statues of the gods. Oracles from all sides predicted Mithridatess future victories, he said, and other nations were rushing to join forces with him. It supervised government workers and was in charge of things like navy ships (triremes) and army horses. He also said that Mithridates would free the citizens of Athens from their debts (whether he meant public or private debts is not clear). But what did the development of Athenian democracy actually involve? Fighting ensued, and the Athenians then took steps that explicitly violated the Thirty Years' Treaty. Citizens probably accounted for 10-20% of the polis population, and of these it has been estimated that only 3,000 or so people actively participated in politics. The name of "democracy" became an excuse to turn on anyone regarded as an enemy of the state, even good politicians who have, as a result, almost been forgotten. 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. These challenges to democracy include the paradoxical existence of an Athenian empire. Alexander the Great, for all his achievements, is described as a "mummy's boy" whose success rested in many ways on the more pragmatic foundations laid by his father, Philip II. Specific issues discussed in the assembly included deciding military and financial magistracies, organising and maintaining food supplies, initiating legislation and political trials, deciding to send envoys, deciding whether or not to sign treaties, voting to raise or spend funds, and debating military matters. 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. The king probably wished to engage the Romans far to the west, away from his core territories in Anatolia. 500 BC Athens decided to share decision making. One night Sulla personally reconnoitered that stretch of wall, which was near the Dipylon Gate, the citys main entrance. This imperial system has become, for us, a by-word for autocracy and the arbitrary exercise. Solon ended exclusive aristocratic control of the government, substituted a system of control by the wealthy, and introduced a new and more humane . Appian, the historian who wrote in the second century AD, records that the Bithynians were terrified at seeing men cut in halves and still breathing, or mangled in fragments, or hanging on the scythes.. With people chosen at random to hold important positions and with terms of office strictly limited, it was difficult for any individual or small group to dominate or unduly influence the decision-making process either directly themselves or, because one never knew exactly who would be selected, indirectly by bribing those in power at any one time. His political opponents had seized control of Rome, declared him a public enemy, and forced his wife and children to flee to his camp in Greece. Such brutality may have been carried out with a design; Athenians fearing a Roman military intervention were growing restless under Aristion. Athens, too, should throw in with this rising power, he asserted. First, was the citizens who ran the government and held property. 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. In the 4th and 5th centuries BCE the male citizen population of Athens ranged from 30,000 to 60,000 depending on the period. Second, was the metics who were foreign residents of Athens. By Athenian democratic standards of justice, which are not ours, the guilt of Socrates was sufficiently proven. If they did not fulfill their duty they would be fined and sometimes marked with red paint. Most of the Greek cities there welcomed the Pontic forces, and by early 88, Mithridates was firmly in control of western Anatolia. Sulla arrived in Greece early in 87 with five legions (approximately 25,000 men) and some mounted auxiliaries. We are committed to protecting your personal information and being transparent about what information we hold. It was the first known democracy in the world. That was one, class-based sort of objection to Greek-style direct democracy. World History Encyclopedia. S2 ep4: What would a more just future look like? When some topped the walls and ran away, he sent cavalry after them. License. Then, early in the first century BC, a political crisis engulfed Athens when its eponymous archon, or chief magistrate, refused to abide by the Athenian constitutions one-term limit. "There are grounds to consider whether we want to go down the same route that Athens did. The stalemate continued. It argues that it was not the loss of its empire and defeat in war against Sparta at the end of the 5th century that heralded the death knell of Athenian democracy - as it is traditionally perceived. a unique and truly revolutionary system that realized its basic principle to an unprecedented and quite extreme extent: no polis had ever dared to give all its citizens equal political rights, regardless of their descent, wealth, social standing, education, personal qualities, and any other factors that usually determined status in a community. Nevertheless, democracy in a slightly altered form did eventually return to Athens and, in any case, the Athenians had already done enough in creating their political system to eventually influence subsequent civilizations two millennia later. Athenian democracy refers to the system of democratic government used in Athens, Greece from the 5th to 4th century BCE. 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. laborers forced into bondage over debt, and the middle classes who were excluded from government, while not alienating the increasingly wealthy landowners and aristocracy. 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). A marble relief showing the People of Athens being crowned by Democracy, inscribed with a law against tyranny passed by the people of Athens in 336 B.C. Its popular Assembly directed internal affairs as a showcase of democracy. I wish to receive a weekly Cambridge research news summary by email. Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. 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.