The World History Encyclopedia logo is a registered trademark. To the Greeks, he represented himself as a new Alexander, the champion of Greek culture against Rome. Mark is a full-time author, researcher, historian, and editor. Read more. The answer lies in a dramatic tale starring the demagogue Athenion, a mindless mob, a tyrant, and a brutal Roman general. Theophilus even hacked off the hands of Romans clinging to statues inside a temple. Most of all, Pericles paid artisans to build temples read more, Ancient Greek mythology is a vast and fascinating group of legends about gods and goddesses, heroes and monsters, warriors and fools, that were an important part of everyday life in the ancient world. In this case there was a secret ballot where voters wrote a name on a piece of broken pottery (ostrakon). At the kings order, the locals slaughtered tens of thousands of Romans and Italians who lived among them. So what we have in Herodotus is a Greek debate in Persian dress. He was chief historical consultant for the BBC TV series 'The Greeks'. Athenion promised that Mithridates would restore democracy to Athensan apparent reference to the archons violation of the constitutions one-term limit. Athens, too, should throw in with this rising power, he asserted. "There are grounds to consider whether we want to go down the same route that Athens did. However, the equality Herodotus described was limited to a small segment of the Athenian population in Ancient Greece. Sulla ordered another retreat, and turned his attention to Athens, which by now was a softer target than Piraeus. Now all citizens could participate in government, not just aristocrats. 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. By Professor Paul Cartledge History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. Draco writing the first written law code in Athens was the initiating event that brought democracy to Athens. Solon, (born c. 630 bcedied c. 560 bce), Athenian statesman, known as one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece (the others were Chilon of Sparta, Thales of Miletus, Bias of Priene, Cleobulus of Lindos, Pittacus of Mytilene, and Periander of Corinth). Submitted by Mark Cartwright, published on 03 April 2018. And its denouement is the Roman sack of Athens, a bloody day that effectively marked the end of Athens as an independent state. Some 2,000 of Archelauss men were killed. 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. Terrified Romans fled to temples for sanctuary, but to no avail; they were butchered anyway. That at any rate is the assumed situation. The famous Long Walls that had connected the two cities during the Peloponnesian War had since fallen into disrepair. These bronze coins bore the Pontic symbol of a star between two half-moons. Athens, for example, committed itself to unpopular wars which ultimately brought it into direct conflict with the vastly more powerful Macedonia. Following standard Roman procedure, Sullas men made a quick assault on the walls of the port, trying to catch the defenders by surprise. https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-greece/ancient-greece-democracy. The island had many Roman and Italian residents and relied heavily on the Roman trade. One which is so bad that people ultimately cry out for a dictator. The real question now is not can we, but should we go back to the Greeks? While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. 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. The majority won the day and the decision was final. Centuries later, archaeologists discovered some of these in the ruins of the Pompeion, a gathering place for the start of processions. The assembly also ensured decisions were enforced and officials were carrying out their duties correctly. 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. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/Athenian_Democracy/. (There were also no rules about what kinds of cases could be prosecuted or what could and could not be said at trial, and so Athenian citizens frequently used the dikasteria to punish or embarrass their enemies.). Read more. 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. The military impact of Athenian democracy was twofold. The Romans were extorting as much revenue as possible from their new province of Asia. The war had one last act to play out. Certainly, he was an oligarch, but whether he was old or not we can't say. As the year 87 drew on, Mithridates sent additional troops. Nine presidents (proedroi), elected by lot and holding the office one time only, organised the proceedings and assessed the voting. I wish to receive a weekly Cambridge research news summary by email. 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. At the start of the century Athens, contrary to traditional reports, was a flourishing democracy. Archelaus landed on the Greek coast to the north and withdrew into Thessaly, where he joined forces with Pontic reinforcements that had marched overland from Anatolia. Then there was the view that the mob, the poor majority, were nothing but a collective tyrant. In ancient Athens, hatred between the rich and poor threatened the city-state with civil war and tyranny. One night Sulla personally reconnoitered that stretch of wall, which was near the Dipylon Gate, the citys main entrance. The assembly could also vote to ostracise from Athens any citizen who had become too powerful and dangerous for the polis. Critically, the emphasis on "people power" saw a revolving door of political leaders impeached, exiled and even executed as the inconstant international climate forced a tetchy political assembly into multiple changes in policy direction. The Athenians: Another warning from history? But without warning, it sank into the earth. Of all the democratic institutions, Aristotle argued that the dikasteria contributed most to the strength of democracy because the jury had almost unlimited power. Illustrating the esteem in which democratic government was held, there was even a divine personification of the ideal of democracy, the goddess Demokratia. Athenian Democracy. World History Foundation is a non-profit organization registered in Canada. Historian Appian states that the Pontics massacred thousands of Italians there, a repeat of the slaughter in Anatolia. To protect their money, some Athenians buried coin hoards. Fighting ensued, and the Athenians then took steps that explicitly violated the Thirty Years' Treaty. 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. 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. Thank you for your help! Eventually the Romans breached a section of the wall and poured through. Originally Answered: Did Athenian democracy failed because of its democratic nature? 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. - Melissa Schwartzberg. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. Because of his reforming compromises and other legislation, posterity refers to him as Solon the lawgiver. 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. He sees 12 stages in the development of Athenian democracy, including the initial Eupatrid oligarchy and the final fall of democracy to the imperial powers. But this was all before the powerful Athens of the fifth century BC, when the city had been at its zenith. What mattered was whether or not the unusual system was any good. Seven noble Persians conspire to overthrow the usurper and restore legitimate government. Inevitably, there was some fallout, and one of the victims of the simmering personal and ideological tensions was Socrates. 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 word democracy comes from the Greek words demos, meaning "the people," and kratos, meaning "to rule.". Please support World History Encyclopedia. This time, they burst through Archelauss hastily constructed lunette. In despair, many Athenians kill themselves. 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 . Related Content However, in reality, it was actually Persia who had won the war. Others brought up rams and entered the breach theyd made in the walls earlier. The constitutional change, according to Thucydides, seemed the only way to win much-needed support from Persia against the old enemy Sparta and, further, it was thought that the change would not be a permanent one. 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. Rome would have to fight the Pontic king again before his final defeat and deathpurportedly by suicidein 63. He holds an MA in Political Philosophy and is the WHE Publishing Director. At the meetings, the ekklesia made decisions about war and foreign policy, wrote and revised laws and approved or condemned the conduct of public officials. Running a website with millions of readers every month is expensive. (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.). An artillery duel developed. The Romans placed a proxy on the Bithynian throne and encouraged him to raid Pontic territory. Why did the system fail? The result was a series of domestic problems, including an inability to fund the traditional police force. 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. At best it was mere opinion, and almost always it was ill-informed and wrong opinion. Sparta and its allies accused Athens of aggression and threatened war. 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. We care about our planet! The Athenian defenders, weakened by hunger, fled. Although active participation was encouraged, attendance in the assembly was paid for in certain periods, which was a measure to encourage citizens who lived far away and could not afford the time off to attend. As the new Alexander, he may also have seen the conquest of Greece as a natural move. The 50-man prytany met in the building known as the Bouleuterion in the Athenian agora and safe-guarded the sacred treasuries. But what did the development of Athenian democracy actually involve? S2 ep 3: What is the future of wellbeing? But when one of the Athenian delegates began a grand speech about their citys great past, Sulla abruptly dismissed them. An early example of the Greek genius for applied critical theory was their invention of political theory, probably some time during the first half of the fifth century BC. Ultimately, the Romans grew exhausted, and Sulla ordered a retreat. 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. Athenian democracy refers to the system of democratic government used in Athens, Greece from the 5th to 4th century BCE. How did Athens swing so quickly from euphoria to catastrophe? Sulla arrived in Greece early in 87 with five legions (approximately 25,000 men) and some mounted auxiliaries. 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.) 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. It dealt with ambassadors and representatives from other city-states. "It shows how an earlier generation of people responded to similar challenges and which strategies succeeded. The city held festivals and presented nine plays each year, both comedies and tragedies. The boul represented the 139 districts of Attica and acted as a kind of executive committee of the assembly. 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. But what form of government, what constitution, should the restored Persian empire enjoy for the future? Books democratic system failed to be effective. 'Why', answers his guardian Pericles, who was then at the height of his influence, 'it is whatever the people decides and decrees'. The competition of elite performers before non-elite adjudicators resulted in a pro-war culture, which encouraged Athenians in . In the later parts of the Republic, Plato suggests that democracy is one of the later stages in the decline of the ideal state. 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. That was definitely the opinion of ancient critics of the idea. As he advanced, Thebes and the other Greek cities that had allied with Archelaus nimbly switched back to the Roman side. Athenian democracy refers to the system of democratic government used in Athens, Greece from the 5th to 4th century BCE. Sullas solution: rob the Greek temples of their treasures. Archelaus was to seize Delos, then solidify Pontic control of Athens and as much of Greece as possible. Archelaus, who had more men than Sulla at the outset, tried to make use of his numerical superiority in an all-out attack on the besiegers. Buildings in the Agora and on the south side of the Acropolis remained damaged for decades, monuments to the poverty in postwar Athens. A year after their defeat of Athens in 404 BC, the Spartans allowed the Athenians to replace the government of the Thirty Tyrants with a new democracy. Not all anti-democrats, however, saw only democracy's weaknesses and were entirely blind to democracy's strengths. A demagogue, a treacherous ally, and a brutal Roman general destroyed the city-stateand democracyin the first-century BC. Athens, therefore, had a direct democracy. The specific connection made by the anonymous writer is that the ultimate source of Athens' power was its navy, and that navy was powered essentially (though not exclusively) by the strong arms of the thetes, that is to say, the poorest section of the Athenian citizen population. 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. The government and economy were also weak causing distress all over Athens. "use strict";(function(){var insertion=document.getElementById("citation-access-date");var date=new Date().toLocaleDateString(undefined,{month:"long",day:"numeric",year:"numeric"});insertion.parentElement.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(date),insertion)})(); FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. "Athenian Democracy." Many tried to flee, but Aristion placed guards at the gates. Critics of democracy, such as Thucydides and Aristophanes, pointed out that not only were proceedings dominated by an elite, but that the dmos could be too often swayed by a good orator or popular leaders (the demagogues), get carried away with their emotions, or lack the necessary knowledge to make informed decisions. Others were rather more subtly expressed. 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. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. Special interests include art, architecture, and discovering the ideas that all civilizations share. 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. "Athenian Democracy." The ancient Greeks have provided us with fine art, breath-taking temples, timeless theatre, and some of the greatest philosophers, but it is democracy which is, perhaps, their greatest and most enduring legacy. Into this dangerous situation stepped Solon, a moderate man the Athenians trusted to bring justice for all. They therefore in a sense deserved the political pay-off of mass-biased democracy as a reward for their crucial naval role. This money was only to cover expenses though, as any attempt to profit from public positions was severely punished. 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. The Athenian statesman Pericles defined democracy as a system which protects the interests of all the people, not just a minority. Solon Put Athens on the Road to Democracy. 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. Archelauss men, Sulla discovered, had dug a tunnel and undermined it. 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. According to a fragmentary account by the historian Posidonius, Athenions letters persuaded Athens that the Roman supremacy was broken. The prospect of the Anatolian Greeks throwing off Roman rule also sparked pan-Hellenic solidarity. These challenges to democracy include the paradoxical existence of an Athenian empire. We contribute a share of our revenue to remove carbon from the atmosphere and we offset our team's carbon footprint. All male citizens of Athens could attend the assembly which made political decisions. The opposing forces clashed bitterly for a long timeAppian records that both Sulla and Archelaus held forth in the thick of the action, cheering on their men and bringing up fresh troops. At one point, the Romans carried a ram to the top of one of the mounds fashioned from the rubble of the Long Walls. Last updated 2011-02-17. They note that wealthy and influential peopleand their relativesserved on the Council much more frequently than would be likely in a truly random lottery. Little more than a hundred years later it was governed by an emperor. Although this Athenian democracy would survive for only two centuries, its invention by Cleisthenes, The Father of Democracy, was one of ancient Greeces most enduring contributions to the modern world. The Pompeion was ravaged beyond repair and left to decay. 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. Plutarch also claims that Aristion took to dancing on the walls and shouting insults at Sulla. Cite This Work However, more difficult was the fact that Athens now had to recognize and accept Sparta as the leader of Greece. Thank you! Democracy itself, however, buckled under the strain. Chronological order of government in ancient Athens. Sign up for our free weekly email newsletter! Those defeats persuaded Mithridates to end the war. The second important institution was the boule, or Council of Five Hundred. 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. It was the first known democracy in the world. In 83 BC, Sulla and his army returned to Italy, kicking off the Roman Republics first all-out civil war, which he won. [15] The masses were, in brief, shortsighted, selfish and fickle, an easy prey to unscrupulous orators who came to be known as demagogues. World History Encyclopedia, 03 Apr 2018. But why should they be? When Athenion returned home in the early summer of 88, citizens gave him a rapturous reception. This being the case, the following remarks on democracy are focussed on the Athenians. and the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. Though he at first refused, he later relented and sent a delegation to meet with the Roman commander. Why, to start with, does he not use the word democracy, when democracy of an Athenian radical kind is clearly what he's advocating? After his speech, the excited throng rushes to the theater of Dionysus, where official assemblies are held, and elects Athenion as hoplite general, the citys most important executive position. Indeed, for the Athenian democrats, elections would have struck at the heart of democracy: They would have allowed some people to assert themselves, arrogantly and unjustly, against the others. By the end, it was hailing its latest ruler, Demetrius, as both a king and a living God. 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. Ostracism, in which a citizen could be expelled from Athens for 10 years, was among the powers of the ekklesia. Any citizen could speak to the assembly and vote on decisions by simply holding up their hands. Athens is a city-state, while today we are familiar with the primary unit of governance . Then, in 133 B.C.E., Rome experienced its first political. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. Then there was the view that the mob, the poor majority, were nothing but a collective tyrant. There were 3 classes in the society of ancient Athens. Other reputations are also taken to task: The "heroic" Spartans of Thermopylae, immortalised in the film 300, are unmasked as warmongering bullies of the ancient world. Athens' democracy in fact recovered from these injuries within years. In the 4th and 5th centuries BCE the male citizen population of Athens ranged from 30,000 to 60,000 depending on the period. License. The capital would be sending no more reinforcements or money. 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. Over time tyrants became greedy and cruel. The stalemate continued. 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. In practice, this assembly usually involved a maximum of 6000 citizens. I was not sent to Athens by the Romans to learn its history, but to subdue its rebels, he declared. His election as hoplite general quickly followed. Archaic Greece saw advances in art, poetry and technology, but is known as the age in which the polis, or city-state, was read more, In the late 6th century B.C., the Greek city-state of Athens began to lay the foundations for a new kind of political system. Most of the Greek cities there welcomed the Pontic forces, and by early 88, Mithridates was firmly in control of western Anatolia. All Rights Reserved. To subscribe, click here. 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. A Greek trireme Antiphon's regime lasted only a few months, and after a brief experiment with a more moderate form of oligarchy the Athenians restored the old democratic institutions pretty much as they had been. World History Encyclopedia. 'What? Suffering dearly, the Greek cities on the Anatolian coast went looking for help and found a deliverer in Mithridates VI, king of Pontus in northeastern Anatolia. A mass slaughter followed. This "slippery-fish diplomacy" helped it survive military defeats and widespread political turbulence, but at the expense of its political system. Second, was the metics who were foreign residents of Athens. Any citizen could speak to the assembly and vote on decisions by simply holding up their hands. 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. One of the main reasons why ancient Athens was not a true democracy was because only about 30% of the population could vote. 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. 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. To some extent Socrates was being used as a scapegoat, an expiatory sacrifice to appease the gods who must have been implacably angry with the Athenians to inflict on them such horrors as plague and famine as well as military defeat and civil war. But in 200, Philip, having come of age and claimed the crown, dispatched an army toward Athens to regain the port. They are also, however, reminders of the human capacity for disagreement, read more, An ambiguous, controversial concept, Jacksonian Democracy in the strictest sense refers simply to the ascendancy of Andrew Jackson and the Democratic party after 1828. Aristion didnt hold out long: He surrendered when he ran out of drinking water. Mithridates swiftly retaliated, invading and overrunning Bithynia. In addition, in times of crisis and war, this body could also take decisions without the assembly meeting. Ideals such as these would form the cornerstones of all democracies in the modern world. When some topped the walls and ran away, he sent cavalry after them. In a democracy, the Greek historian Herodotus wrote, there is, first, that most splendid of virtues, equality before the law. It was true that Cleisthenes demokratia abolished the political distinctions between the Athenian aristocrats who had long monopolized the political decision-making process and the middle- and working-class people who made up the army and the navy (and whose incipient discontent was the reason Cleisthenes introduced his reforms in the first place).