Ancient Greek Government
Ancient Greece witnessed a wide variety of government systems as people searched for the answers to such fundamental questions as who should rule and how? Should sovereignty lie in the rule of law, the constitution, officials, or the citizens? Not settling on a definitive answer, governments in the Greek world took extraordinarily diverse forms, from tyranny to democracy.
Across different Greek city-states and over many centuries, political power expressed itself in different forms of government, often in the same city as it evolved. Power could rest in the hands of a single individual, an elite or in every male citizen: democracy - widely regarded as the Greeks' greatest contribution to civilization.
https://www.worldhistory.org/Greek_Government/
The Size of Government
In Aristotle’s time, states were comparatively smaller than they are today. Thus, in democracies, the many could directly rule via participation in open councils. Although our democracies are much larger now, the core concepts remain the same: Our vote is our means of exercising our rule, and any one of us may chose to run for an office of the state.
https://fs.blog/aristotles-politics/
Democracy: Mixed Form Of Government In Sparta
Spartan’s government has been labeled as having a “mixed constitution.” This is because its government is a combination of elements of monarchy, democracy, and oligarchy.
- An element of monarchy that is evident in Sparta’s government is having two hereditary kings. The kings had religious roles such as being recognized as priests of Zeus, military roles including having one of the kings leading the army in battle whilst the other remained in Sparta, and limited judicial roles such as being held responsible for matters involving the adoption of children. However, they also had many privileges such as the privilege of always being served first in the syncytia.
- Democratic elements that have been incorporated into Sparta’s government include the ekklesia voting on laws and the ephorate. The ekklesia also voted on other matters such as the decision to instigate war, however, this element of democracy was limited as the Gerousia had the power to override decisions. The ephorate is another democratic element as they were elected by the assembly to serve only once in their life for only a year and held great power over the kings.
- An element of the oligarchy that is evident in Sparta’s government is the Gerousia as they held a significant amount of power in the government. The Gerousia consisted of the two kings and 28 elders, males that were at least sixty years old and elected by the ekklesia by acclamation, who then retained the position for life. The primary function of the Gerousia was to prepare proposals for the ekklesia as it was a probouleutic body.
It is from Athenian democracy that basic concepts of freedom have been the base of modern democracy and that is why it has few similarities. This is because characteristics of Athenian democracy have few similarities to modern democracy in regards to rights and having systems set up to maintain democracy.
https://edubirdie.com/examples/democracy-mixed-form-of-government-in-sparta/
Structure of Spartan Society & Government
The Doric state of Sparta, copying the Doric Cretans, instituted a mixed governmental state: it was composed of elements of monarchical, oligarchical, and democratic systems. Isocrates refers to the Spartans as "subject to an oligarchy at home, to a kingship on campaign" (iii. 24).
Dual Kingship - State Was Ruled by Two Hereditary Kings
The state was ruled by two hereditary kings of the Agiad and the Eurypontid families, both descendants of Heracles and equal in authority so that one could not act against the power and political enactments of his colleague, though the Agiad king received greater honour by virtue of seniority of his family for being the "oldest extant" (Herod. vi. 5)...
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There are several legendary explanations for this unusual dual kingship, which differ only slightly; for example, that King Aristodemus had twin sons, who agreed to share the kingship, and this became perpetual. Modern scholars have advanced various theories to account for the anomaly. Some theorize that this system was created in order to prevent absolutism, and is paralleled by the analogous instance of the dual consuls of Rome. Others believe that it points to a compromise arrived at to end the struggle between two families or communities. Other theories suggest that this was an arrangement that was met when a community of villages combined to form the city of Sparta. Subsequently the two chiefs from the largest villages became kings. Another theory suggests that the two royal houses represent respectively the Spartan conquerors and their Achaean predecessors: those who hold this last view appeal to the words attributed by Herodotus (v. 72) to Cleomenes I: "I am no Dorian, but an Achaean"; although this is usually explained by the (equally legendary) descent of Aristodemus from Heracles. Either way, kingship in Sparta was hereditary and thus every king Sparta had was a descendant of the Agiad and the Eurypontid families. Accession was given to the male child who was first born after a king's accession.
The duties of the kings were primarily religious, judicial, and militaristic. They were the chief priests of the state, and performed certain sacrifices and also maintained communication with the Delphic sanctuary, which always exercised great authority in Spartan politics. In the time of Herodotus (about 450 BC), their judicial functions had been restricted to cases dealing with heiresses, adoptions and the public roads. Civil cases were decided by the ephors, and criminal jurisdiction had been passed to the ephors, as well as to a council of elders. By 500 BC the Spartans had become increasingly involved in the political affairs of the surrounding city-states, often putting their weight behind pro-Spartan candidates. Shortly before 500 BC, as described by Herodotus[citation needed], such an action fueled a confrontation between Sparta and Athens, when the two kings, Demaratus and Cleomenes, took their troops to Athens. However, just before the heat of battle, King Demaratus changed his mind about attacking the Athenians and abandoned his co-king. For this reason, Demaratus was banished, and eventually found himself at the side of Persian King Xerxes for his invasion of Greece twenty years later (480 BC), after which the Spartans enacted a law demanding that one king remain behind in Sparta while the other commanded the troops in battle.
Aristotle describes the kingship at Sparta as "a kind of unlimited and perpetual generalship" (Pol. iii. I285a), Here also, however, the royal prerogatives were curtailed over time. Dating from the period of the Persian wars, the king lost the right to declare war, and was accompanied in the field by two ephors. He was supplanted also by the ephors in the control of foreign policy. Over time, the kings became mere figureheads except in their capacity as generals. Real power was transferred to the ephors and to the gerousia.
Despite eventually losing much of their power, the kings retained much respect in the religious sense. They were highly revered after death, with elaborate mourning rituals described as duties of both Spartiates and Perioeci. In addition, there tended to be extreme reluctance to execute them for crimes; even in cases of a king being convicted of treason, he was often given the opportunity to seek asylum in other states.
Ephors - chosen by popular election from citizens - democratic element.
The ephors, chosen by popular election from the whole body of citizens, represented a democratic element in the constitution.
After the ephors were introduced, they, together with the two kings, were the executive branch of the state. Ephors themselves had more power than anyone in Sparta, although the fact that they only stayed in power for a single year reduced their ability to conflict with already established powers in the state. Since reelection was not possible, an ephor who abused his power, or confronted an established power center, would have to suffer retaliation. Although the five ephors were the only officials with regular legitimization by popular vote, in practice they were often the most conservative force in Spartan politics.
Gerousia - special policy maker, 28 elders, usually part of royal households
Sparta had a special policy maker, the Gerousia, a council consisting of 28 elders over the age of 60, elected for life and usually part of the royal households, and the two kings. High state policy decisions were discussed by this council who could then propose action alternatives to the demos.
Ekklesia - the Spartan citizen assembly
The collective body of Spartan citizenry would select one of the alternatives by voting. Unlike most Greek poleis, the Spartan citizen assembly (Ekklesia), could neither set the agenda of issues to be decided, nor debate them, merely vote on the alternatives presented to them. Neither could foreign embassies or emissaries address the assembly; they had to present their case to the Gerousia, which would then consult with the Ephors. Sparta considered all discourse from outside as a potential threat and all other states as past, present, or future enemies, to be treated with caution in the very least, even when bound with alliance treaties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartan_Constitution
Ancient Greek Democracy
In the year 507 B.C., the Athenian leader Cleisthenes introduced a system of political reforms that he called demokratia, or “rule by the people” (from demos, “the people,” and kratos, or “power”). It was the first known democracy in the world.
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.
Although this Athenian democracy would survive for only two centuries, its invention by Cleisthenes, “The Father of Democracy,” was one of ancient Greece’s most enduring contributions to the modern world. The Greek system of direct democracy would pave the way for representative democracies across the globe.
https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-greece/ancient-greece-democracy
History of Greece & Politics
Although civilization, as its advantages became clear, spread west and northwest out of Asia, bureaucratic monarchy could not easily follow it. The sea was becoming a historical factor as important as the steppe and the great irrigable rivers. Tyre and Sidon, maritime cities of Phoenicia (modern Lebanon), had long exploited their coastal situation, not only to remain independent of the landward empires but also to push across the sea, even beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, in quest of trade. Their daughter cities—Carthage, Utica, and Cádiz—were the first colonies, but primitive communications made it impossible for Phoenicia to rule them.
Greeks, originally Indo-European nomads who gradually made their way south to the Aegean and there took to the sea. They built on the achievements of earlier peoples and even took over the first bureaucratic monarchy to appear on European soil, the Minoan civilization of the island of Crete, which succumbed to invaders from the Greek mainland about 1450 BCE. Other invaders from the north overthrew the mainland kingdoms of Mycenae, Tiryns, and Pylos about 1200 BCE. The Dark Age of Greece that then began lasted until the 8th century BCE, by which time the Greeks had not only adapted the Phoenician alphabet and begun to found overseas colonies but also brought nearly to maturity the city-state (polis in Greek, from which the term politics derives). This form of government was the great political invention of classical antiquity. (See also ancient Greek civilization.)
The city-state was made possible by Mediterranean geography, which is such that every little fishing village had to be able to defend itself against attack from land or sea, for outside help could not reach it easily. A person’s dependence on his community, for physical as well as economic survival, was therefore obvious and complete. The city had first claim on his labour and loyalty, a claim that was usually freely recognized. It was this reality that led Aristotle (who himself came from just such a small commonwealth, Stageira) to define humans as political animals. In addition, coastal mountain ranges made it difficult for any community in Greece to dominate more than a few square miles of land. Therefore, in the Greek world (which by c. 600 BCE stretched from the coasts of Asia Minor to what is now southern France) there were dozens of centres of government. The term city-state expresses the double aspect of those small settlements.
Each city-state was, on the one hand, an economic, cultural, and religious organization; on the other hand, each was a self-governing community capable, in theory, of maintaining absolute independence by enlisting all its adult male inhabitants as soldiers. It was like a business association and also like an encamped army. (In many respects, the city of Sparta actually was an encamped army.) Freedom was defined as the right and ability of every city to govern itself. What freedom meant for the internal order of such cities was fiercely and often bloodily debated for more than two centuries.
Parthenon
Although it was a fact of the Greek world that geography deterred the rise of an empire to federate and control all the cities, a few nevertheless rose to imperial greatness. Those cities engaged in profitable trade across the sea, as their Phoenician predecessors had done. Athens, for example, exported olive oil, silver, and pottery, and the profits of that trade enabled it to build a great navy and formidable city walls. Athenian ships defeated Persia (480 BCE) and won a small empire in the Aegean. The combination of ships and walls enabled Athens long to defy and nearly to defeat Sparta, its chief rival among the Greek cities. Even after Sparta’s triumph at the end of the Peloponnesian War (404 BCE), Athens remained an independent, sovereign state until its defeat by Philip II of Macedonia at the battle of Chaeronea (338 BCE). In short, during the period of its prime Athens was free to make what experiments it liked in the realm of government, and to that period are owed not just the first example of successful democracy in world history but also the first investigations in political thought.
Monarchy, oligarchy, democracy
Athenians did not believe that they had anything to learn from the bureaucratic monarchies of the East, which were incompatible with Greek notions of citizenship. If self-defense necessitated that citizens be required to fight for their polis when called on, in return each had to be conceded some measure of respect and autonomy—personal freedom. To protect that freedom, government was necessary: anarchy had no attractions for any Greek except perhaps Diogenes, the father of Cynic philosophy.
Aristotle
The central question of politics, then, was the distribution of power among the citizens. Was Greek freedom best preserved and defined by the rule of the few or by that of the many? On the whole, the great names favoured aristocracy, understood as the rule of the best. Plato believed that the object of politics was virtue and that only a few would ever thoroughly understand the science by which virtue could be attained and that those trained few should rule as “philosopher kings.” Aristotle, his pupil, seems to have put the cultivation of the intellect among the highest human goods, and he believed—quite reasonably, given the limited economic resources then available—that this fruit of civilization could be gathered only among a leisure class supported by the labours of the many. In return for their leisure, the gentry should agree to sacrifice some of their time to the tedious business of governing, which only they would be sufficiently disinterested and well-informed to do successfully. Neither of these apologies for oligarchy had any success in practice. The champions of democracy carried the day, at least in Athens and its allied cities. In return for playing their parts as soldiers or sailors, ordinary Athenians insisted on controlling the government.
The result was imperfect but impressive. The people were misled by demagogues; they were intolerant enough to put Plato’s master, Socrates, to death; they were envious of all personal distinction; and of their three great wars (against Persia, Sparta, and Macedonia) they lost two. Furthermore, passionate devotion to the idea that Athens was the greatest of all cities, the school of Greece and the wonder of civilization, misled them into basing their society in large part on slave labour, into wanton imperial adventure abroad, and into denying Athenian citizenship to all who were not born into it (even Aristotle), however much they contributed to the city’s greatness and however much more they might have done. The foundations of Athenian democracy were narrow, shallow, and fragile. But to say all this is only to say that the city could not entirely shake off the traditions of its past. Its achievement was the more remarkable for that. Seldom since has civilized humanity surpassed democratic Athens, and until the last the city was satisfactorily governed by law and by popular decision. It owed its fall less to any flaw than to the overwhelming force that was mounted against it.
Alexander the Great
Far to the north of Hellas proper, a new power arose. Greek civilization had slowly trained and tamed the wild people of Macedonia. Their king, Philip II, forged them into a powerful army, and he and his son Alexander the Great then seized the opportunity open to them. History and geography made it impossible for the Greek cities to hang together, so they were hanged separately. It seemed as if the city-state had been but a transient expedient. Henceforward Athens and Sparta would take their orders from foreign conquerors—first Macedonia, then Rome.
Rome
The republic
But, as it turned out, the city-state had barely begun to display its full political potential. To the west, two non-Greek cities, Carthage and Rome, began to struggle for mastery, and, after the defeat of the Carthaginian general Hannibal at Zama (202 BCE), Rome emerged as the strongest state in the Mediterranean.
The Greeks did not know how to classify Rome. The Greek historian Polybius, who chronicled Rome’s rise, suggested that its constitution was such a success because it was a judicious blend of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. The Romans, a conservative, practical people, showed what they thought of such abstractions by speaking only of an unanalyzed “public thing”—res publica—and thus gave a new word, republic, to politics. With this focus the patriotism of the city-state reached its greatest intensity. The Romans were deeply attached to their traditions, all of which taught the same lesson. For example, the legendary hero Gaius Mucius Scaevola gave his right hand to the flames to prove that there was nothing a Roman would not endure for his city, which therefore would never be defeated. That passionate devotion to Rome’s survival was tested again and again in war. All the tales of early Rome turn on battle. With dour persistence the peasants who had gathered on the seven hills beside the river Tiber resisted every invader, fought back after every defeat, learned from all their mistakes, and even, however reluctantly and belatedly, modified their political institutions to meet the new needs of the times as they arose.
Polybius was right: power in Rome was indeed shared among the people, the aristocracy (embodied in the Senate), and the consuls—the executive officers of the republic who had replaced the kings. The claims of the many and the few were fought out at election time, when the world’s first clearly identifiable political parties appeared. Until the republic’s decline, the results of elections were universally respected, and the triumphant alliance of the few and the many against the world was proclaimed in the letters blazoned on the city’s buildings and battle standards, “SPQR,” for Senatus populusque Romanus (“The Senate and the people of Rome”).
Like Athenian democracy, this system worked well for a long time, and, if the chief Athenian legacy was the proof that politics could be understood and debated logically and that under the right conditions democracy could work, Rome proved that the political process of competition for office and the public discussion of policy were valuable things in themselves.
Nevertheless, the Roman Republic had been forged in a grim world. Wars, always supposedly in self-defense, had gradually extended Rome’s power over Italy. It is not surprising that what impressed the world most about the city was its military strength rather than its political institutions, even though the two were intimately related. As the weakness of Rome’s neighbours became apparent, the Romans began to believe in their mission to rule, “to spare the conquered and war down the proud,” as their greatest poet, Virgil, put it. Military strength, in short, led to military adventurism. By the 1st century BCE, Rome, having become a naval power as well as a military one, had conquered the whole Mediterranean basin and much of its hinterland. The strains of empire building made themselves felt. The Roman armies, no longer composed of citizens temporarily absent from the plow or the workshop but of lifetime professionals, were now loyal to their generals rather than to the state, and those generals brought on civil war as they competed to turn their foreign conquests into power at home. The population of Rome swelled, but economic growth could not keep pace, so many citizens became paupers dependent on a public dole. The aristocrats appointed to govern the provinces saw their postings chiefly as opportunities to get rich quickly by pillaging their unfortunate subjects. The republic could not solve those and other problems and was in the end superseded by the monarchy of Augustus.
The Empire
The bedrock of the emperor Augustus’s power was his command of the legions with which he had defeated all his rivals, but he was a much better politician than he was a general, and he knew that naked political power is as insecure as it is expensive. He reduced the military establishment as much as was prudent, laboured to turn the revolutionary faction that had supported his bid for power into a respectable new ruling class, and proclaimed the restoration of the republic in 27 BCE. But not even Augustus could make the restoration real. The safety of the state, questions of war and peace, and most of the business of governing the empire were now in the hands of a monarch. Consequently, there was not enough for the Senate to do, and Augustus never went so far as to restore genuinely free elections or the organs of popular government. He kept the population of the city happy with chariot races, gladiatorial contests, and the dole of bread. Nevertheless, he could not give up the attempt to legitimize his regime. Like earlier monarchs elsewhere, he called in the aid of religion, even though the religion of Rome was as republican as its constitution. Later emperors made their own divinity a tenet of the public faith. Later still, they imposed Christianity as the sole legitimate and official religion of the empire, and they exploited the power and prestige of the church to buttress their own authority.
For four centuries the resemblance between Rome and the bureaucratic Eastern monarchies steadily increased. Roman nationalism, Roman traditionalism, and Roman law survived as legacies that posterity would one day claim, and, if nobody much believed in the constitutional shams of Augustus’s day, the example of his constitutional monarchy was to prove potent at a much later period.
The age of the city-state was at last drawing to a close. The emperor Caracalla (died 217) extended Roman citizenship to all subjects of the empire so that he could tax them more heavily. The demands of the imperial administration began to bankrupt the cities, which had previously prospered as the local organs of government under Rome. New barbarian attacks threw the empire onto the defensive, and in 410 CE the city of Rome itself was captured and sacked by the Visigoths. About 65 years later the last Roman emperor in the West was deposed, and thenceforward the caesars reigned only in Constantinople and the East.
The city-state was made possible by Mediterranean geography, which is such that every little fishing village had to be able to defend itself against attack from land or sea, for outside help could not reach it easily. A person’s dependence on his community, for physical as well as economic survival, was therefore obvious and complete. The city had first claim on his labour and loyalty, a claim that was usually freely recognized. It was this reality that led Aristotle (who himself came from just such a small commonwealth, Stageira) to define humans as political animals. In addition, coastal mountain ranges made it difficult for any community in Greece to dominate more than a few square miles of land. Therefore, in the Greek world (which by c. 600 BCE stretched from the coasts of Asia Minor to what is now southern France) there were dozens of centres of government. The term city-state expresses the double aspect of those small settlements.
Each city-state was, on the one hand, an economic, cultural, and religious organization; on the other hand, each was a self-governing community capable, in theory, of maintaining absolute independence by enlisting all its adult male inhabitants as soldiers. It was like a business association and also like an encamped army. (In many respects, the city of Sparta actually was an encamped army.) Freedom was defined as the right and ability of every city to govern itself. What freedom meant for the internal order of such cities was fiercely and often bloodily debated for more than two centuries.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/government/Greece
Antiquity - Origins & Early History
Athens has been inhabited from Neolithic times, possibly from the end of the fourth millennium BC, or over 5,000 years. By 1412 BC, the settlement had become an important center of the Mycenaean civilization and the Acropolis was the site of a major Mycenaean fortress whose remains can be recognised from sections of the characteristic Cyclopean walls. On the summit of the Acropolis, below the later Erechtheion, cuttings in the rock have been identified as the location of a Mycenaean palace. Between 1250 and 1200 BC, to feed the needs of the Mycenaean settlement, a staircase was built down a cleft in the rock to reach a water supply that was protected from enemy incursions, comparable to similar works carried out at Mycenae...
According to legend, Athens was formerly ruled by kings, a situation which may have continued up until the 9th century BC. From later accounts, it is believed that these kings stood at the head of a land-owning aristocracy known as the Eupatridae (the 'well-born'), whose instrument of government was a Council which met on the Hill of Ares, called the Areopagus and appointed the chief city officials, the archons and the polemarch (commander-in-chief). The most famous king of Athens was Theseus, a prominent figure in Greek Mythology who killed the Minotaur.
During this period, Athens succeeded in bringing the other towns of Attica under its rule. This process of synoikismos – the bringing together into one home – created the largest and wealthiest state on the Greek mainland, but it also created a larger class of people excluded from political life by the nobility. By the 7th century BC, social unrest had become widespread, and the Areopagus appointed Draco to draft a strict new code of law (hence the word 'draconian'). When this failed, they appointed Solon, with a mandate to create a new constitution (in 594 BC).
Reform and Democracy
The reforms that Solon initiated dealt with both political and economic issues. The economic power of the Eupatridae was reduced by forbidding the enslavement of Athenian citizens as a punishment for debt (debt bondage), by breaking up large landed estates and freeing up trade and commerce, which allowed the emergence of a prosperous urban trading class. Politically, Solon divided the Athenians into four classes, based on their wealth and their ability to perform military service. The poorest class, the Thetai, (Ancient Greek Θήται) who formed the majority of the population, received political rights for the first time and were able to vote in the Ecclesia (Assembly). But only the upper classes could hold political office. The Areopagus continued to exist but its powers were reduced.
The new system laid the foundations for what eventually became Athenian democracy, but in the short-term it failed to quell class conflict and after twenty years of unrest the popular party, led by Peisistratos, seized power. Peisistratos is usually called a tyrant, but the Greek word tyrannos does not mean a cruel and despotic ruler, merely one who took power by force. Peisistratos was in fact a very popular ruler, who made Athens wealthy, powerful, and a centre of culture. He preserved the Solonian Constitution, but made sure that he and his family held all the offices of state.
Peisistratus built the first aqueduct tunnel at Athens, which most likely had its sources on the slopes of Mount Hymettos and along the Ilissos river. It supplied, among other structures, the fountain house in the southeast corner of the Agora, but it had a number of branches. In the 4th century BC it was replaced by a system of terracotta pipes in a stone-built underground channel, sometimes called the Hymettos aqueduct; many sections had round, oval or square access holes on top of about 10 cm × 10 cm (4 in × 4 in). Pipe segments of this system are displayed at the Evangelismos and Syntagma Metro stations.
Peisistratos died in 527 BC and was succeeded by his sons Hippias and Hipparchus. They proved to be much less adept rulers and in 514 BC, Hipparchus was assassinated in a private dispute over a young man (see Harmodius and Aristogeiton). This led Hippias to establish a real dictatorship, which proved very unpopular. He was overthrown in 510 BC. A radical politician with an aristocratic background named Cleisthenes then took charge, and it was he who established democracy in Athens.
The reforms of Cleisthenes replaced the traditional four phyle ('tribes') with ten new ones, named after legendary heroes and having no class basis; they were in fact electorates. Each phyle was in turn divided into three trittyes and each trittys had one or more demes, which became the basis of local government. The phyle each elected fifty members to the Boule, a council which governed Athens on a day-to-day basis. The Assembly was open to all citizens and was both a legislature and a supreme court, except in murder cases and religious matters, which became the only remaining functions of the Areopagus.
Most public offices were filled by lot, although the ten strategoi (generals) were elected. This system remained remarkably stable and, with a few brief interruptions, it remained in place for 170 years, until Philip II of Macedon defeated Athens and Thebes at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Athens
Archaic Greece - Political Developments
Politically, the archaic period saw the development of the polis (or city-state) as the predominant unit of political organisation. Many cities throughout Greece came under the rule of autocratic leaders, called "tyrants". It also saw the development of law and systems of communal decision-making, with the earliest evidence for law codes and constitutional structures dating to the period. By the end of the archaic period, both the Athenian and Spartan constitutions seem to have developed into their classical forms.
Development of the Polis
The archaic period saw significant urbanisation and the development of the concept of the polis as it was used in Classical Greece. By Solon's time, if not before, the word polis had acquired its classical meaning, and though the emergence of the polis as a political community was still in progress at this point, the polis as an urban centre was a product of the eighth century. However, the polis did not become the dominant form of socio-political organisation throughout Greece in the archaic period, and in the north and west of the country it did not become dominant until some way into the Classical period.
The urbanisation process in archaic Greece known as "synoecism" – the amalgamation of several small settlements into a single urban centre – took place in much of Greece in the eighth century BC. Both Athens and Argos, for instance, began to coalesce into single settlements around the end of that century. In some settlements, this physical unification was marked by the construction of defensive city walls, as was the case in Smyrna by the middle of the eighth century BC, and Corinth by the middle of the seventh century BC.
It seems that the evolution of the polis as a socio-political structure, rather than a simply geographical one, can be attributed to this urbanisation, as well as a significant population increase in the eighth century. These two factors created a need for a new form of political organisation, as the political systems in place at the beginning of the archaic period quickly became unworkable.
Athens
Though in the early part of the Classical period the city of Athens was both culturally and politically dominant, it was not until the late sixth century BC that it became a leading power in Greece.
The attempted coup by Cylon of Athens (who become tyrant of Athens) may be the earliest event in Athenian history which is clearly attested by ancient sources, dating to around 636 BCE. At this time, it seems that Athens' monarchy had already ended and the archonship had replaced it as the most important executive office in the state, though the archonship could only be held by members of the Eupatridae, the families which made up Athens' aristocracy.
The earliest laws of Athens were established by Draco, in 621/0; his law on homicide was the only one to have survived to the Classical period. Draco's law code aimed to replace private revenge as the first and only response of an individual to an offence committed against them. The law code of Draco, however, failed to prevent the tensions between the rich and poor which were the impetus to Solon's reforms.
In 594/3 BC, Solon was appointed "archon and mediator". Exactly what his reforms consisted of is uncertain. He claimed to have taken up the horoi to set the land free, but the exact meaning of horoi is unknown; their removal seems to have been part of the problem of hektemoroi – another word whose meaning is obscure. Solon was also credited with abolishing slavery for debtors, and establishing limits on who could be granted Athenian citizenship.
Solon instituted radical constitutional reform, replacing noble birth as a qualification for office with income. The poorest – called thetes – could hold no offices, although they could attend the Assembly and the law courts, while the richest class – the pentacosiomedimni – were the only people eligible to become treasurer, and possibly archon. He set up the Council of the Four Hundred, responsible for discussing motions which were to come before the Assembly. Finally, Solon substantially reduced the powers of the archon by giving citizens the right of appeal; their case was judged by the Assembly.
A second wave of constitutional reform in Athens was instituted by Cleisthenes towards the end of the sixth century. Cleisthenes apparently redivided the Athenian population, which had previously been grouped into four tribes, into ten new tribes. A new Council of 500 was instituted, with members from each deme represented. Demes were also given the power to determine their own members (which, in turn, provided them with influence over the membership of the citizen body more generally) and to somewhat determine their own judicial arrangements. These reforms gave the citizen body a sense of responsibility for what happened in the community for the first time. Between the reforms of Solon and Cleisthenes, the Athenian constitution had become identifiably democratic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_Greece
Homer and the Greek Renaissance, 900-600BC
Throughout the past 2500 years of western history there has been a tendency on the part of one age after another to go back in time to find something of itself in the past. The quest for collective identity has often taken scholars, artists, intellectuals, philosophers, scientists and others back to that historical point in time in which it all began. For us moderns of the past 500 years, that tendency is strong and it is no accident that we have often found our identity in the world of Classical Greece. There is something about the word "classical" that is indeed appealing. We speak about classical music, a classic film or even classic Coke. By calling something classic we mean that it stands the test of time, or that it is number one, or that in all times and all places it is somehow good.
The ancient Greeks seemed to have placed western society as well as the western intellectual tradition on a footing or groundwork that remains to this day. We take this foundation for granted, for the simple reason that the Greeks of the classical age seemed to have discovered so many things which today matter a great deal. So, although our voyage into the ancient past has begun with the Ancient Near East we now find ourselves on the Attic peninsula, in the heart of the ancient Mediterranean world...
Homer's world is a closed and finite world. This is completely unlike our own world which is a mechanical world, governed by mathematics and fixed physical laws. Homer's world is a living world – the earth, man, animals and plants are all endowed with personality, emotion and wills of their own. Even the gods and goddesses were endowed with these qualities. The gods themselves could appear at any time and at any place. Although the gods had no permanent relations with the world of men and women, they were interested in their welfare. They also intervened in the affairs of life, as Homer's Iliad makes abundantly clear. In general, the gods were the guides and councilors of mortal men and women. Still, the gods and goddesses often deceived men by offering them delusion rather than reality.
For Homer, the world was not governed by caprice, whim or chance – what governed the world was "Moira" (fate, fortune, destiny). Fate was a system of regulations that control the unfolding of all life, all men and women, all things of the natural world, and all gods and goddesses. Fate was not only a system of regulations but a fundamental law that maintained the world. It is Moira that gives men and women their place and function in Greek society. That is, it is Moira that determines who shall be slave or master, peasant or warrior, citizen or non-citizen, Greek or barbarian. It is Moira that fixed the rhythm of human life – from childhood through youth to old age and finally death, it was Fate that regulated the personal growth of the individual. Even the gods had their destinies determined by Moira. From the Iliad, the goddess Athena expounds on this principle of Fate to Telemachus when she says the gods may help mortals but "Death is the law for all: the gods themselves/Cannot avert it from the man they cherish when baneful Moira has pronounced his doom."
Given all this, it should be obvious that Greek religion was polytheistic. Homer endowed his gods with a personality and the gods differed from men only (1) in their physical perfection and (2) in their immortality. In other words, gods and goddesses, like men and women, could be good, bad honest, devious, jealous, vengeful, calm, sober, quick-witted or dim. The gods assisted their favorite mortals and punished those who defied their will. Most gods were common to all Greeks but each city-state also had their own patron deity. Gods and goddesses were worshipped in public. But there were also household gods – the gods of the hearth – specific to each family or clan. The general acceptance of these gods is a sign of a specific culture that arose during the Greek Renaissance, a culture we can identify as "Panhellenic."
http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture5b.html
It was in the Homeric Period, also known as “The Age of Homer,” between 850 B.C. and 650 B.C., that an evolution in forms of government from monarchy to oligarchy, and tyranny to eventual democracy, began in ancient Greece. Homer was the major figure of ancient Greek literature and the author of the earliest epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. In the year 630 B.C., the last tyrant of Attica, Ceylon, seized the Acropolis, which was the seat of government in Athens, and established himself as the ruler of all Attica. He didn’t rule for long. Ceylon was overthrown within weeks by farmers and heavily armed foot soldiers known as hoplites. Many of Ceylon’s followers were killed, and the few that escaped death fled into the mountains. Thus, Athenian democracy was born.
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/publicspeakingprinciples/chapter/ancient-greece/
How Democracy Got Its Strange & Turbulent Start in Ancient Athens
In 490 BCE, Athenians went to the polls to elect their annual military officers and civilian magistrates. The outcome of the election is sometimes felt to have determined the entire history of the Western world. Ancient Athens has become synonymous with democracy, and the exploits of the Greeks are lauded for saving the world from tyranny. Yet Athens had not always had a democratic system of government. Some of Athens’s mythical kings rank among the weirdest characters in the whole of Greek mythology...
Ancient Athens has become synonymous with democracy, and the exploits of the Greeks at the three epic battles of Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis are lauded for saving the world from tyranny. Yet Athens had not always had a democratic system of government. In the mythical tradition the city was ruled by kings, who had a zero-tolerance policy when it came to democracy. In Homer’s Iliad, Odysseus is said to put any ‘man of the people’ firmly in his place: ‘sit still,’ he says, ‘listen to men who are better than you; you are unwarlike; you are impotent; you are an irrelevance in combat and in counsel; we can’t all be kings; the rule of many is a bad thing; there should just be one king and commander who takes the decisions on behalf of his people.’ No ordinary person should ever challenge the authority of a mythical king, and when a common soldier, who is incredibly ugly, bandy-legged, lame in one foot, round shouldered, pointy-headed and never shuts up, criticizes the supreme commander Agamemnon, Odysseus thrashes the unfortunate man with his golden staff, making him cringe and cower, burst into tears, and break out into livid bruises. The army think it is the best thing that Odysseus has ever done.
https://bigthink.com/the-past/turbulent-birth-of-athens-democracy/
The Birthplace of Democracy: Greece's Political System & Parliament
Ancient Greece and its cultural heritage significantly influenced not only modern Greek culture but also European and world culture. The ancient Athenian Republic is the basis of the Republic of modern societies.
For the first time in the history of mankind, in ancient Greece, a state was created with laws, for which the citizens participate in their formation. In a democracy, all adult citizens have the right to vote, and laws are for the common good, not just the benefit of the rich and powerful...
The Athenian democracy reached its peak in the middle of the 5th century and its prosperity lasted for about thirty years, a period that went down in history as the ‘golden age of Pericles’. But the state with its separate institutions already existed forty years before Pericles and would survive until the time of the Macedonians, two hundred years later. In other words, it lived for almost three centuries, more than any other modern or ancient democracy. The great endurance in the time of the Athenian democracy is attributed by the scholars not only to the right institutions but also to their great adaptability and evolution. Institutions were born from the needs of life and therefore easily adapted to changing conditions. There were no brain creations of a wise head, even if it belonged to Solon.
The adaptability of the institutions is shown by the evolution of the institution of the king. In full democracy, in the time of Pericles, the archon king was drawn every year, a distant echo of the Mycenaean conquests, the last of which was Kodros. The institution was not abolished. It had evolved into a painless office for democracy with religious ritual responsibilities.
Cleisthenes may be considered the founder of the Athenian Republic, but he relied on the legislation enacted by Solon, who is without a doubt the father of democracy. When Solon drafted his laws, he did not have any illusions about their effectiveness. "The law," he said, "is like a spider's web: the small and the weak cling to it, while the strong tear it apart." Another example of straightforwardness and parsimony, which characterized the ancient Greek spirit...
https://greeking.me/blog/greek-history-culture/item/365-greek-democracy
7 Points to Know About Ancient Greek Government
You may have heard that ancient Greece invented democracy, but democracy was only one type of government employed by the Greeks, and when it first evolved, many Greeks thought it a bad idea.
In the pre-Classical period, ancient Greece was composed of small geographic units ruled by a local king. Over time, groups of the leading aristocrats replaced the kings. Greek aristocrats were powerful, hereditary noblemen and wealthy landowners whose interests were at odds with the majority of the populace.
1. Ancient Greece Had Many Governments
In ancient times, the area that we call Greece was many independent, self-governing city-states. The technical, much-used term for these city-states is poleis (the plural of polis). We're familiar with the governments of the 2 leading poleis, Athens and Sparta.
Poleis joined together voluntarily for protection against the Persians. Athens served as the head [technical term to learn: hegemon] of the Delian League.
The aftermath of the Peloponnesian War eroded the integrity of the poleis, as successive poleis dominated each other. Athens was temporarily forced to give up its democracy.
Then the Macedonians, and later, the Romans incorporated the Greek poleis into their empires, putting an end to the independent polis.
2. Athens Invented Democracy
Probably one of the first things learned from history books or classes on ancient Greece is that the Greeks invented democracy. Athens originally had kings, but gradually, by the 5th century B.C., it developed a system that required active, ongoing participation of the citizens. Rule by the demes or people is a literal translation of the word "democracy".
While virtually all citizens were allowed to participate in democracy, citizens did not include:
- women
- children
- enslaved people
- resident aliens, including those from other Greek poleis
This means that the majority were excluded from the democratic process.
The democratization of Athens was gradual, but the germ of it, the assembly, was part of the other poleis, even Sparta.
3. Democracy Didn't Just Mean Everyone Votes
The modern world looks at democracy as a matter of electing men and women (in theory our equals, but in practice already powerful people or those we look up to) by voting, perhaps once a year or four. The Classical Athenians might not even recognize such limited participation in the government as a democracy.
Democracy is rule by the people, not rule by majority vote, although voting -- quite a lot of it -- was part of the ancient procedure, as was selection by lot. Athenian democracy included the appointment of citizens to the office and active participation in the running of the country.
Citizens didn't just elect their favorites to represent them. They sat on court cases in very large numbers, perhaps as high as 1500 and as low as 201, voted, by various not necessarily precise methods, including estimation of hands raised, and spoke their minds on everything affecting the community in the assembly [technical term to learn: ecclesia], and they might be selected by lot as one of the equal numbers of magistrates from each of the tribes to sit on the council [technical term to learn: Boule].
4. Tyrants Could Be Benevolent
When we think of tyrants, we think of oppressive, autocratic rulers. In ancient Greece, tyrants could be benevolent and supported by the populace, although not usually the aristocrats. However, a tyrant did not gain supreme power by constitutional means; nor was he the hereditary monarch. Tyrants seized power and generally maintained their position by means of mercenaries or soldiers from another polis. Tyrants and oligarchies (the aristocratic rule by the few) were the main forms of government of the Greek poleis after the fall of the kings.
5. Sparta Had a Mixed Form of Government
Sparta was less interested than Athens in following the will of the people. The people were supposed to be working for the good of the state. However, just as Athens experimented with a novel form of government, so also was Sparta's system unusual. Originally, monarchs ruled Sparta, but over time, Sparta hybridized its government:
- the kings remained so one could go to war
- there were also 5 annually-elected ephors
- a council of 28 elders [technical term to learn: Gerousia]
- an assembly of the people
The kings were a monarchical element, the ephors and Gerousia were an oligarchic component, and the assembly was a democratic element.
6. Macedonia Was a Monarchy
At the time of Philip of Macedonia and his son Alexander the Great, the government of Macedonia was monarchical. Macedonia's monarchy was not only hereditary but powerful, unlike Sparta whose kings held circumscribed powers. Although the term may not be accurate, feudal captures the essence of the Macedonian monarchy. With the Macedonian victory over mainland Greece at the Battle of Chaeronea, the Greek poleis ceased to be independent but were forced to join the Corinthian League.
7. Aristotle Preferred Aristocracy
Usually, the types of government relevant to ancient Greece are listed as three: Monarchy, Oligarchy (generally synonymous with rule by the aristocracy), and Democracy. Simplifying, Aristotle divided each into good and bad forms. Democracy in its extreme form is mob rule. Tyrants are a type of monarch, with their own self-serving interests paramount. For Aristotle, oligarchy was a bad type of aristocracy. Oligarchy, which means rule by the few, was rule by and for the wealthy for Aristotle. He preferred rule by the aristocrats who were, by definition, those who were the best. They would operate to reward merit and in the interests of the state.
https://www.thoughtco.com/important-facts-about-ancient-greek-government-118550
Part 2: Aristotelean Preservation of Constitutions
Introduction
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