The Rise and (Relative) Success of Dēmokratia in Ancient Greece

In the fifth century, Solon – an Athenian archon (or statesman) – introduced a number of measures in response to rising instability which would revolutionise political structure forever by shifting authority into the hands of citizens and out of those of the elite in the existing oligarchic structures. These democratic structures were strengthened into the second century, before the rule of Roman autocracy after the fall of Corinth in 146 BC. This democracy, however, remained largely limited as citizenship, and therefore the right to vote, was understood in terms of an individual’s access to freedom. Women, enslaved individuals, and foreigners were not, therefore, regarded as citizens of the Greek polis (a socio-geographic term to encompass the Greek city-state and its regional identity) and were restricted from any political engagement. While not recognisable today therefore as full democracy (hopefully), Solon’s legislation empowered the demos (free Greek citizens) and encouraged individual political action. This article will explore the rise of Athenian democracy and assess the extent of such structures, and how far they can be compared to today’s definitions of the term, particularly in the United Kingdom.

Ancient Greece in the fifth century was an autocracy, with authority concentrated in the hands of the elite who locked their power into the bloodlines of the wealthy and excluded the poorer classes from the management of the polis. While control of resources and therefore the generation of wealth created an incredibly powerful political system, economic instability and popular protest amongst the lower classescontributed to pressures and the subsequent introduction of several reforms which would progressively undermine the existing systems of government by introducing power to the demos. Christopher Carey emphasises how these developments were gradual but identifies Solon’s impact as revolutionary in laying the groundwork for such change by fundamentally altering contemporary economic and judicialsystems to ensure legal protection at all social levels, and leading constitutional change to ensure wider political representation. Such instability and the subsequent pressure for change grew against what Matthew Simonton describes as the “predatory nature” of oligarchies from among the poorer classes, who were indebted to landowners under indentured labour. Solon’s identification and targeting of this system as the source of instability was largely revolutionary given the contemporary understanding that poverty, while unfortunate, was largely inescapable. To alter the economic system, Solon claims to have removed the stone markers – known as horoi – which demarcated indentured land himself, thereby eradicating the debts which “incurred on the security of a person” and made them dependent on the higher classes, thereby increasing equality between classes.

While the subsequent development of democracy in Classical and Hellenistic Athens was slow between the fifth and third centuries, Simonton nevertheless argues it “expanded” and “flourished” in this time, particularly under the leadership of Alexander the Great, who encouraged democratic rule in the Asia minor polis states, further cementing the political and bureaucratic centrality of Athens within the Ancient Greek empire. Democracy was generally preferred by the demos, becoming, as Simonton pointed out, part of the “common culture”, with democratic theory becoming embedded into institutionalorganisations, and generally considered more gentle and humane than existing oligarchical and tyrannical structures. Empowering the demos took time, but was progressively advanced by both the increasing unpopularity of such oligarchy and tyranny, and the efforts of democratic archons, whose development of democratic theory Cynthia Farrar found to be obsessed with a more “rational” state order, but one which was “reflective” of contemporary social ideology prioritising the masses, and therefore driven and shaped by the people. The realisation of such democratic idealism took the form of the ekklesia(assembly) in the seventh century, which platformed open meetings to debate polis military policies, domestic legislation and representative voting organisation. This was revolutionary since it was the first time those without property were able to engage in local political decisions, which was furthered by the provision of stipends for poorer individuals like farmers to ensure their ability to travel to the ekklesia if they lived further away, thereby ensuring greater equality and class representation. In the ekklesia, roughly 6,000 demos were physically organised in the Pnyx (a hillside auditorium on the Acropolis or ‘high city’, which was the citadel above Athens) according to social class or tribe, with individuals voting by raising their hand. The power of the masses was reinforced further with this democratic theory in the fifth century“under the aegis of Solon” who modified the politeia (organisation of power) to create the Boule in 594 BC which was made up of 400 members  of different classes to balance the power of autocracy and the broader citizen base. E. Staveley however points out how this was merely theoretical and not realised until 508 BC by Cleisthenes who created the Council of the Five Hundred, further expanding the democratic base to represent each demes (local municipalities) with fifty representatives from each of ten new socio-economic tribes to debate matters of the polis. Although this admittedly remained only a partial democracy, the end of oligarchy and tyranny in Athens was groundbreaking and paved the way for modern democratic organisation.  

While the expansion of democracy to include the lower classes was largely revolutionary, this right to political engagement was restricted to citizens, who were considered only to be men, thereby excluding the majority of Ancient Athenian society, including women, foreigners, enslaved individuals, and children. Citizenship was closely tied to the contemporary understanding that freedom was access to leisure and a lack of dependence on others, explaining such limitations as women and enslaved people were considered dependent on men and enslavers respectively for their livelihood. Moreover, Athenian society was a meritocracy since it believed “judgement comes with maturity”, as Carey suggests, further limiting political engagement to male citizens over the age of thirty. For foreigners, who were considered alien, naturalisation in Athens was incredibly difficult, with those who failed the citizenship tests before a board of enquiry – similar to those today in the UK – facing enslavement if unsuccessful. In this ideological climate, Mary Beard finds women’s voices had “no place in public discourse” and were generally excluded from the male dominated sphere of writing. A notable subversion of this is Sappho’s poem The Hymn to Aphrodite, which worked to feminise an epic to Diomedes in Homer’s Iliad, demonstrating how while women were largely excluded from popular and therefore political engagement, they appeared in cultural spaces, as Sappho did by diverting the masculine sphere of military conquest into a poem about feminine lesbian love. 

Ultimately, Claude Mosse argues that the Athenian political structure following the fifth century was a “moderate democracy” at best, and that evolution of its infrastructure was necessary for a true andeffective representative system. J. Larson goes further, heavily criticising the Athenian democratic system, arguing it was less representative of public opinion than oligarchies to an extent, since “important decision[s]” were generally referred to experts instead of the masses, thereby reducing the number of debates which were proposed to the demos overall, while the representative under oligarchical structureswere smaller, but more involved in significant political activity. He does however conclude that democracy was “possible” given the voting systems required active citizen involvement, and succeeded in such respect. Athenian democracy was revolutionary in its existence, since, as Raaflaub highlights, oligarchs previously considered political influence to be transactional through individuals’ “money and bodies”,while democracy valued an individuals’ personal choice. As this state strengthened between the third and second centuries, democracy became more successful as equality amongst the eligible members of the state grew. Today in the UK, citizens – defined either through birth, descent, naturalisation of registration – over the age of eighteen can vote, so this article finds the crucial difference between democracy today and in Ancient Athenian Greece to lie in what citizenship means to the state and to the individual. For Ancient Greece, this meant freedom to engage politically and therefore influence the wider polis, raising the question of what it means for citizens in the UK today.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Sappho, The Hymn to Aphrodite, trans. by J. M. Duban, Classical Bulletin, 52.61 (1975), p.61.

Secondary sources

Beard, Mary, Confronting the Classics, 2nd ed. (Profile, 2014), pp.26-31.

Carey, Christopher, Democracy in Classical Athens, 2nd ed. (Bloomsbury, 2017), pp.15-48.

Davies, John K., ‘Athenian Citizenship: The Descent Groups and the Alternatives’ in Athenian Democracy, ed. by P. J. Rhodes (Edinburgh, 2004), pp.18-22.

Farrar, Cynthia, The origins of democratic thinking: The invention of politics in classical Athens (Cambridge, 1988), pp.1-14.

‘General Introduction’ in Athenian Democracy, ed. by P. J. Rhodes (Edinburgh, 2004), pp.1-5.

Hansen, Mogens Herman, ‘How Did the Athenian Ecclesia Vote?’ in Athenian Democracy, ed. by P. J. Rhodes (Edinburgh, 2004), pp.40-61.

Larson, J. A. O., Representative Government in Greek and Roman History (California Press, 1955), pp.1-4, 86-105.

Mosse, Claude, ‘How did a Political Myth Take Shape: Solon, ‘Founding Father of the Athenian Democracy’, trans. by Rosh Ireland, in Athenian Democracy, ed. by P. J. Rhodes (Edinburgh, 2004), pp.242-259.

Raaflaub, Kurt A., ‘Equalities and Inequalities in Athenian Democracy’ in Dēmokratia: A Conversation on Democracies Ancient and Modern, ed. by Josiah Ober and Charles Hedrick (Princeton, 1996), pp.139-174.

Simonton, Matthew, Classical Greek Oligarchy: A Political History (Princeton, 2017), pp.1, 275-286, doi:10.23943/Princeton/9780691176.001.0001.

Stavely, E. S., Greek and Roman Voting and Elections, ed. by H.H. Scullard (Thames and Hudson, 1972), pp.13-18, 51-54.