This imperial system has become, for us, a by-word for autocracy and the arbitrary exercise. However, the equality Herodotus described was limited to a small segment of the Athenian population in Ancient Greece. All male citizens of Athens could attend the assembly which made political decisions. Cartwright, Mark. The capital would be sending no more reinforcements or money. So what we have in Herodotus is a Greek debate in Persian dress. The Romans built a huge mobile siege tower that reached higher than the citys walls, and placed catapults in its upper reaches to fire down upon the defenders. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. Weary of the siege and determined to seize the city by assault, he ordered his soldiers to fire an endless stream of arrows and javelins. The word democracy (dmokratia) derives from dmos, which refers to the entire citizen body: the People. Traditionally, the concept of democracy is believed to have originated in Athens in c508 BC, although there is evidence to suggest that democratic systems of government may have existed elsewhere in the world before then, albeit on a smaller scale. Actor posing as Socrates Modern representative democracies, in contrast to direct democracies, have citizens who vote for representatives who create and enact laws on their behalf. 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. 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. In 83 BC, Sulla and his army returned to Italy, kicking off the Roman Republics first all-out civil war, which he won. Dr. Scott argues that this was caused by a range of circumstances which in many cases were the ancient world's equivalent of those faced by Britain today. Why did the system fail? He also said that the ability to govern and participate in government was more important than one's class. This being the case, the following remarks on democracy are focussed on the Athenians. Athens was forced to destroy its main defenses, abolish the Delian League and its fleet was handed over to the Spartans. In this way, the 500 members of the boule dictated how the entire democracy would work. Then there was the view that the mob, the poor majority, were nothing but a collective tyrant. Athens transformed ancient warfare and became one of the ancient world's superpowers. As the Pontic general Archelaus persuaded other Greek cities to turn against Romeincluding Thebes to the northwest of AthensAristion established a new regime in Athens. Athens was already a waning star on the international stage resting on past imperial glories, and the book argues that it struggled to keep pace with a world in a state of fast-paced globalisation and political transition. It was this revived democracy that in 406 committed what its critics both ancient and modern consider to have been the biggest single practical blunder in the democracy's history: the trial and condemnation to death of all eight generals involved in the pyrrhic naval victory at Arginusae. Theophilus even hacked off the hands of Romans clinging to statues inside a temple. As winter stretched on, Athenians began to starve. Cartwright, M. (2018, April 03). 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. If they did not fulfill their duty they would be fined and sometimes marked with red paint. 'What? - Melissa Schwartzberg. 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. It was this body which supervised any administrative committees and officials on behalf of the assembly. Centuries later, archaeologists discovered some of these in the ruins of the Pompeion, a gathering place for the start of processions. BBC 2014 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Inside Piraeus, Archelaus countered by building towers for his siege engines. The battle was fought on the Marathon plain of northeastern Attica and marked the first blows of the Greco-Persian War. S2 ep2: What did the future look like in the past? 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. At last, Archelaus saw that the game was up and skillfully evacuated his army by sea. 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. The Athenian defenders, weakened by hunger, fled. 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. But what did the development of Athenian democracy actually involve? 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. Of all the democratic institutions, Aristotle argued that the dikasteria contributed most to the strength of democracy because the jury had almost unlimited power. Athenion struts on stage before the crowd, then displays the sloganeering skills of a modern politician, saying: Now you command yourselves, and I am your commander in chief. 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. (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.). Over time, however, the Romans had begun to look less friendly. Democracy itself, however, buckled under the strain. Running a website with millions of readers every month is expensive. But when one of the Athenian delegates began a grand speech about their citys great past, Sulla abruptly dismissed them. Athenion at first feigned a reluctance to speak because of the sheer scale of what is to be said, according to Posidonius. 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. World History Encyclopedia, 03 Apr 2018. 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. Now, Roman senators and Athenian exiles in Sullas entourage asked him to show mercy for the city. The military impact of Athenian democracy was twofold. From Democrats To Kings is published by Icon Books. World History Encyclopedia is a non-profit organization. Into this dangerous situation stepped Solon, a moderate man the Athenians trusted to bring justice for all. As we have seen, only male citizens who were 18 years or over could speak (at least in theory) and vote in the assembly, whilst the positions such as magistrates and jurors were limited to those over 30 years of age. His election as hoplite general quickly followed. Athens, too, should throw in with this rising power, he asserted. Archaeologists have found no inscriptions with decrees from the Assembly that date within 40 years of the end of the siege. Plato realized why democracy failed - even in ideal conditions, such as the direct democracy of ancient Athens. There were 3 classes in the society of ancient Athens. When Athenion returned home in the early summer of 88, citizens gave him a rapturous reception. 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. To protect their money, some Athenians buried coin hoards. Rome would have to fight the Pontic king again before his final defeat and deathpurportedly by suicidein 63. Realizing the citys defenses were broken, Aristion burned the Odeon of Pericles, on the south side of the Acropolis, to prevent the Romans from using its timbers to construct more siege engines. 'Certainly', says Pericles. The third important institution was the popular courts, or dikasteria. 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. Our selection of the week's biggest Cambridge research news and features sent directlyto your inbox. 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. It supervised government workers and was in charge of things like navy ships (triremes) and army horses. Sign up for our free weekly email newsletter! 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. The number of dead is beyond counting. Inside homes, the Romans discovered a sight that must have horrified even the most hardened among them: human flesh prepared as food. The boul represented the 139 districts of Attica and acted as a kind of executive committee of the assembly. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. With Athens under his thumb, Sulla turned back to Piraeus. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. 474 Words2 Pages. Sulla arrived in Greece early in 87 with five legions (approximately 25,000 men) and some mounted auxiliaries. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. This executive of the executive had a chairman (epistates) who was chosen by lot each day. World History Encyclopedia. His influence and that of his best pupil Aristotle were such that it was not until the 18th century that democracy's fortunes began seriously to revive, and the form of democracy that was then implemented tentatively in the United States and, briefly, France was far from its original Athenian model. 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. Cleisthenes introduced democracy in Athen (500c BCE) Democracy of Athens. He holds an MA in Political Philosophy and is the WHE Publishing Director. Not All Opinions Are Equal In a democracy all opinions are equal. 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. 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. Its economy, heavily dependent on trade and resources from overseas, crashed when in the 4th century instability in the region began to affect the arterial routes through which those supplies flowed. [15] Sparta and its allies accused Athens of aggression and threatened war. People rushed to greet him as he was carried into the city on a scarlet-covered couch, wearing a ring with Mithridatess portrait. The word democracy (dmokratia) derives from dmos, which refers to the entire citizen body, and kratos, meaning rule. 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. Those defeats persuaded Mithridates to end the war. An artillery duel developed. Regardless, Sulla benefited greatly. How did Athens swing so quickly from euphoria to catastrophe? But where Athenion failed, Mithridates was determined to succeed. Though Mithridates had to withdraw from territories he had conquered and pay an indemnity, he remained in power in Pontus. Gloating over Roman misfortunes, he declared that Mithridates controlled all of Anatolia. 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. 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). First, was the citizens who ran the government and held property. known for its art, architecture and philosophy. 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. 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. Of this group, perhaps as few as 100 citizens - the wealthiest, most influential, and the best speakers - dominated the political arena both in front of the assembly and behind the scenes in private conspiratorial political meetings (xynomosiai) and groups (hetaireiai). 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. 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. Therefore, women, slaves, and resident foreigners (metoikoi) were excluded from the political process. 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. When that failed, the Romans settled in for a long siege. People of power or influence weren't concerned with the rights of such non-citizens. In the words of historian K. A. Raaflaub, democracy in ancient Athens was. When Athenion sent a force to seize control of Delos, a Roman unit swiftly defeated it. Knowledge of the life of Pericles derives largely from . The mass involvement of all male citizens and the expectation that they should participate actively in the running of the polis is clear in this quote from Thucydides: We alone consider a citizen who does not partake in politics not only one who minds his own business but useless. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. Last modified April 03, 2018. Greek Bronze Ballot DisksMark Cartwright (CC BY-NC-SA). Please note that some of these recommendations are listed under our old name, Ancient History Encyclopedia. "Athenian Democracy." In the late 500s to early 400s BCE, democracy developed in the city-state of Athens. Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. 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. To the Persians, he emphasized his descent from ancient Persian kings. 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. When the fleet reached the city, Aristion quickly seized power, thanks in part to a personal guard of 2,000 Pontic soldiers. 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. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. S2 ep 5: What is the future of artificial intelligence. 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. 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. Archelaus in turn built a tower that he brought up directly opposite its Roman counterpart. But what form of government, what constitution, should the restored Persian empire enjoy for the future? 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. The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes: Structure, Principles Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. In this case there was a secret ballot where voters wrote a name on a piece of broken pottery (ostrakon). A Council of 500 and Assembly were created. What mattered was whether or not the unusual system was any good. The collapse of Greek democracy 2,400 years ago occurred in circumstances so similar to our own it could be read as a dark and often ignored lesson from the past, a new study suggests. In Athens, it was a noble named Solon who laid the foundations for democracy, and introduced a . Archaeologists discovered these caches thousands of years later and found bronze coins minted during the siege, when Aristion and King Mithridates jointly held the title of master of the mint. 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. Rome responded, rushing 20 warships and 1,000 troops to Piraeus to keep Philip V at bay. The boule was a group of 500 men, 50 from each of ten Athenian tribes, who served on the Council for one year. There is a strong case that democracy was a major reason for this success. 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. (Ostracism, in which a citizen could be expelled from the Athenian city-state for 10 years, was among the powers of the ekklesia.) 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. Our publication has been reviewed for educational use by Common Sense Education, Internet Scout (University of Wisconsin), Merlot (California State University), OER Commons and the School Library Journal. The assembly also ensured decisions were enforced and officials were carrying out their duties correctly. Athenion had the mob eating out of his hand. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Aegean, events touched off an explosion whose force would swamp Athens. Why, to start with, does he not use the word democracy, when democracy of an Athenian radical kind is clearly what he's advocating?