All the big cities in Ancient Greece had that
one special trait to set it apart: Olympia hosted the big games, Delphi had the Oracle,
Sparta cultivated buff dudes and systematic self-oppression in equal measure, and Athens most
famously of all had Democracy! Yes, Δημοκρατία, the system of government where the people have
the power, the glorious start of the Athenian Golden Age, and one of the Greek world’s most
consequential contributions to human society... basically happened by accident. Now that’s not
to say it was some unintentional mistake they clumsily stumbled into (as hilarious and frankly
in-character as that would be) – but rather, the creation of Athenian Democracy was a much
lengthier and more complex process than the Athenians would have you believe.
According to their folk traditions and drinking
songs: Democracy was born in a single moment of excellence when Harmódios and Aristogeíton
killed the tyrant Hípparkhos, freeing the people of Athens to live as equals under the law
forever after – great work team, let’s get drunk. That’s the story they told themselves and the rest
of Greece... but luckily for us, we know that the Athenians are sneaky little liars we can’t trust
for sh*t – these are the same guys who claimed they’re so amazing that gods were literally
fighting to be their patron. Cool myth; maybe cool it on the Ego. Now, the real story of Democracy
isn’t as glamorous but is quite illuminating: a winding, century-long tale of reforms, civil
strife, tyrants, assassins, an invading army, and a little more civil strife leading to the birth
of Democracy in 508 BC. Hard-fought, well-earned.
It’s a story that could’ve played out anywhere in Greece, yet, it only happened in
Athens, so we do (tragically) have to give them some credit. But as we investigate how this unique
system of governance arose in dinky old Athens of all places, we’ll see that Democracy wasn’t a gift
from the Olympians above which only Athenians were big-brain enough to handle, but a logical outcome
of careful problem-solving and a few lucky breaks. And as much as I hate to indulge them with more
bragging material, Athenian Democracy is even more impressive than we often acknowledge. So, to
see how those ego-tripping madmen crafted one of the greatest systems in the history of human
society – sigh… damn they’re good – Let’s do some History!
Our story begins in the 600s BC, where the
city-state of Athens or Αθήνα was completely, utterly average. Located on the Attica
peninsula midway up the Aegean Sea, it was centrally-located in the Greek world but
only peripherally-important. Here at the start, Athens was a polis like every other, governed
by citizens and an aristocratic elite, with a flexible, unwritten constitution. One notable
feature of Athenian law typical of the time was resolving disputes with endless blood-feuds,
as seen in the entire plot of the Oresteia. This changed in the late 600s when Draco or Drakōn
supposedly gave Athens its first formal law code. It was so famously harsh that it gives us the
word Draconian, but critically, it turned the law from something nebulous and violent into
something codified and standardized. Good start!
The code soon got some tweaks in 594, when Solon was the city’s Archon – That meant he
was in charge of the assembly for a year, and boy oh boy did he make it count by implementing a
heckin’ chonky program of economic and social reforms. First was the Seisachtheia, the “Shaking
off of Burdens”: intended to clear up longstanding debts that weighed down society by nixing the land
debts and liberating citizens who were stuck in debtors’ prisons. This all was paired with reforms
to the citizen classes – previously, who could serve in what role was pre-set by birth, but Solon
now divided the classes by wealth. He came up with a whole scheme to measure how profitable your
land was based on how many standardized units of wheat, oil, and wine it produced. That’s some
videogame-ass nonsense right there, but I gotta be honest, If I was an Athenian I would absolutely
be chasing the high score in Olive Oil. I don’t know if that would make me a filthy capitalist or
a filthy gamer and frankly I don’t know which one is worse. Now, separating out government roles
by wealth class sounds very undemocratic – and it is – but ditching birthright nobility was a
huge step forward. And once participation rights were set by wealth, there was legal regularity, so
from there it’s not a huge leap to say “actually all of these classes can serve in every part of
government”; and sure enough, that’ll be exactly how we’ll land at Democracy.
But we’re not there yet, because after Solon’s
whirlwind year in power, Athens just couldn’t elect a new Archon, leading to a few years
of Literal Anarchy – Aναρχία – No Archon, because Athens was divided between three rival
factions: the Men of the Plain, Men of the Shore, and Men of the Hills. For the next half century,
these regional aristocratic cliques had their run of the place, and it seemed like Solon’s
reforms had only weakened the state. But as with many cities in Ancient Greece, civil strife
was the perfect opportunity for an enterprising citizen to seize power and become a tyrannos:
a tyrant. So it was in 561 when Peisístratos, one of the Men of the Hills, appeared in the main
marketplace all roughed up, claiming to have been attacked. He asked for bodyguards, got them, and
embarked upon crime – marching up the Acropolis to try and seize power by force. He was driven
out of the city, so bit of a swing and a miss, but close enough that he was willing to try again.
His second attempt was via a marriage alliance, but when that didn’t work he went back to his
roots: obvious lies and goofy bullsh*t – he found a really tall woman and dressed her up as
Athena to ride into town on a chariot and proclaim Peisistratus as rightful ruler of Athens. But
hold on a minute, the first source of that story is Herodotus, and I know better than to trust like
that – Peisistratus was also said to have defeated his rival factions in battle at Pellene and I
feel like that’s the more important item here.
But one way or another, in 546 Peisistratus vanquished his opposition
and took power as the sole tyrannos of Athens. So how does this coup-throwing doofus get
us any closer to Democracy? Frustratingly, he was damn good at his job. See, the unsolved
problem after Solon’s reforms was how small, pliable, and weak the Athenian state still was;
so as our boy Big P consolidates his own power, he’s ruling mildly and cleverly, respecting the
laws, still holding elections, and building on the reforms that Solon started. In the short term
he quelled the factional crisis, but in the long run Athens became stronger, richer, and far more
prestigious. Now this is a long list, the man was Busy: first he set up courts all across Attica’s
countryside to give the law more presence beyond the city center, while improving the city itself
with a big public fountain in the Agora and a new temple to Athena on the acropolis. He financed
this in part with money from silver mines he owned in Northern Greece as well as new state-run mines
down in Lavrion – those’ll come in real clutch in half a century when it single-handedly funds the
navy that beats the Persians – and Athenian coins struck with that silver soon circulated all
over the Aegean. They didn’t have that cute little owl yet, but they would, and there’s no
point in any of this without that goofy owl!
P-man also revamped the city’s two main celebrations, the Dionysia and the Panathenaia;
turning the celebratory games, feasts, plays, and processions from local events into major festivals
that drew revelers and athletes from across the Greek world. On the culture front, he commissioned
standardized editions of the Iliad and Odyssey to circulate, which happen to be the earliest
versions of the texts we have, so that alone is worth throwing the coup – not really, but, like,
mmmmmm – And with economic and cultural clout came political influence, as Big P made alliances with
the tyrants of Naxos and Samos, and annexed the sacred island of Delos – giving Athens a little
taste of a naval empire in the Aegean Sea. But just an appetizer, banquet to follow.
At the start of the century, Athens was any other
small Greek city-state, but after Peisistratus, it was more prominent than ever, and the state had
more identity, more authority, and more stability after two decades of reforms. Pei-guy was a
tyrannos to be sure, but the record shows he was not tyrannical. After his death in 527, his
two sons took charge of the city, and this takes us to our starting tale of Hipparchus getting
stabbo’d by Harmodius and Aristogeiton in 514. Yet despite what those rascal Athenians would have you
believe, this was not the end of tyranny in Athens nor the dawn of democracy, but the violent outcome
of a very public rejection. See, Hipparchus made kissy faces at Harmodius, but he was already
smangin’ Aristogeiton, and it escalated from there into Literal Murder during the Panathenaia, after
which point his brother Hippias was still ruler of Athens for another 4 years. And it was in that
key interval where he really turned tyrannical: jailing, killing, exiling, and enough other
dickish behavior that popular memory of the entire Peisistratid family soured into “ew,
tyrants, screw those guys”. Hippias was such a menace that Athens reimagined entire arcs
of its history to fit how much they hated him.
So if that didn’t do it, how democracy??? Well, Hippias was booted
from power in 510 by, of literally all people, a Spartan army, interfering on the advice of
the Delphic Oracle. But with the tyrant gone, Athens slipped right back into old habits of
factional slap-fights over the power vacuum – this time between Isagóras and Kleisthénes. I-guy
wanted K-man banished because of a century-old curse on his family the Alcmeonids, and called
the Spartans back in for help, but this time, the Athenians told Sparta to get out and take
Isagoras with them, leaving Cleisthenes the victor. And here, in 508 BC, Cleisthenes makes
the reforms that finally achieve Democracy.
His winning strategy seems to have been Invent Populism: realizing the citizens of Athens were a
much larger social group than the Aristocrats, he promised them new rights to align the people into
a single mega-faction. First was making all adult male citizens equal participants in government
regardless of property class, with specialized positions chosen by random draw for a term of one
year. He also reorganized the Athenians into 10 tribes, each of which was subdivided into thirds:
one group in the city, one inland, and one on the coast, making each tribe the average cross-section
of all Attica. It’s all a little convoluted, but jumbling everything up fully broke the
aristocracy’s regional power-bases. Then, a Council of 500 was created to advise the assembly,
with each tribe calling 50 of their citizens to serve on it each year; Once you served, you were
out for 10 years, so everyone got their turn and nobody gets entrenched in the system.
The goal of all this was to spread out the power
and align everyone towards Athens as the provider of law & authority, no room for factions. And
every aspect of the system reinforced each other: each tribe is a vertical slice of Athenian
society, the state is constantly rotating who’s in charge with random lots instead of
popularity contests, and all of that power is shared as evenly as possible. This is, frankly,
an astonishing system; not just ideologically but also as practical problem-solving: widening
citizens’ rights directly limits the powers of aristocrats and the danger of their factions.
Every citizen was on an even playing field, and the perils of Stasis that Athens spent
a century suffering from now had a far more palatable solution than Tyranny.
Athenian democracy wasn’t magic, it was genius;
forged over a long time with a lot of hard work from Cleisthenes all the way back to Draco.
From 508, everything that follows in the Athenian story flows from this single moment of
transformation: a change that touched every aspect of the Athenian state and every person within it.
Politics, warfare, empire, philosophy, theater, the conscious creation of history and thus my
whole-ass job derives from this hard-fought, radical innovation. And from here, their golden
age lay ahead. Athens had not yet become great, not yet terrible, and not yet glorious – but
it was now, undeniably and forever, Athens.
Thank you for watching! The word Democracy is come from the Greek word
demokratia, which is Demos, people, and Kratos, power, together is mean people-power, so there you
go. – I’m sorry I have to do the Mr Portokalos bit again, it’s a genetic requirement I cannot refuse.
In any case, I’ll see you in the next video.
