In the 6th century B.C.E., the city of Athens implemented some of the most significant political
reforms in world history.
These reforms eventually produced a system called Democracy, and this innovation forever
changed political theory.
But before we get there, we need a bit of context.
The constitutional history of ancient Athens, or at least the important bits, can be easily
divided into three distinct eras.
First, Athens was an Oligarchy, which means that a small group of powerful families ruled
the city.
In time, Athens underwent a radical transformation, and became what I'm going to call a Limited
Democracy.
Roughly a century later, Athens changed yet again, from a Limited Democracy to a Full
Democracy.
Although, even at the height of Athenian Democracy, political rights were not extended to women,
or children, or slaves, or foreign residents, who together made up like 90% of the Athenian
population.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Let's begin back during the Oligarchy.
During this period, a small council called the Areopagus was at the centre of Athenian
political life.
You can kind of think of the Areopagus as a Senate or a Council of Elders, only way
more exclusive.
Membership tended to be based on birth, which meant that all political activity was limited
to a few powerful families.
The poor were basically ignored.
This council was responsible for political appointments, and surprise surprise, these
tended to go to friends and family.
In the early years, political appointees served for life, but over time, this was reduced
to 10-year terms, and even later to 1-year terms.
There were three important political appointees.
The first was called the Basileus, which just means King.
To be clear, this person wasn't really the king, this was just a throwback title left
over from an old forgotten monarchy.
The Basileus officiated religious festivals and performed important sacrifices.
The symbolic connection to the old monarchy made this a prestigious position, even though
politically it was virtually powerless.
The second appointee was called the Polemarch, which means War Leader.
This person was the Commander in Chief of the Athenian military, which was obviously
a big and important job.
The Polemarch also had a minor role in Athenian religious life, and would participate in any
war related festivals or ceremonies.
The third position was known as the Eponymous Archon.
Historians attach the word eponymous to this name simply because the Athenians, like many
other ancient states, named their years after the person in charge.
The Eponymous Archon, or, just Archon, was the city's chief government official.
They stood at the head of the government bureaucracy, and administered the Athenian state.
Obviously this was the most important position in Athens.
There were also six less important positions, called Junior Archons.
It's confusing, we don't have to get into it, but every public official was technically
"an Archon," which meant that people sometimes called them "The Nine Archons of Athens."
Today, we just call the most important public official "The Archon."
The Junior Archons aren't really important, they just helped out with the legal system.
The only reason I mention them is because they'll come up later, but, I mean...
don't worry about it.
So that's our baseline.
The Nine Archons of Athens.
As we move away from Oligarchy and towards Democracy, the most important things to remember
is that the three major positions, the Basileus, the Polemarch, and the Archon, were all appointed
by the Areopagus.
In the early 6th century B.C.E., there was a prolonged political dispute within the Areopagus,
and all public business ground to a hault.
As a solution, the oligarchs found a compromise candidate to serve as Archon, and empowered
him to implement a series of reforms to ensure that this wouldn't happen again.
This man's name was Solon, and in time, his reforms would help produce the world's first
full democracy.
Solon came to office with a political agenda.
He believed that the way to stop the infighting between the oligarchs was to basically invent
politics on a national scale.
Solon's theory was that if he could empower the poor and get them involved in the political
process, paralysis at the upper levels of power would become impossible.
So, for the first time ever, Solon opened up Athenian politics to every adult male citizen.
He did this by establishing an Assembly of Athenian Citizens.
From this point forward, this Assembly was at the centre of Athenian politics.
Virtually every government decision ran through the Assembly, from military procurement, to
diplomatic relations, to declarations of war.
The world had never seen anything like this.
It was revolutionary.
A minimum of 6,000 citizens had to be present before a vote in the Assembly could take place.
From what we can tell, tens of thousands showed up on a regular basis to make their voices
heard.
Before the voting, any relevant speakers were invited onto a stage to make their case before
the crowd.
Voting was done by a show of hands, and it's important to recognize that there was no secret
ballot.
Everybody knew how their friends and neighbours were voting, and they weren't shy about telling
them if they disapproved.
By the way, in Athens, there was no such thing as an ironic detatchment from politics.
Good citizens had strong political opinions.
This level of public engagement is what people mean when they say Athenian Democracy, and
there's never quite been anything like it.
But it's not like the old oligarchs gave up all of their power.
Solon set up a new council, separate from the Areopagus, called the Boule.
This council was responsible for deciding what went before the Assembly for a vote.
With all of its legislative authority taken away, the old Areopagus was left with virtually
no power.
I want to talk about how this council was organized, but first I need to quickly explain
how Solon reformed the Athenian class structure.
He divided all Athenian citizens into four economic classes.
For our purposes today, all we need to know is that these classes were basically the Ultra
Rich, the Very Rich, the Moderately Rich, and Everybody Else.
So, Solon used these four classes to inform the make-up of his new council, allowing each
class to appoint 100 men to the Boule.
The fact that 300 of the 400 members were appointed by rich people was by design.
Make no mistake, this was aristocracy by another name.
We don't exactly know how people got appointed to this council, but it's safe to assume that
each class held some sort of internal election.
Speaking of elections, the "Nine Archons of Athens" were no longer appointed by the Areopagus,
and were instead elected by the people.
Each of the four economic classes held its own election.
Poor Athenians couldn't be candidates themselves, but they could vote for rich people who alligned
with their interests.
The 10 candidates from each class with the most votes were all mixed together into one
group of 40.
Of these 40 candidates, 9 names were picked at random, and these people became the Basileus,
Polemarch, Eponymous Archon, and the 6 Junior Archons.
Again, this system was stacked in favour of the rich, but it was a step in the right direction.
At the time, the Athenians justified the randomness in these elections with with piety, saying
that they always liked to give the final say to the gods.
In practice, this was a pretty simple way to reduce the influence of money in politics,
since no amount of bribery could ever guarantee a result.
Under this new democracy, Athenian politics flourished.
Pretty quickly, three major factions emerged, each vying for power.
First, there was the Plains Faction.
These people tended to be rich landowners, who lived on the plains outside of the city.
The Plains Faction were the remnants of the old landed aristocracy.
Consequently, they fought to preserve the prerogatives of the rich, and opposed any
further political reforms.
As landowners, they worked to protect their profits by opposing any initiatives that would
lower the price of food.
Next, there was the Hill Faction.
People in the Hill Faction lived on the hills in and around the city.
The hills were pretty lousy places to live, since you couldn't really farm or build very
much on them.
This faction consisted of the poorest citizens, who, up until recently, had been locked out
of the political process.
They loved the political reforms, and favoured any initiatives that would further improve
their standard of living.
Obviously the Plains Faction and the Hill Faction did not like each other.
The third faction was the Coast Faction.
The area near the coast was a bustling economic zone, full of artisans, and manufacturing,
and lots of trade.
This faction included both rich and poor citizens, but what united them was the fact that their
livelihoods depended on trade with the outside world.
The Coast Faction was cosmopolitan and reform-minded, but above all they were interested in making
money.
In order to get the Coast Faction on board with the new Athenian democracy, Solon offered
Athenian citizenship to any foreign-born skilled professional that wanted to move to the city
with their family.
The Coast Faction loved this policy, and it helped propel Athens into an economic boom.
But as I've said, Athens wasn't a full democracy yet.
The system was still institutionally biased towards the rich, which over time, created
a bunch of unforeseen problems.
The three factions hated each other, and it was increasingly difficult to get anything
accomplished.
Also, despite the safeguards built into the system, a series of strongmen found it a easy
get themselves elected Archon and seize power.
Athens entered a brief period of tyranny.
At the end of this period, the strongmen were thrown out of the city, and another set of
reforms were implemented, transforming Athens from a Limited Democracy to a Full Democracy.
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This new system was a significant improvement, and fixed a lot of old problems.
Most importantly, it dealt with the persistent factional gridlock.
As a first step, the old class system was thrown out the window.
In its place, 10 new artificial groups were created, called tribes.
Each tribe covered a certain geographic area, and each was deliberately designed so that
all three political factions had equal representation within each tribe.
Again, the purpose of these tribes was to stop the gridlock.
But this was just the tip of the iceberg.
Athens was further subdivided into 139 "demos," or "deme," each belonging to a specific tribe.
Every deme had its own council, and was lead by an elected official called a Demarch.
The Demarch, along with the council, could pass little bylaws, and raise its own revenue
as needed.
This was a pretty ingenious invention.
Over time, each citizen's political identity became intertwined with their deme.
We even have evidence that some people started replacing their family name with their deme
name.
Now that the old wealth-based classes were gone, the Boule had to be completely restructured.
Membership was increased from 400 to 500, and from now on, each of the 10 tribes got
to elect 50 people to the council.
This time, there was no institutional bias toward the wealthy.
Elections were run locally, so each deme got to choose a handful of their own candidates.
All candidates from the same tribe were pooled together, and 50 were selected at random to
represent their tribe in the Boule for that year.
Citizens were only allowed to serve in the Boule twice in their lifetime, with a mandatory
10-year gap in between terms.
With these limitations, any ambitious citizen had a pretty good shot at getting elected
at some point in their life.
As before, the Boule prepared the agenda for each meeting of the Athenian assembly.
However, this new and improved Boule was even more powerful than before, and most of that
had to do with a new mechanism called the Prytaneis.
The Prytaneis was basically an executive committee within the Boule.
The 360 day Athenian calendar year was evenly divided into 10 parts.
For 36 days a year, each tribal delegation got to serve on the Prytaneis, which was responsible
for running the day-to-day operations of the Athenian state.
If the Athenian Assembly decided to build some ships, this committee got the money and
hired the shipbuilders.
If public employees needed to be paid, this committee figured out how to get the money
into their hands.
If a foreign diplomat needed to speak with the Athenian government, they spoke with this
committee.
To put it very simply, this committee ran the government.
During those 36 days, all 50 members of the Prytaneis lived together in a house in the
centre of Athens.
The committee worked 24 hours a day, in shifts.
Just in case there was ever an emergency, there was a rule that 17 members had to be
on duty at all times.
Every day, one person was chosen at random to to serve as chairman of the committee.
The chairman was in charge the state seal, the key to the state treasury, and the key
to the state archives.
It was a symbolic thing to serve as chairman, but people still considered it an honour.
So, the Boule was more powerful than ever, but that had to come at the expense of something
else.
Gradually, all 9 of the Archons became less and less important.
Eventually they became so weak that the duties of each Archon were performed by a series
of randomly selected Athenian citizens.
The fact that the Polemarch, who was in charge of the Athenian military, was now a randomly
selected citizen should raise some eyebrows.
Luckily, even though the Polemarch was still technically in charge of the military, he
was relegated to ceremonial duties, and new positions rose up to do the heavy lifting.
Each of the 10 tribes elected somebody called a Strategos.
Strategos basically means general, and together, the Strategoi commanded the Athenian armies
and admiraled her fleets.
But just as importantly, they were instrumental when crafting military policy.
When the Assembly was debating anything warfare related, it was customary to invite all ten
Strategoi to give their opinion.
Sometimes there were lively debates back and forth, but when there was a consensus among
the Strategoi, the the Assembly tended to defer to their expertise.
Strictly speaking, each Strategos was only supposed to serve for one year, but the Assembly
wasn't afraid to extend their terms, especially during wartime.
So, a lot of care was taken to make sure that Athenian politics wouldn't fall into factionalism
and infighting like it did back in the old days.
A lot of progress had been made on this front.
The tribes were non-ideological, and each tribe was given its turn to be in charge of
the Boule's executive committee.
But weak factions still sometimes rose up around specific issues, and there was always
the danger that one of these days, this could produce another tyrant.
To prevent this, the Athenians built a release valve into their system.
This release valve was called Ostracism.
Once per year, there was a special Assembly meeting.
Unlike every other meeting, when people arrived, they grabbed a smashed piece of pottery that
was provided for them.
Each citizen used this pottery as a makeshift ballot, and etched a name into the surface.
The names were tallied, and if one name received more than 6,000 votes, the person with the
most votes was Ostracized, or banished from the city for a period of 10 years.
There was no need for any proof of wrongdoing, or criminality, or anything.
To put it quite simply, when an Ostracism went into effect, the most unpopular person
in Athens, usually a politician, was expelled from the city.
This was a crude but effective way to fight against the emergence of both strongmen and
factionalism.
If a minority of citizens could get anybody banished from the city, it was tough to get
a divisive political movement off the ground.
The vote took place every year, but that didn't necessarily mean somebody was banished every
year.
If no one individual received 6,000 votes, no action was taken.
As Full Athenian Democracy was implemented, the city ballooned into a manufacturing powerhouse,
exporting its products and its culture all over the Mediterranean.
It didn't take long for the Athenians to develop a reputation for their unique political system,
and for the city itself to become a major hub for political thinkers.
From Italy to North Africa to the Near East, cities began adopt political institutions
that looked an awful lot like the Athenian ones.
After centuries in the sun, Athens was eventually conquered by outside powers, but the example
they set and their contribution to western political thought continues to be one of the
most important things that any state has ever produced.