Critics of democracy, such as Thucydides and Aristophanes, pointed out that not only were proceedings dominated by an elite, but that the dmos could be too often swayed by a good orator or popular leaders (the demagogues), get carried away with their emotions, or lack the necessary knowledge to make informed decisions. According to a fragmentary account by the historian Posidonius, Athenions letters persuaded Athens that the Roman supremacy was broken. The prospect of the Anatolian Greeks throwing off Roman rule also sparked pan-Hellenic solidarity. More loosely, it alludes to the entire range of democratic reforms that proceeded alongside the Jacksonians read more, The Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C. It is a period of history that we would do well to think about a little more right now - and we ignore it at our peril.". Demagogue meant literally 'leader of the demos' ('demos' means people); but democracy's critics took it to mean mis-leaders of the people, mere rabble-rousers. Ancient Athenian democracy differs from the democracy that we are familiar with in the present day. Thank you for your help! The word democracy (dmokratia) derives from dmos, which refers to the entire citizen body, and kratos, meaning rule. Once near his target, Sulla moved to isolate Athens from Piraeus and besiege each separately. Numerous educational institutions recommend us, including Oxford University. But what form of government, what constitution, should the restored Persian empire enjoy for the future? The book, entitled From Democrats To Kings, aims to overhaul Athens' traditional image as the ancient world's "golden city", arguing that its early successes have obscured a darker history of blood-lust and mob rule. 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. Athenion had the mob eating out of his hand. 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. 500 BC Athens decided to share decision making. Sulla had the tyrant and his bodyguard executed. Buildings in the Agora and on the south side of the Acropolis remained damaged for decades, monuments to the poverty in postwar Athens. 04 Mar 2023. Eventually the Romans breached a section of the wall and poured through. The Romans were extorting as much revenue as possible from their new province of Asia. When Athenion sent a force to seize control of Delos, a Roman unit swiftly defeated it. He also said that Mithridates would free the citizens of Athens from their debts (whether he meant public or private debts is not clear). Under this system, all male citizens - the dmos - had equal political rights, freedom of speech, and the opportunity to participate directly in the political arena. Why did the system fail? One of the main reasons why ancient Athens was not a true democracy was because only about 30% of the population could vote. The competition of elite performers before non-elite adjudicators resulted in a pro-war culture, which encouraged Athenians in . The Romans looted even the great shrine at Delphi dedicated to Apollo. Athenian democracy refers to the system of democratic government used in Athens, Greece from the 5th to 4th century BCE. Athenian democracy was a direct democracy made up of three important institutions. In the late 500s to early 400s BCE, democracy developed in the city-state of Athens. 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. For example, in Athens in the middle of the 4th century there were about 100,000 citizens (Athenian citizenship was limited to men and women whose parents had also been Athenian citizens), about 10,000 metoikoi, or resident foreigners, and 150,000 slaves. "Athenian Democracy." Critically, the emphasis on "people power" saw a revolving door of political leaders impeached, exiled and even executed as the inconstant international climate forced a tetchy political assembly into multiple changes in policy direction. Citizens probably accounted for 10-20% of the polis population, and of these it has been estimated that only 3,000 or so people actively participated in politics. This was a democratic form of government where the people or 'demos' had real political power. Archelaus in turn built a tower that he brought up directly opposite its Roman counterpart. (Thuc. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Aegean, events touched off an explosion whose force would swamp Athens. Sulla had reason to let Mithridates off easyhe was anxious to deal with his political opponents back in Rome. In 146, they ruthlessly destroyed the city-state of Corinth and established their authority over much of Greece. Although active participation was encouraged, attendance in the assembly was paid for in certain periods, which was a measure to encourage citizens who lived far away and could not afford the time off to attend. READ MORE: Why Greece Is Considered the Birthplace of Democracy. He also helped himself to a stash of gold and silver found on the Acropolis. In addition, in times of crisis and war, this body could also take decisions without the assembly meeting. Solon Put Athens on the Road to Democracy. In practice, this assembly usually involved a maximum of 6000 citizens. Under Macedonian control, Athens had dwindled to a third-rank power, with no independence in foreign affairs and an insignificant military. World History Encyclopedia is a non-profit organization. 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. That was one, class-based sort of objection to Greek-style direct democracy. Historian Appian states that the Pontics massacred thousands of Italians there, a repeat of the slaughter in Anatolia. Aristion didnt hold out long: He surrendered when he ran out of drinking water. Centuries later, archaeologists discovered some of these in the ruins of the Pompeion, a gathering place for the start of processions. We care about our planet! As soldiers carted away their prized and sacred possessions, the guardians of Delphi bitterly complained that Sulla was nothing like previous Roman commanders, who had come to Greece and made gifts to the temples. It was the first known democracy in the world. Becoming more desperate, they gathered wild plants on the slopes of the Acropolis and boiled shoes and leather oil-flasks. The Athenian Democracy existed from the early 7th century BC up until Athens was conquered by the Macedonians in 322 BC. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/Athenian_Democracy/. Books The events that led to renewed hostilities began in 433, when Athens allied itself with Corcyra (modern Corfu ), a strategically important colony of Corinth. What mattered was whether or not the unusual system was any good. 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. Over time tyrants became greedy and cruel. Democracy itself, however, buckled under the strain. These bronze coins bore the Pontic symbol of a star between two half-moons. The tyranny had been a terrible and. The opposing forces clashed bitterly for a long timeAppian records that both Sulla and Archelaus held forth in the thick of the action, cheering on their men and bringing up fresh troops. In the furious fighting that followed, he kept his army close to Piraeus to ensure that his archers and slingers on the wall could still wreak havoc on the Romans. Scorning the vanquished, he declared that he was sparing them only out of respect for their distinguished ancestors. Terrified Romans fled to temples for sanctuary, but to no avail; they were butchered anyway. But without warning, it sank into the earth. It was too much. Sulla called a halt to the pillage and slaughter. When Athenion returned home in the early summer of 88, citizens gave him a rapturous reception. A demagogue, a treacherous ally, and a brutal Roman general destroyed the city-stateand democracyin the first-century BC. Please read our email privacy notice for details. When some topped the walls and ran away, he sent cavalry after them. There were 3 classes in the society of ancient Athens. Submitted by Mark Cartwright, published on 03 April 2018. 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). As winter stretched on, Athenians began to starve. Around 460 B.C., under the rule of the general Pericles (generals were among the only public officials who were elected, not appointed) Athenian democracy began to evolve into something that we would call an aristocracy: the rule of what Herodotus called the one man, the best. Though democratic ideals and processes did not survive in ancient Greece, they have been influencing politicians and governments ever since. The boule was a group of 500 men, 50 from each of ten Athenian tribes, who served on the Council for one year. and the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. 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. 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. 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. He and his allies then retreated to the Acropolis, which the Romans promptly surrounded. (There were also no rules about what kinds of cases could be prosecuted or what could and could not be said at trial, and so Athenian citizens frequently used the dikasteria to punish or embarrass their enemies.). In Athens, it was a noble named Solon who laid the foundations for democracy, and introduced a . 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. Over time, however, the Romans had begun to look less friendly. Athens, humbled in recent years by the Romans, can seize control of its destiny, Athenion declares. This, fortunately, did not last long; even Sparta felt unable to prop up such a hugely unpopular regime, nicknamed the '30 Tyrants', and the restoration of democracy was surprisingly speedy and smooth - on the whole. Therefore, women, slaves, and resident foreigners (metoikoi) were excluded from the political process. Sulla eventually gained the upper hand, thanks to large devices that Appian said discharged twenty of the heaviest leaden balls at one volley. These missiles killed a large number of Pontic men and damaged their tower, forcing Archelaus to pull it back. In 590 BCE Athenians were suffering from debt and famine throughout Athens. At the kings order, the locals slaughtered tens of thousands of Romans and Italians who lived among them. For more details about how Ober came to . Ostrakon for PericlesMark Cartwright (CC BY-NC-SA). The effect on the citys model democracy was also staggering. Unfortunately, sources on the other democratic governments in ancient Greece are few and far between. Athens is a city-state, while today we are familiar with the primary unit of governance . In 399 he was charged with impiety (through not duly recognising the gods the city recognised, and introducing new, unrecognised divinities) and, a separate alleged offence, corrupting the young. Other city-states had, at one time or another, systems of democracy, notably Argos, Syracuse, Rhodes, and Erythrai. Democracy, which had prevailed during Athens' Golden Age, was replaced by a system of oligarchy in 411 BCE. The Pontic army used scythes mounted on chariots as weapons of terror, cutting swaths through the Bithynian ranks. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. S2 ep4: What would a more just future look like? Athenian Democracy. 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. And its denouement is the Roman sack of Athens, a bloody day that effectively marked the end of Athens as an independent state. The first, rather obvious, strike against Athenian democracy is that there was a tendency for people to be casually executed. Sulla obtained iron and other material from Thebes and placed his newly built siege engines upon mounds of rubble collected from the Long Walls. Macedonians under Philip IIfather of Alexander the Greathad defeated Athens in 338 BC and installed a garrison in the Athenian port city of Piraeus. License. Sulla ordered another retreat, and turned his attention to Athens, which by now was a softer target than Piraeus. Solon, (born c. 630 bcedied c. 560 bce), Athenian statesman, known as one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece (the others were Chilon of Sparta, Thales of Miletus, Bias of Priene, Cleobulus of Lindos, Pittacus of Mytilene, and Periander of Corinth). Greek democracy. According to a fragmentary account by the historian Posidonius, Athenion's letters persuaded Athens that "the Roman supremacy was broken." The prospect of the Anatolian Greeks throwing off Roman rule also sparked pan-Hellenic solidarity. This money was only to cover expenses though, as any attempt to profit from public positions was severely punished. Inside Piraeus, Archelaus countered by building towers for his siege engines. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. With the city starving, its leaders asked Aristion to negotiate with Sulla. Some Rights Reserved (2009-2023) under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license unless otherwise noted. After his speech, the excited throng rushes to the theater of Dionysus, where official assemblies are held, and elects Athenion as hoplite general, the citys most important executive position. This time, they burst through Archelauss hastily constructed lunette. At last, Archelaus saw that the game was up and skillfully evacuated his army by sea. Little more than a hundred years later it was governed by an emperor. The assembly could also vote to ostracise from Athens any citizen who had become too powerful and dangerous for the polis. Athens remains a posterchild for democracies worldwide, but it was not a pure democracy. City residents who had cheered lustily for Athenion, the demagogic envoy, now found themselves ruled by a tyrant. All male citizens of Athens could attend the assembly which made political decisions. Some 2,000 of Archelauss men were killed. Yet his plans hit a snag when Delos refused to break from Rome. Regardless, Sulla benefited greatly. They butchered and ate all their cattle, then boiled the hides. Although the 4th century was one of critical transition, the era has been overlooked by many ancient historians in favour of those which bookend it - the glory days of Athenian democracy in the 5th century and the supremacy of Alexander the Great from 336 to 323 BC. To the Greeks, he represented himself as a new Alexander, the champion of Greek culture against Rome. Any citizen could speak to the assembly and vote on decisions by simply holding up their hands. Ancient Greece saw a lot of philosophical and political changes soon after the end of the Bronze Age. The real question now is not can we, but should we go back to the Greeks? After all, at the time of writing, Athens was the greatest single power in the entire Greek world, and that fact could not be totally unconnected with the fact that Athens was a democracy. The Roman leaders, he said, were prisoners, and ordinary Romans were hiding in temples, prostrate before the statues of the gods. Oracles from all sides predicted Mithridatess future victories, he said, and other nations were rushing to join forces with him. Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. 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. Originally Answered: Did Athenian democracy failed because of its democratic nature? If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. His election as hoplite general quickly followed. He is the author, co-author, editor and co-editor of 20 or so books, the latest being Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past (Pan Macmillan, London, 2004). At best it was mere opinion, and almost always it was ill-informed and wrong opinion. 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. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. Then, early in the first century BC, a political crisis engulfed Athens when its eponymous archon, or chief magistrate, refused to abide by the Athenian constitutions one-term limit. Though Mithridates had to withdraw from territories he had conquered and pay an indemnity, he remained in power in Pontus. 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. After all, at the time of writing, Athens was the greatest single power in the entire Greek world, and that fact could not be totally unconnected with the fact that Athens was a democracy. This newfound alliance initially benefited Athens. He detached a force to surround Athens, then struck at Piraeus, where Archelaus and his troops were stationed. The Athenian statesman Pericles defined democracy as a system which protects the interests of all the people, not just a minority. Our selection of the week's biggest Cambridge research news and features sent directlyto your inbox. They therefore in a sense deserved the political pay-off of mass-biased democracy as a reward for their crucial naval role. Cartwright, Mark. These groups had to meet secretly because although there was freedom of speech, persistent criticism of individuals and institutions could lead to accusations of conspiring tyranny and so lead to ostracism. Less than two years separate these scenes. There was no political violence, land theft or capital punishment because those went against the political norms Rome had established. Yet, with the advent of new technology, it would actually be possible to reinvent today a form of indirect but participatory tele-democracy. Instead, Dr. Scott argues that the strains and stresses of the 4th century BC, which our own times seem to echo, proved too much for the Athenian democratic system and ultimately caused it to destroy itself. Of all the democratic institutions, Aristotle argued that the dikasteria contributed most to the strength of democracy because the jury had almost unlimited power. 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. After defeating the Bithynians, Mithridates drove into the Roman province of Asia. Seven noble Persians conspire to overthrow the usurper and restore legitimate government. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. But what did the development of Athenian democracy actually involve? But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! But - a big 'but' - it works: that is, it delivers the goods - for the masses. Related Content Eventually Archelaus realized someone was divulging his plans, but turned it to his advantage. The boul represented the 139 districts of Attica and acted as a kind of executive committee of the assembly. His achievements included the construction of the Acropolis, begun in 447. 2.37). In the 4th and 5th centuries BCE the male citizen population of Athens ranged from 30,000 to 60,000 depending on the period. They are also, however, reminders of the human capacity for disagreement, read more, An ambiguous, controversial concept, Jacksonian Democracy in the strictest sense refers simply to the ascendancy of Andrew Jackson and the Democratic party after 1828. Chronological order of government in ancient Athens. One night Sulla personally reconnoitered that stretch of wall, which was near the Dipylon Gate, the citys main entrance. The capital would be sending no more reinforcements or money. Sparta and its allies accused Athens of aggression and threatened war. There is a strong case that democracy was a major reason for this success. Its popular Assembly directed internal affairs as a showcase of democracy. It supervised government workers and was in charge of things like navy ships (triremes) and army horses. Following standard Roman procedure, Sullas men made a quick assault on the walls of the port, trying to catch the defenders by surprise.