Summary: The Evolution Of Athenian Democracy

Charnese Hickling

07-13-2015

MC-IC-CAE

The Evolution of Democracy in Athens

“In a democracy, there is, first, that most splendid of virtues, equality before the law.” the Greek historian Herodotus wrote. In essence democracy is a relatively simple concept that has manifested into many extremes. At its simplest form democracy can be referred to as a government of the people. However if you peer deeper into the concept it can be defined as a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system. Whatever the case may be or however you decide to define democracy you can find its origins in Athens, Greece. The word democracy (dēmokratia) derives

from dēmos, which refers to the entire citizen body, and kratos, meaning rule and it was Cleisthenes who attempted to put the two together to form democracy. Cleisthenes’ demokratia abolished the political distinctions between the Athenian aristocrats who had long monopolized the political decision-making process and the middle- and working-class people who made up the army and the navy. However, the “equality” Herodotus described was limited to a small segment of the Athenian population. Throughout this paper I will delve into the term democracy exploring its history, evolution and influence over the rest of the world.
It is told that democracy actually existed before Athens but Athens is where it developed into the complex system that it is known as today. It all began in 1066 B.C. when the last King of Athens, Cordus was replaced by an archon. An archon, also known as a chief magistrate as first was almost identical to the king, meaning they ruled for life and had to be a member of a royal family. This however changed and continued to change in 752 B.C. when the position of archon was limited to a term of ten years, then in 683 B.C. the office transitioned from having one archon to nine archons serving one year terms. In 594 B.C. you can start to see a switch in the actual implementation of democracy and that was when Solon was elected. During this time in Athenian history many farmers were falling into debt and were forced into slavery at the hands of money lenders. Solon noticed the problem and came up with the solution of forgiving all of their debt and developed a fairer system. Solon also developed a council of 400 men chosen from all groups around Athens except for the poorest. While that does seem harsh to leave the poor unrepresented he made up for it by not forcing them to pay taxes.
The biggest turn in the development of democracy came under the leadership of Cleisthenes, who is credited with being the father of democracy. Cleisthenes helped to overthrow the harsh and tyrannical rule of Hippias but was driven from Athens by the aristocrats, who were unwilling to relinquish absolute power. The poorer citizens, however, were determined to have a greater say in how the city was run. They revolted, executed their leaders and called Cleisthenes back from exile to form the first government of the people. Cleisthenes made a new divide in the Athenian population, separating them into ten tribal groups. Out of each of the tribal groups came fifty elected representatives to the Assembly. This extended representation and voting rights to almost all of the male citizens in Athens, thus laying the groundwork for which Athenians developed democracy.
Around 462 B.C.

the supreme tribunal, the Areopagus, which was their supreme court began to diminish in power and authority. The Areopagus was a council composed of former archons, who had general oversight of laws and the government. With the Areopagus declining in power, a full democracy was put into effect in Athens. Shortly after the democracy was set up Pericles, the Greek statesman expanded it. He was able to set up compensation for service in public office and jury duty, allowing many who could not financially afford to take office in the government to still be able to participate, thus fully extending the governance of Athens to all of its male

citizens.
One of the unique features of the Athenian democracy once it gained full momentum was that they used a lottery system in appointing almost all of the public offices. This was because, in theory, a random lottery was more democratic than an election: pure chance, after all, could not be influenced by things like money or popularity. This did two things, spread out the governing authority to most citizens and also controlled the power that people were able to obtain. This can be shown in in the fact that appointment by lot and short terms of office allowed almost all Athenians to participate in their government during sometime during their lives. The lottery system also limited the ability of one person or group of people to gain too much power. However, historians argue that selection to the boule was not always just a matter of chance. They note that wealthy and influential people and their relatives served on the Council much more frequently than would be likely in a truly random lottery.
The Athenian government had a direct form of democracy. Athens in the 4th to 5th century BCE had an extraordinary system of government, whereby all male citizens had equal political rights, freedom of speech, and the opportunity to participate directly in the political arena. It was only male citizens who were 18 years or over could speak and vote in the assembly, whilst the positions such as magistrates and jurors were limited to those over 30 years of age. Therefore, women, slaves, and resident foreigners (metoikoi) were excluded from the political process. In its early stages was broken into three different parts; ekklesia which was a sovereign governing body that wrote laws and dictated policy; the boule, a council of representatives from the ten Athenian tribes; and the dikasteria, the popular courts in which citizens argued cases before a group of lottery- selected jurors.
The ekklesia or the assembly was the sovereign governing body of Athens. Any member of the population, which was composed of 40,000 adult male citizens, was welcome to attend the meetings of the ekklesia. There had to have a minimum of 6,000 citizens in attendance for them to have a session. If there was not enough citizens in attendance 300 specially trained slaves would go through the town with a rope dipped in red paint, and anyone who was hit by the paint was subject to a fine for not doing his civic duty. The assembly met several times a month for a total of 40 times per year in a hillside auditorium west of the Acropolis called the Pnyx. At the meetings, the ekklesia made decisions about war and foreign policy, financial magistracies, wrote and revised laws, organizing and maintaining food supplies, political trials, and approved or condemned the conduct of public officials. They also had the power of ostracism, which is the banishment of a citizen from the Athenian city-state for 10 years; grant citizenship, decide on foreign policy and spend money on public projects. Any citizen had the right to speak to the group to persuade them in their way of thinking and ultimately voting. Voting was simple, citizens would vote on decisions by simply holding up their hands. The majority won the day and the decision was final. The assembly also ensured decisions were enforced and officials were carrying out their duties correctly
The second important institution was the boule, or Council of Five Hundred, formed by Cleisthenes. The boule was a group of 500 men, 50 from each of ten Athenian tribes, who served on the Council for one year. Positions on the boule were chosen by lot and not by election. The boule is responsible for preparing the bills that the assembly proposed and carried out the votes of the assembly. Unlike the assembly, the council met daily with the exception of festival days and did most of the hands-on work of governance. Their tasks included; supervising government workers, being in charge of navy ships and army horses. They also had the responsibility of dealing with ambassadors and representatives from other city-states. In essence the 500 members of the boule were able to dictate how the entire democracy would work.
The third and final part of Athenian democracy was the popular courts, dikasteria. 500 jurors were selected daily from the pool of male students that were over the age of 30 to meet. Some say that out of all of the parts of democracy that the dikasteria contributed the most to the strength of democracy because the jury had almost unlimited power. Since there were no police in ancient Athens the demos, which is the entire population, was responsible for bringing court cases, arguing for the prosecution and defense, and delivering the verdict and sentencing simply by majority rule. There were really no rules in the dikasteria, thus allowing almost any case to be brought against anyone and virtually anything could be said, this concept seemed to backfire in some cases for citizens would often use the dikasteria to punish or embarrass their enemies.
Jurors were paid a wage for their days work however since the wage was less than the typical workers salary, the typical juror was an elderly retiree. The funds for this practice had to come from a lot of outside sources seeing as Athenians did not have to pay taxes. They got revenues for the jurors compensation came from customs duties, contributions from allies and taxes levied on the metoikoi, immigrant foreigners who lived in Greece without the right to citizenship. There was one exception to citizens paying taxes which the leitourgia which was a kind of tax that wealthy people volunteered to pay to sponsor major civic undertakings. These civic undertakings included things such as the maintenance of a navy ship or the production of a play or choral performance at the city’s annual festival.
In addition to elected positions there was the strategoi which is simply their military commander. There were ten of them one elected from every district, having the opportunity to be elected for consecutive years with no limit.
Yes this seems to be a very complex system to have been used so many years ago but this complex system had a purpose. It 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. With people being chosen at random to hold important positions and with terms of office strictly limited, it was difficult for any individual or small group to dominate or unduly influence the decision-making process either directly themselves or, because one never knew exactly who would be selected, indirectly by bribing those in power at any one time. Thucydides said, "We alone consider a citizen who does not partake in politics not only one who minds his own business but useless". Good citizenship means doing more for the good of the people than what is required by law. Illustrating the esteem in which democratic government was held, there was even a divine personification of the ideal of democracy and the calling of every citizen to participate.
Democracy prevailed during Athens’ Golden Age. While Athens had constructed what seemed to be a perfect form of democracy but it came to an inevitable end around under the rule of the general Pericles, who were generals that were among the only public officials who were elected, not appointed. The Athenian democracy began to evolve into something that people today would classify as aristocracy. Democracy was replaced by a system of oligarchy after the disastrous Athenian defeat in Sicily in 409 BCE. The change in the constitution according to Thucydides seemed the only way to win the needed support from Persia against their old enemy Sparta and, further, it was thought that the change would not be a permanent one. 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.
Although democratic ideals and processes did not survive to be practiced in Ancient Greece, they have had an influence over politics and governments around the world ever since. Democracy in ancient Athens was a unique and truly revolutionary system that realized its basic principle to an unprecedented and extreme extent. At that time no other polis had dared to give all of its citizen’s equal political rights, regardless of their wealth, descent, education, personal qualities, social standing or any other factors that are usually used in order to determine status within the community. It is these ideals such as these that would form the building blocks for which all democracies in the modern world would stand. The ancient Greeks have provided the modern world with many wonderful features that reflect their magnificent society. Ancient Greek geographers divided the world into regions we still use today. The lands west of Greece are still known as the western world, while the lands east of Greece are often referred to as the eastern world. Many of the ideas that flourished in the western world were “born” in ancient Greece. This is why Greece is often known as the Cradle of Western Civilization These ideas include; fine arts, luxurious temples, timeless theatre, and great philosophes such as Plato and Socrates but it is democracy which is perhaps their greatest and most enduring legacy left for the world.
One of the greatest civilizations that were influenced by Athenian democracy would be the United States of America. There are many similarities and also many differences between the American version of democracy and the Athenian version of democracy. The similarities are their concepts of; we the people, all legislative powers, a speedy and public trial, and all men are created equal which are directly reflected in the United States.
The statement we the people is one dear to all Americans for it is how the preamble of the Constitution reads. It was from Athenians being oppressed by the oligarchical rule of a handful of aristocrats that forced the ancient Athenians to seek out a government where all citizens would determine how the state was run. A similar case came about in the United States when colonist became oppressed by the tyrannical rule of the remote British monarchy and sought the same remedy once they were declared as free. It is very clear when looking at the U.S. Constitution that our Founding Fathers were inspired somewhat by the democratic institutions of ancient Athens. While looking at the two in a very broad context they appear to be very similar and at that stance they are but when you take a deeper look at the two you would see that they are fundamentally different. Ancient Athens was an extreme example of a direct democracy, in which every citizen was eligible to vote on nearly every decision that was made by the government and all officials were chosen by a random lottery. However in the United States is a republic in which citizens elect officials to represent them, and the representatives do the majority of lawmaking and governing and not the actual citizens themselves.
The second point of similarity and difference is found in all of the legislative powers. In Ancient Athens, legislation was created and enacted by the Assembly, which was made up of every citizen who wanted to attend and met 40 times every year. The number of eligible citizens ranged from 20,000 to 60,000 and attendance usually consisted of about 6,000 men. Anyone who wanted to speak could speak at the assembly’s meetings. With a council of 500 full time representatives, chose once a year by lottery could also issue preliminary decrees and was responsible for setting agendas for assembly meetings. The United States Congress takes the role that the Assembly and the Council of 500 did in ancient Athens, proposing and voting on legislation in a similar was, but is made up of a much smaller body of elected representatives that the Assembly of Athens.
The third portion of democracy that is shared between both governments is the right to a speedy and public trial.

The Ancient Athenian trials were heard by a randomly selected jury of anywhere between 200 and 6,000 citizens. Potential jurors volunteered for duty at the beginning of each year, entered into the juror pool by lottery and were assigned randomly to a case each day when they presented themselves for service. Cases were presided over by lay magistrates, also chosen by lottery, which had no formal training and could not make decision regarding cases, juries or testimonies. You can find the America’s interpretation of the right to a speedy and public trial in the 6th amendment of the United States Constitution. It reads, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense."

However, this is not the case in the United States. In the U.S. courts have juristically smaller juries; a much more regulated process and more powerful judges, the basic idea of a fair trial by jury remained the same

though.
The final and perhaps most important philosophy of democracy that was passed from ancient Athens to America would be the fact that all men are created equal. The Founding Fathers and the ancient Athenians seemed to share some of the same prejudices and shortcomings when it comes to establishing democracy. The quote was important enough of value to our Founding Fathers that they sought it suitable to be placed in the United States Constitution. It reads “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” In ancient Athens, only free males of Athenian descent were considered citizens. This excluded all women, slaves, and resident aliens and even men who had a foreign-born parent, limiting government participation to approximately 10 to 20 percent of the population. The U.S. Constitution also originally denied representation to women and slaves, disenfranchising a large portion of the country’s population. Immigration accounts for a large number of the current population of the United States. Immigrants come for many reasons; hope of improving their social situation, escaping discrimination or war, jobs or education and even natural disasters in their homelands. It took over 150 years to expand rights to a point where it could be considered truly democratic by today’s standards. Many U.S. citizens have struggled for their rights. African Americans, women, Hispanic, Asian, Jews, and other groups have fought against discrimination. Today, citizens have the guarantee of equal opportunity. This guarantee means that it is unlawful for the government or a private institution to discriminate against them because of their race, gender, religion, age, or disability. Seeing as it has taken hundreds of years for this process to be prefect in the United States the government of ancient Athens, which only lasted 150 years, never had a chance.
There were also small parts of Athenian Democracy that either differed of had similarities with the current United States form of democracy that do not fit into the above noted categories. One of these categories would be the highlight amongst the differences of the people in their society. Citizens and non-citizens distinctions were clearly made in Athens. Greeks were intensely concerned with differences among individuals’ differences between humans and animals, between males and females, between free people and slaves, between men who owned property and men who did not and of course between Greeks and non-Greeks. Today, modern America fights for those inequalities to become extinct in society, the exact opposite of Athens.
Another minor difference can be seen in the legal system. It was challenging in ancient Athens because individuals often represented themselves when in court rather than getting a lawyer or other official representative to deal with the offense. Osborne said “…the volunteer prosecutor was often not a disinterested or mercenary third-party but the injured party himself”. There is also another shared quality between ancient and modern democracy which is the amount of nationalism and patriotism seen in the people and the government alike. This can be seen in the characteristic of the Athenians of regarding their power and existence highly. Similar to this amazing sense of accomplishment and perseverance, the United States and its government has also been known for demonstrating respect and honor within the nation and it has also faced times of adversity. Another similarity is seen between ancient Athens and modern democracy when a lack of representation for a city-state or nation as a whole is seen. In modern democracy, there are still examples where the people, of a United States feel excluded from the decision making within the government. This also is seen in ancient democracy as well due to the fact that only adult males were allowed to participate in the government's activities.
John Zumbrennen makes connections to ancient Athenian leaders representing the "silent" population and describing how this is done in the United States, specifically during the Bush administration shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. "...Besides resting on his surging popularity in the days after 9/11 and the vast flow of positive rhetoric from government and media outlets in those days, Bush's political position here hinged on his temporarily successful attempt to let the silence of the American demos speak" (Zumbrennen, 187-188). Zumbrennen continues on to explain why this success existed and compared it to the success during Pericles’ rule ;"What is more, as with Pericles, Bush's success depended in considerable part on central claims about American unity and American identity" (Zumbrennen, 188).
Although, in this paper focuses on the influence of ancient Athenian democracy’s influence on the Founding Fathers of the United States and even the United States in its present form, Athenian democracy influenced many Western civilizations around the world. Countries such as; Bhutan, Dominican Republic, Germany, India, Kingdom of the Netherlands, Malawi, Mexico, Pakistan, Poland, Puerto Rico, Republic of Ireland, South Africa, Sudan and Uganda all use the concept of ruling through a democracy form of government in some way. In most cases though democratic techniques in the modern world have embodied the ideology of democracy, but the overall structure has been diluted over time. "The dominant ideologies in modern capitalist states have tended to dilute the democratic idea, to dissolve it altogether into the concept of liberalism, to offer liberalism not as a complement to, but as a substitute for, democracy as popular power" (Euben, Wallach, and Ober, 78).
Many influential people throughout history have expressed their views and opinion on democracy. Thurgood Marshall said, “Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.” Thurgood Marshall was equating our constitution itself to the term democracy in its most simple yet complex form. Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.” Aung San Suu Kyi said, “Democracy is when the people keep a government in check”. “Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.” George Bernard Shaw and Aristotle said, “Democracy arose from men’s thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely. Although these people think of democracy in a positively, I would be omitting too many people if I made it seem that everyone was a fan of this governmental practice. It is shown in statements such as Thomas Jefferson’s when he said, “a democracy is nothing more than mob rule where 51% of people may take away the rights of the other 49%” and Benito Mussolini said, “Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. You in America will see that some day.”
As you can see, although the Athenian democracy would survive for only two centuries, Cleisthenes’ invention was one of the greatest of ancient Greece that has made enduring contribution to the modern world up until today. Democracy has impacted almost every country on this Earth if not directly, indirectly through contact with another country. In essence democracy is a relatively simple concept that has evolved into many different forms being interpreted differently from country to country regardless of the case democracy can simply be shortened by a quote by the 16th president of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln, “A government of the people, for the people, by the people”. I would like to personally thank Cleisthenes for his impact on society by setting an unprecedented trend that has and will forever impact countries around the world. It is hard to imagine what the world would be like today without the United States in its current form. Part of the beauty of this great nation is its use of democracy as a form of government. Democracy is partially the reason that many of the other countries whether big or small look to the United States as an example of how to run their government. It had not also ran flawlessly in the United States but through the years even American democracy has evolved into this miraculous system in which all Americans may not be treated equally but they are given the chance to bring the people who mistreat them due to discrimination or whatever the case may be before trial.