ATHENS
THE ATHENIAN PEOPLE
=Attica.=--The Athenians boasted of having always lived in the same
country; their ancestors, according to their story, originated from
the soil itself. The mountaineers who conquered the south land passed
by the country without invading it; Attica was hardly a temptation to
them.
Attica is composed of a mass of rocks which in the form of a triangle
advances into the sea. These rocks, renowned for their blocks of
marble and for the honey of their bees,[66] are bare and sterile.
Between them and the sea are left three small plains with meagre soil,
meanly watered (the streams are dry in summer) and incapable of
supporting a numerous population.
=Athens.=--In the largest of these plains, a league from the sea,
rises a massive isolated rock: Athens was built at its foot. The old
city, called the Acropolis, occupied the summit of the rock.
The inhabitants of Attica commenced, not by forming a single state,
but by founding scattered villages, each of which had its own king and
its own government. Later all these villages united under one
king,[67] the king of Athens, and established a single city. This
does not mean that all the people came to dwell in one town. They
continued to have their own villages and to cultivate their lands; but
all adored one and the same protecting goddess, Athena, divinity of
Athens, and all obeyed the same king.
=Athenian Revolutions.=--Later still the kings were suppressed. In
their place Athens had nine chiefs (the archons) who changed every
year. This whole history is little known to us for no writing of the
time is preserved. They used to say that for centuries the Athenians
had lived in discord; the nobles (Eupatrids) who were proprietors of
the soil oppressed the peasants on their estates; creditors held their
debtors as slaves. To reestablish order the Athenians commissioned
Solon, a sage, to draft a code of laws for them (594).
Solon made three reforms:
1. He lessened the value of the money, which allowed the debtors
to release themselves more easily.
2. He made the peasants proprietors of the land that they
cultivated. From this time there were in Attica more small
proprietors than in any other part of Greece.
3. He grouped all the citizens into four classes according to
their incomes. Each had to pay taxes and to render military
service according to his wealth, the poor being exempt from
taxation and military service.
After Solon the Athenians were subject to Pisistratus, one of their
powerful and clever citizens; but in 510 the dissensions revived.
=Reforms of Cleisthenes.=--Cleisthenes, leader of one of the parties,
used the occasion to make a thoroughgoing revolution.
There were many strangers in Athens, especially seamen and traders who
lived in Piraeus near the harbor. Cleisthenes gave them the rights of
citizenship and made them equal[68] to the older inhabitants. From
this time there were two populations side by side--the people of
Attica and those of Piraeus. A difference of physical features was
apparent for three centuries afterward: the people of Attica resembled
the rest of the Greeks; those in Piraeus resembled Asiatics. The
Athenian people thus augmented was a new people, the most active in
Greece.
THE ATHENIAN PEOPLE
In the fifth century the society of Athens was definitely formed:
three classes inhabited the district of Attica--slaves, foreigners,
and citizens.
=The Slaves.=--The slaves constituted the great majority of the
population; there was no man so poor that he did not have at least one
slave; the rich owned a multitude of them, some as many as five
hundred. The larger part of the slaves lived in the house occupied
with grinding grain, kneading bread, spinning and weaving cloth,
performing the service of the kitchens, and in attendance on their
masters. Others labored in the shops as blacksmiths, as dyers, or in
stone quarries or silver mines. Their master fed them but sold at a
profit everything which they produced, giving them in return nothing
but their living. All the domestic servants, all the miners, and the
greater part of the artisans were slaves. These men lived in society
but without any part in it; they had not even the disposition of their
own bodies, being wholly the property of other men. They were thought of
only as objects of property; they were often referred to as "a body"
({~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL
LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}). There was no other law for
them than the will of their master, and he had all power over them--to
make them work, to imprison them, to deprive them of their sustenance,
to beat them. When a citizen went to law, his adversary had the right to
require that the former's slaves should be put to the torture to tell
what they knew. Many Athenian orators commend this usage as an ingenious
means for obtaining true testimony. "Torture," says the orator Isaeus,
"is the surest means of proof; and so when you wish to clear up a
contested question, you do not address yourselves to freemen, but,
placing the slaves to the torture, you seek to discover the truth."
=Foreigners.=--The name Metics was applied to people of foreign origin
who were established in Athens. To become a citizen of Athens it was
not enough, as with us, to be born in the country; one must be the son
of a citizen. It might be that some aliens had resided in Attica for
several generations and yet their family not become Athenian. The
metics could take no part in the government, could not marry a
citizen, nor acquire land. But they were personally free, they had the
right of commerce by sea, of banking and of trade on condition that
they take a patron to represent them in the courts. There were in
Athens more than ten thousand families of metics, the majority of them
bankers or merchants.
=The Citizens.=--To be a citizen of Athens it was necessary that both
parents should be citizens. The young Athenian, come to maturity at
about eighteen years of age, appeared before the popular assembly,
received the arms which he was to bear and took the following oath: "I
swear never to dishonor these sacred arms, not to quit my post, to
obey the magistrates and the laws, to honor the religion of my
country." He became simultaneously citizen and soldier. Thereafter he
owed military service until he was sixty years of age. With this he
had the right to sit in the assembly and to fulfil the functions of
the state.
Once in a while the Athenians consented to receive into the
citizenship a man who was not the son of a citizen, but this was rare
and a sign of great favor. The assembly had to vote the stranger into
its membership, and then nine days after six thousand citizens had to
vote for him on a secret ballot. The Athenian people was like a closed
circle; no new members were admitted except those pleasing to the old
members, and they admitted few beside their sons.
THE GOVERNMENT OF ATHENS
=The Assembly.=--The Athenians called their government a democracy (a
government by the people). But this people was not, as with us, the
mass of inhabitants, but the body of citizens, a true aristocracy of
15,000 to 20,000 men who governed the whole nation as masters. This
body had absolute power, and was the true sovereign of Athens. It
assembled at least three times a month to deliberate and to vote. The
assembly was held in the open air on the Pnyx; the citizens sat on
stone benches arranged in an amphitheatre; the magistrates before them
on a platform opened the session with a religious ceremony and a
prayer, then a herald proclaimed in a loud voice the business which
was to occupy the assembly, and said, "Who wishes to speak?" Every
citizen had the right to this privilege; the orators mounted the
tribune according to age. When all had spoken, the president put the
question; the assembly voted by a show of hands, and then dissolved.
=The Courts.=--The people itself, being sovereign, passed judgment in
the courts. Every citizen of thirty years of age could participate in
the judicial assembly (the Heliaea). The heliasts sat in the great
halls in sections of five hundred; the tribunal was, then, composed of
one thousand to fifteen hundred judges. The Athenians had no
prosecuting officer as we have; a citizen took upon himself to make
the accusation. The accused and the accuser appeared before the court;
each delivered a plea which was not to exceed the time marked off by a
water-clock. Then the judges voted by depositing a black or white
stone. If the accuser did not obtain a certain number of votes, he
himself was condemned.
=The Magistrates.=--The sovereign people needed a council to prepare
the business for discussion and magistrates to execute their
decisions. The council was composed of five hundred citizens drawn by
lot for one year. The magistrates were very numerous: ten generals to
command the army, thirty officials for financial administration, sixty
police officials to superintend the streets, the markets, weights and
measures, etc.[69]
=Character of This Government.=--The power in Athens did not pertain
to the rich and the noble, as in Sparta. In the assembly everything
was decided by a majority of votes and all the votes were equal. All
the jurors, all the members of the council, all the magistrates except
the generals were chosen by lot. The citizens were equal not only in
theory, but also in practice. Socrates said[70] to a well-informed
Athenian who did not dare to speak before the people: "Of what are you
afraid? Is it of the fullers, the shoe-makers, the masons, the
artisans, or the merchants? for the assembly is composed of all these
people."
Many of these people had to ply their trade in order to make a living,
and could not serve the state gratuitously; and so a salary was
instituted: every citizen who sat in the assembly or in the courts
received for every day of session three obols (about eight cents of
our money), a sum just sufficient to maintain life at that time. From
this day the poor administered the government.
=The Demagogues.=--Since all important affairs whether in the assembly
or in the courts were decided by discussion and discourse, the
influential men were those who knew how to speak best. The people
accustomed themselves to listen to the orators, to follow their
counsels, to charge them with embassies, and even to appoint them
generals. These men were called Demagogues (leaders of the people).
The party of the rich scoffed at them: in a comedy Aristophanes
represents the people (Demos) under the form of an old man who has
lost his wits: "You are foolishly credulous, you let flatterers and
intriguers pull you around by the nose and you are enraptured when
they harangue you." And the chorus, addressing a charlatan, says to
him, "You are rude, vicious; you have a strong voice, an impudent
eloquence, and violent gestures; believe me, you have all that is
necessary to govern Athens."
PRIVATE LIFE
The Athenians created so many political functions that a part of the
citizens was engaged in fulfilling them. The citizen of Athens, like
the functionary or soldier of our days, was absorbed in public
affairs. Warring and governing were the whole of his life. He spent
his days in the assembly, in the courts, in the army, at the
gymnasium, or at the market. Almost always he had a wife and children,
for his religion commanded this, but he did not live at home.
=The Children.=--When a child came into the world, the father had the
right to reject it. In this case it was laid outside the house where
it died from neglect, unless a passer-by took it and brought it up as
a slave. In this custom Athens followed all the Greeks. It was
especially the girls that were exposed to death. "A son," says a
writer of comedy, "is always raised even if the parents are in the
last stage of misery; a daughter is exposed even though the parents
are rich."
If the father accepted the child, the latter entered the family. He
was left at first in the women's apartments with the mother. The girls
remained there until the day of their marriage; the boys came out when
they were seven years old. The boy was then entrusted to a preceptor
(pedagogue), whose business it was to teach him to conduct himself
well and to obey. The pedagogue was often a slave, but the father gave
him the right to beat his son. This was the general usage in
antiquity.
Later the boy went to school, where he learned to read, write, cipher,
recite poetry, and to sing in the chorus or to the sound of the flute.
At last came gymnastics. This was the whole of the instruction; it
made men sound in body and calm in spirit--what the Greeks called
"good and beautiful."
To the young girl, secluded with her mother, nothing of the liberal
arts was taught; it was thought sufficient if she learned to obey.
Xenophon represents a rich and well-educated Athenian speaking thus of
his wife with Socrates: "She was hardly twenty years old when I
married her, and up to that time she had been subjected to an exacting
surveillance; they had no desire that she should live, and she learned
almost nothing. Was it not enough that one should find in her a woman
who could spin the flax to make garments, and who had learned how to
distribute duties to the slaves?" When her husband proposed that she
become his assistant, she replied with great surprise, "In what can I
aid you? Of what am I capable? My mother has always taught me that my
business was to be prudent." Prudence or obedience was the virtue
which was required of the Greek woman.
=Marriage.=--At the age of fifteen the girl married. The parents had
chosen the husband; it might be a man from a neighboring family, or a
man who had been a long-time friend of the father, but always a
citizen of Athens. It was rare that the young girl knew him; she was
never consulted in the case. Herodotus, speaking of a Greek, adds:
"This Callias deserves mention for his conduct toward his daughters;
for when they were of marriageable age he gave them a rich dowry,
permitted them to choose husbands from all the people, and he then
married them to the men of their choice."
=Athenian Women.=--In the inner recess of the Athenian house there was
a retired apartment reserved for the women--the Gynecaeum. Husband and
relatives were the only visitors; the mistress of the household
remained here all day with her slaves; she directed them,
superintended the house-keeping, and distributed to them the flax for
them to spin. She herself was engaged with weaving garments. She left
the house seldom save for the religious festivals. She never appeared
in the society of men: "No one certainly would venture," says the
orator Isaeus, "to dine with a married woman; married women do not go
out to dine with men or permit themselves to eat with strangers." An
Athenian woman who frequented society could not maintain a good
reputation.
The wife, thus secluded and ignorant, was not an agreeable companion.
The husband had taken her not for his life-long companion, but to
keep his house in order, to be the mother of his children, and because
Greek custom and religion required that he should marry. Plato says
that one does not marry because he wants to, but "because the law
constrains him." And the comic poet Menander had found this saying:
"Marriage, to tell the truth, is an evil, but a necessary evil." And
so the women in Athens, as in most of the other states of Greece,
always held but little place in society.
FOOTNOTES:
[66] The marble of Pentelicus and the honey of Hymettus.
[67] This legendary king was called Theseus.
[68] Certain limitations, however, are referred to below, under
"Metics."--ED.
[69] Not to mention the Archons, whom they had not ventured to suppress.
[70] Xenophon, "Memorabilia," iii., 7, 6.