The Political Institutions of the Ancient Greeks

by Basil Edward Hammond

The constitution, in the time of the Peloponnesian war, was arranged, in nearly all respects, according to the principles which the Greeks regarded as distinctive of ideal or extreme democracy, and tended to ensure firstly that all citizens should be equally treated in the distribution of offices, and secondly that the general assembly should be free to do as it liked. The exceptions to the prevailing tendency are to be found in the appointment of the ten generals by election, in the right of the five hundred to exclude a proposal from discussion, and in the provision that a resolution or new law might be indicted as unconstitutional before a law court. But the five hundred were not men of greater wisdom or experience than the other Athenians, being merely so many citizens taken at random by drawing lots: it does not appear from the descriptions which Thucydides gives of debates in the assembly that the generals or the five hundred exercised any commanding influence: and the illegal resolution against the admirals who commanded at Arginusæ took effect, just as if there had been no such thing as a regulation that it might be judicially indicted.

But it must be observed that what was an ideal democracy in the eyes of the Greeks was not an ideal democracy according to the views of our own time. When we speak of a democracy we generally mean a system of government in which the whole adult male population have some sort of control over public affairs. At Athens, a large part, it may have been half, or three-quarters or five-sixths, of the adult male population were slaves; and slaves, having lost their personal freedom, are of course incapable of political rights. If then we wish in speaking of the Athenian constitution to use terms in their modern sense and not in their Greek sense, we must say that the rulers of Athens were not a democracy but an aristocracy: it is true that they constituted a far larger part of the population than most aristocracies, but as compared with the whole they were but few. And further we may observe that without slavery there could never have been such a government as that which ruled Athens. The Athenian citizens gave a large part of their time to public business and attendance at public festivals: and they could not have done this unless there had been plenty of slaves to perform the industrial and menial work that the community required[180].

Although Athens ought, according to the modern use of terms, to be called rather an aristocracy than a democracy, it seems to be certain that the men actually and habitually employed in the daily work of government bore numerically a larger proportion to the whole population in ancient Athens than they have done in any other state known to history. The whole population of Attica may have been a quarter of a million or it may have been nearly half-a-million: the citizens numbered about thirty thousand, and it is probable that at least ten thousand of them were habitually employed in the business of government: and these ten thousand may have been a twenty-fifth part and were not less than a fiftieth part of the whole population. In modern England those who are habitually employed in governing would include members of Parliament, of town councils, of county councils, and of school-boards, magistrates, judges, and the staff of all Government offices, except those persons who are mere clerks or servants: I cannot say how many they would muster, all told: but, judging from those parts of England that I know best, I should estimate them at something between a two-hundredth and a five-hundredth part of the inhabitants of the country.

4. Democracy after the Peloponnesian War, 404-338 B.C.

In the period which followed the Peloponnesian war the poorer citizens who predominated in the assembly passed several votes to promote the pleasure and the pecuniary interests of their class. Pay was provided for every citizen who attended a meeting of the assembly or was a spectator at a religious festival and its dramatic performances. The pay was at first fixed at a low rate: before 392 B.C. it had been raised to three obols, the same sum as was paid to a dicast for a day's attendance[181]. The pay for the law courts, the assemblies, the festivals and the council came to nearly two hundred talents yearly[182]. The whole revenue of the Athenian state in the fourth century is not known: but it can scarcely have exceeded eleven or twelve hundred talents[183]: and thus it seems that about one-sixth part of it was spent in providing citizens with religious spectacles or comfortable employment.

After the three obols had been decreed, a majority more overwhelming than ever was ensured in the assembly to the poorer class. The professional orators began to devote their skill to the purpose of persuading the ecclesia, and thus obtained a control over Athenian policy. It was fortunate for the state that in Demosthenes it found not only an orator but a patriot and a statesman: and it says much for the good sense of the assembly that it followed his counsels, unless they interfered too much with the comfort of the individual citizens. The assembly governed on the whole with moderation, and no harsh measures against the property of the rich were ever passed in it: but it insisted that the poor citizens should have their three obols for the religious spectacles, even when the money was wanted for a most necessary war to defend Olynthus against Macedonia[184]. The very frequent assemblies of the whole body of citizens gave the poorer classes a decisive voice in all questions of policy and legislation: but they also ensured that all the citizens had some knowledge of what was being proposed, and gave them the habit of listening to arguments, and of deciding questions by voting and not by force. During the period from 404 B.C. to 338 B.C. Athens was never troubled with conspiracies or seditious violence.

The fall of Athens occurred at the end of the period of which I have been speaking, and no doubt the defects of the constitution and the unwillingness of the citizens to make any sacrifices were contributory causes. But it is not certain that, even if Athens had been as well governed and patriotic as ever, it would have been able so to unite the jealous Greek cities as to ensure their independence against the new and formidable power of Macedonia.

Our materials for forming an estimate of the nature of democracy in the Greek cities other than Athens are, as I have said, very scanty. But it seems clear that most of the democracies ruled with less moderation and self-control than the Athenian democracy, and had less stability. Revolutions from democracy to oligarchy or from oligarchy to democracy recurred at shorter intervals in many Greek cities than at Athens: and sometimes, as at Corcyra in 427 B.C., and at Argos in 371 B.C. or 370 B.C., an unsuccessful attempt at revolution was punished with wholesale massacre[185]. It is to be observed that the Greek writers, in speaking of democracy, generally seem to regard it with distrust and even dislike: and this could hardly have been the case, if all democratic governments had been as well conducted as the Athenian government. We know that at Athens the whole mass of the citizens were able at any moment to do whatever they liked, subject to no restraint except from the Graphê Paranomôn and from their own characters and inclinations: and it seems certain that in every Greek city mentioned by the Greek writers as democratically governed the citizens were still more free from restraint: for many of the best and most careful writers were great admirers of artificial restraints on democracy, and if any city had provided itself with such restraints the fact would have been recorded. It is clear that a government which allows the mass of the citizens to do whatever they choose must be beset with dangers, unless the citizens have learned habits of self-restraint and mutual forbearance from a long and gradual political education. The Athenians had learned such habits, but the other Greeks probably had not: for the Athenians alone among the Greeks had had the good fortune to live under the wise constitutions of a Solon and a Cleisthenes, which, by granting to the mass of the citizens at first a very small share and afterwards a larger share in the control of public affairs, provided them with such political training that eventually they were able with safety to expose themselves to the perils of complete self-government.

5. Oligarchy at Athens, 411 B.C. and 404 B.C.

In the year 415 B.C., the seventeenth year of the Peloponnesian war, the Athenians despatched a great naval and military expedition to the distant island of Sicily. The expedition encountered many difficulties: the Athenians sent strong reinforcements: but in the year 412 B.C. their fleet suffered a crushing defeat in the Great Harbour of Syracuse, and their army was afterwards completely destroyed. Athens itself was without any adequate defence of ships or sailors or soldiers[186]: the Athenians did their best to supply the deficiency, but there was grave reason to fear that their unaided efforts would not avail to save them, and they greatly desired to get support by making some new alliance. It was certain that no new allies could be found among the Greeks[187], and they could look for no help unless it were from the king of Persia[188].