Nor does it seem unreasonable to give him credit for a more generous forward movement than what is implied in the literal account of Herodotus. Instead of being forced against his will to purchase popular support by proposing this new constitution, Kleisthenês may have proposed it before, during the discussions which immediately followed the retirement of Hippias; so that the rejection of it formed the ground of quarrel—and no other ground is mentioned—between him and Isagoras. The latter doubtless found sufficient support, in the existing senate and public assembly, to prevent it from being carried without an actual appeal to the people, and his opposition to it is not difficult to understand. For, necessary as the change had become, it was not the less a shock to ancient Attic ideas. It radically altered the very idea of a tribe, which now became an aggregation of demes, not of gentes,—of fellow-demots, not of fellow-gentiles; and it thus broke up those associations, religious, social, and political, between the whole and the parts of the old system, which operated powerfully on the mind of every old-fashioned Athenian. The patricians at Rome, who composed the gentes and curiæ,—and the plebs, who had no part in these corporations,—formed for a long time two separate and opposing fractions in the same city, each with its own separate organization. It was only by slow degrees that the plebs gained ground, and the political value of the patrician gens was long maintained alongside of and apart from the plebeian tribe. So too in the Italian and German cities of the Middle Ages, the patrician families refused to part with their own separate political identity, when the guilds grew up by the side of them; even though forced to renounce a portion of their power, they continued to be a separate fraternity, and would not submit to be regimented anew, under an altered category and denomination, along with the traders who had grown into wealth and importance.[247] But the reform of Kleisthenês effected this change all at once, both as to the name and as to the reality. In some cases, indeed, that which had been the name of a gens was retained as the name of a deme, but even then the old gentiles were ranked indiscriminately among the remaining demots; and the Athenian people, politically considered, thus became one homogeneous whole, distributed for convenience into parts, numerical, local, and politically equal. It is, however, to be remembered, that while the four Ionic tribes were abolished, the gentes and phratries which composed them were left untouched, and continued to subsist as family and religious associations, though carrying with them no political privilege.
The ten newly-created tribes, arranged in an established order of precedence, were called,—Erechthêis, Ægêis, Pandiŏnis, Leontis, Akamantis, Œnêis, Kekrŏpis, Hippothoöntis, Æantis, Antiochis; names borrowed chiefly from the respected heroes of Attic legend.[248] This number remained unaltered until the year 305 B. C., when it was increased to twelve by the addition of two new tribes, Antigonias and Demetrias, afterwards designated anew by the names of Ptolemais and Attalis. The mere names of these last two, borrowed from living kings, and not from legendary heroes, betray the change from freedom to subservience at Athens. Each tribe comprised a certain number of demes,—cantons, parishes, or townships,—in Attica. But the total number of these demes is not distinctly ascertained; for though we know that, in the time of Polemô (the third century B. C.), it was one hundred and seventy-four, we cannot be sure that it had always remained the same; and several critics construe the words of Herodotus to imply that Kleisthenês at first recognized exactly one hundred demes, distributed in equal proportion among his ten tribes.[249] But such construction of the words is more than doubtful, while the fact itself is improbable; partly because if the change of number had been so considerable as the difference between one hundred and one hundred and seventy-four, some positive evidence of it would probably be found,—partly because Kleisthenês would, indeed, have a motive to render the amount of citizen population nearly equal, but no motive to render the number of demes equal, in each of the ten tribes. It is well known how great is the force of local habits, and how unalterable are parochial or cantonal boundaries. In the absence of proof to the contrary, therefore, we may reasonably suppose the number and circumscription of the demes, as found or modified by Kleisthenês, to have subsisted afterwards with little alteration, at least until the increase in the number of the tribes.
There is another point, however, which is at once more certain, and more important to notice. The demes which Kleisthenês assigned to each tribe were in no case all adjacent to each other; and therefore the tribe, as a whole, did not correspond with any continuous portion of the territory, nor could it have any peculiar local interest, separate from the entire community. Such systematic avoidance of the factions arising out of neighborhood will appear to have been more especially necessary, when we recollect that the quarrels of the Parali, the Diakrii, the Pediaki, during the preceding century, had all been generated from local feud, though doubtless artfully fomented by individual ambition. Moreover, it was only by this same precaution that the local predominance of the city, and the formation of a city-interest distinct from that of the country, was obviated; which could hardly have failed to arise had the city by itself constituted either one deme or one tribe. Kleisthenês distributed the city (or found it already distributed) into several demes, and those demes among several tribes; while Peiræus and Phalêrum, each constituting a separate deme, were also assigned to different tribes; so that there were no local advantages either to bestow predominance, or to create a struggle for predominance, of one tribe over the rest.[250] Each deme had its own local interests to watch over; but the tribe was a mere aggregate of demes for political, military, and religious purposes, with no separate hopes or fears, apart from the whole state. Each tribe had a chapel, sacred rites and festivals, and a common fund for such meetings, in honor of its eponymous hero, administered by members of its own choice;[251] and the statues of all the ten eponymous heroes, fraternal patrons of the democracy, were planted in the most conspicuous part of the agora of Athens. In the future working of the Athenian government, we shall trace no symptom of disquieting local factions,—a capital amendment, compared with the disputes of the preceding century, and traceable, in part, to the absence of border-relations between demes of the same tribe.
The deme now became the primitive constituent element of the commonwealth, both as to persons and as to property. It had its own demarch, its register of enrolled citizens, its collective property, its public meetings and religious ceremonies, its taxes levied and administered by itself. The register of qualified citizens[252] was kept by the demarch, and the inscription of new citizens took place at the assembly of the demots, whose legitimate sons were enrolled on attaining the age of eighteen, and their adopted sons at any time when presented and sworn to by the adopting citizen. The citizenship could only be granted by a public vote of the people, but wealthy non-freemen were enabled sometimes to evade this law and purchase admission upon the register of some poor deme, probably by means of a fictitious adoption. At the meetings of the demots, the register was called over, and it sometimes happened that some names were expunged,—in which case the party thus disfranchised had an appeal to the popular judicature.[253] So great was the local administrative power, however, of these demes, that they are described as the substitute,[254] under the Kleisthenean system, for the naukraries under the Solonian and ante-Solonian. The trittyes and naukraries, though nominally preserved, and the latter (as some affirm) augmented in number from forty-eight to fifty, appear henceforward as of little public importance.
Kleisthenês preserved, but at the same time modified and expanded, all the main features of Solon’s political constitution; the public assembly, or ekklesia,—the preconsidering senate, composed of members from all the tribes,—and the habit of annual election, as well as annual responsibility of magistrates, by and to the ekklesia. The full value must now have been felt of possessing such preëxisting institutions to build upon, at a moment of perplexity and dissension. But the Kleisthenean ekklesia acquired new strength, and almost a new character, from the great increase of the number of citizens qualified to attend it; while the annually-changed senate, instead of being composed of four hundred members taken in equal proportion from each of the old four tribes, was enlarged to five hundred, taken equally from each of the new ten tribes. It now comes before us, under the name of Senate of Five Hundred, as an active and indispensable body throughout the whole Athenian democracy: and the practice now seems to have begun (though the period of commencement cannot be decisively proved), of determining the names of the senators by lot. Both the senate thus constituted, and the public assembly, were far more popular and vigorous than they had been under the original arrangement of Solon.
The new constitution of the tribes, as it led to a change in the annual senate, so it transformed, no less directly, the military arrangements of the state, both as to soldiers and as to officers. The citizens called upon to serve in arms were now marshalled according to tribes,—each tribe having its own taxiarchs as officers for the hoplites, and its own phylarch at the head of the horsemen. Moreover, there were now created for the first time ten strategi, or generals, one from each tribe; and two hipparchs, for the supreme command of the horsemen. Under the prior Athenian constitution it appears that the command of the military force had been vested in the third archon, or polemarch, no strategi then existing; and even after the latter had been created, under the Kleisthenean constitution, the polemarch still retained a joint right of command along with them,—as we are told at the battle of Marathon, where Kallimachus the polemarch not only enjoyed an equal vote in the council of war along with the ten strategi, but even occupied the post of honor on the right wing.[255] The ten generals, annually changed, are thus (like the ten tribes) a fruit of the Kleisthenean constitution, which was at the same time powerfully strengthened and protected by such remodelling of the military force. The functions of the generals becoming more extensive as the democracy advanced, they seem to have acquired gradually not merely the direction of military and naval affairs, but also that of the foreign relations of the city generally,—while the nine archons, including the polemarch, were by degrees lowered down from that full executive and judicial competence which they had once enjoyed, to the simple ministry of police and preparatory justice. Encroached upon by the strategi on one side, they were also restricted in efficiency by the rise of the popular dikasteries or numerous jury-courts, on the other. We may be very sure that these popular dikasteries had not been permitted to meet or to act under the despotism of the Peisistratids, and that the judicial business of the city must then have been conducted partly by the Senate of Areopagus, partly by the archons; perhaps with a nominal responsibility of the latter at the end of their year of office to an acquiescent ekklesia. And if we even assume it to be true, as some writers contend, that the habit of direct popular judicature, over and above this annual trial of responsibility, had been partially introduced by Solon, it must have been discontinued during the long coercion exercised by the supervening dynasty. But the outburst of popular spirit, which lent force to Kleisthenês, doubtless carried the people into direct action as jurors in the aggregate Heliæa, not less than as voters in the ekklesia,—and the change was thus begun which contributed to degrade the archons from their primitive character as judges, into the lower function of preliminary examiners and presidents of a jury. Such convocation of numerous juries, beginning first with the aggregate body of sworn citizens above thirty years of age, and subsequently dividing them into separate bodies or pannels, for trying particular causes, became gradually more frequent and more systematized: until at length, in the time of Periklês, it was made to carry a small pay, and stood out as one of the most prominent features of Athenian life. We cannot particularize the different steps whereby such final development was attained, and the judicial competence of the archon cut down to the mere power of inflicting a small fine; but the first steps of it are found in the revolution of Kleisthenês, and it seems to have been consummated by the reforms of Periklês. Of the function exercised by the nine archons as well as by many other magistrates and official persons at Athens, in convoking a dikastery, or jury-court, bringing on causes for trial,—and presiding over the trial,—a function constituting one of the marks of superior magistracy, and called the Hegemony, or presidency of a dikastery,—I shall speak more at length hereafter. At present, I wish merely to bring to view the increased and increasing sphere of action on which the people entered at the memorable turn of affairs now before us.
The financial affairs of the city underwent at this epoch as complete a change as the military: in fact, the appointment of magistrates and officers by tens, one from each tribe, seems to have become the ordinary practice. A board of ten, called Apodektæ, were invested with the supreme management of the exchequer, dealing with the contractors as to those portions of the revenue which were farmed, receiving all the taxes from the collectors, and disbursing them under competent authority. The first nomination of this board is expressly ascribed to Kleisthenês,[256] as a substitute for certain persons called Kôlakretæ, who had performed the same function before, and who were now retained only for subordinate services. The duties of the apodektæ were afterwards limited to receiving the public income, and paying it over to the ten treasurers of the goddess Athênê, by whom it was kept in the inner chamber of the Parthenon, and disbursed as needed; but this more complicated arrangement cannot be referred to Kleisthenês. From his time forward too, the Senate of Five Hundred steps far beyond its original duty of preparing matters for the discussion of the ekklesia: it embraces, besides, a large circle of administrative and general superintendence, which hardly admits of any definition. Its sittings become constant, with the exception of special holidays, and the year is distributed into ten portions called Prytanies,—the fifty senators of each tribe taking by turns the duty of constant attendance during one prytany, and receiving during that time the title of The Prytanes: the order of precedence among the tribes in these duties was annually determined by lot. In the ordinary Attic year of twelve lunar months, or three hundred and fifty-four days, six of the prytanies contained thirty-five days, four of them contained thirty-six: in the intercalated years of thirteen months, the number of days was thirty-eight and thirty-nine respectively. Moreover, a farther subdivision of the prytany into five periods of seven days each, and of the fifty tribe-senators into five bodies of ten each, was recognized: each body of ten presided in the senate for one period of seven days, drawing lots every day among their number for a new chairman, called Epistatês, to whom during his day of office were confided the keys of the acropolis and the treasury, together with the city seal. The remaining senators, not belonging to the prytanizing tribe, might of course attend if they chose; but the attendance of nine among them, one from each of the remaining nine tribes, was imperatively necessary to constitute a valid meeting, and to insure a constant representation of the collective people.
During those later times known to us through the great orators, the ekklesia, or formal assembly of the citizens, was convoked four times regularly during each prytany, or oftener if necessity required,—usually by the senate, though the stratêgi had also the power of convoking it by their own authority. It was presided over by the prytanes, and questions were put to the vote by their epistatês, or chairman; but the nine representatives of the non-prytanizing tribes were always present as a matter of course, and seem, indeed, in the days of the orators, to have acquired to themselves the direction of it, together with the right of putting questions for the vote,[257]—setting aside wholly or partially the fifty prytanes. When we carry our attention back, however, to the state of the ekklesia, as first organized by Kleisthenês (I have already remarked that expositors of the Athenian constitution are too apt to neglect the distinction of times, and to suppose that what was the practice between 400-330 B. C. had been always the practice), it will appear probable that he provided one regular meeting in each prytany, and no more; giving to the senate and the stratêgi power of convening special meetings if needful, but establishing one ekklesia during each prytany, or ten in the year, as a regular necessity of state. How often the ancient ekklesia had been convoked during the interval between Solon and Peisistratus, we cannot exactly say,—probably but seldom during the year. But under the Peisistratids, its convocation had dwindled down into an inoperative formality; and the reëstablishment of it by Kleisthenês, not merely with plenary determining powers, but also under full notice and preparation of matters beforehand, together with the best securities for orderly procedure, was in itself a revolution impressive to the mind of every Athenian citizen. To render the ekklesia efficient, it was indispensable that its meetings should be both frequent and free. Men thus became trained to the duty both of speakers and hearers, and each man, while he felt that he exercised his share of influence on the decision, identified his own safety and happiness with the vote of the majority, and became familiarized with the notion of a sovereign authority which he neither could nor ought to resist. This is an idea new to the Athenian bosom; and with it came the feelings sanctifying free speech and equal law,—words which no Athenian citizen ever afterwards heard unmoved: together with that sentiment of the entire commonwealth as one and indivisible, which always overruled, though it did not supplant, the local and cantonal special ties. It is not too much to say that these patriotic and ennobling impulses were a new product in the Athenian mind, to which nothing analogous occurs even in the time of Solon. They were kindled in part doubtless by the strong reaction against the Peisistratids, but still more by the fact that the opposing leader, Kleisthenês, turned that transitory feeling to the best possible account, and gave to it a vigorous perpetuity, as well as a well-defined positive object, by the popular elements conspicuous in his constitution. His name makes less figure in history than we should expect, because he passed for the mere renovator of Solon’s scheme of government after it had been overthrown by Peisistratus. Probably he himself professed this object, since it would facilitate the success of his propositions: and if we confine ourselves to the letter of the case, the fact is in a great measure true, since the annual senate and the ekklesia are both Solonian,—but both of them under his reform were clothed in totally new circumstances, and swelled into gigantic proportions. How vigorous was the burst of Athenian enthusiasm, altering instantaneously the position of Athens among the powers of Greece, we shall hear presently from the lips of Herodotus, and shall find still more unequivocally marked in the facts of his history.
But it was not only the people formally installed in their ekklesia, who received from Kleisthenês the real attributes of sovereignty,—it was by him also that the people were first called into direct action as dikasts, or jurors. I have already remarked, that this custom may be said, in a certain limited sense, to have begun in the time of Solon, since that lawgiver invested the popular assembly with the power of pronouncing the judgment of accountability upon the archons after their year of office. Here, again, the building, afterwards so spacious and stately, was erected on a Solonian foundation, though it was not itself Solonian. That the popular dikasteries, in the elaborate form in which they existed from Periklês downward, were introduced all at once by Kleisthenês, it is impossible to believe; yet the steps by which they were gradually wrought out are not distinctly discoverable. It would rather seem, that at first only the aggregate body of citizens above thirty years of age exercised judicial functions, being specially convoked and sworn to try persons accused of public crimes, and when so employed bearing the name of the heliæa, or heliasts; private offences and disputes between man and man being still determined by individual magistrates in the city, and a considerable judicial power still residing in the Senate of Areopagus. There is reason to believe that this was the state of things established by Kleisthenês, and which afterwards came to be altered by the greater extent of judicial duty gradually accruing to the heliasts, so that it was necessary to subdivide the collective heliæa. According to the subdivision, as practised in the times best known, six thousand citizens above thirty years of age were annually selected by lot out of the whole number, six hundred from each of the ten tribes: five thousand of these citizens were arranged in ten pannels or decuries of five hundred each, the remaining one thousand being reserved to fill up vacancies in case of death or absence among the former. The whole six thousand took a prescribed oath, couched in very striking words, and every man received a ticket inscribed with his own name as well as with a letter designating his decury. When there were causes or crimes ripe for trial, the thesmothets, or six inferior archons, determined by lot, first, which decuries should sit, according to the number wanted,—next, in which court, or under the presidency of what magistrate, the decury B or E should sit, so that it could not be known beforehand in what cause each would be judge. In the number of persons who actually attended and sat, however, there seems to have been much variety, and sometimes two decuries sat together.[258] The arrangement here described, we must recollect, is given to us as belonging to those times when the dikasts received a regular pay, after every day’s sitting; and it can hardly have long continued without that condition, which was not realized before the time of Periklês. Each of these decuries sitting in judicature was called The Heliæa,—a name which belongs properly to the collective assembly of the people; this collective assembly having been itself the original judicature. I conceive that the practice of distributing this collective assembly, or heliæa, into sections of jurors for judicial duty, may have begun under one form or another soon after the reform of Kleisthenês, since the direct interference of the people in public affairs tended more and more to increase. But it could only have been matured by degrees into that constant and systematic service which the pay of Periklês called forth at last in completeness. Under the last-mentioned system the judicial competence of the archons was annulled, and the third archon, or polemarch, withdrawn from all military functions. Still, this had not been yet done at the time of the battle of Marathon, in which Kallimachus the polemarch not only commanded along with the stratêgi, but enjoyed a sort of preëminence over them: nor had it been done during the year after the battle of Marathon, in which Aristeidês was archon,—for the magisterial decisions of Aristeidês formed one of the principal foundations of his honorable surname, the Just.[259]
With this question, as to the comparative extent of judicial power vested by Kleisthenês in the popular dikastery and the archons, are in reality connected two others in Athenian constitutional law; relating, first, to the admissibility of all citizens for the post of archon,—next, to the choosing of archons by lot. It is well known that, in the time of Periklês, the archons, and various other individual functionaries, had come to be chosen by lot,—moreover, all citizens were legally admissible, and might give in their names to be drawn for by lot, subject to what was called the dokimasy, or legal examination into their status of citizen, and into various moral and religious qualifications, before they took office; while at the same time the function of the archon had become nothing higher than preliminary examination of parties and witnesses for the dikastery, and presidence over it when afterwards assembled, together with the power of imposing by authority a fine of small amount upon inferior offenders.