Athens

Athens is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world: its earliest evidence of settlement, on the hill of the Acropolis, dates back 3,000 years. The name of the city is inextricably linked with the goddess Athina, the daughter of Zeus in Greek mythology, who was depicted as a virgin goddess with a decidedly unfeminine nature that allowed her to play a leading role in a world of men.

The pre-eminent symbol of both ancient and modern Athens is the temple of the Parthenon, on the summit of the Acropolis, built in the aftermath of the Persian Wars (ending 448 BC) and dedicated to the goddess Athina. After its Golden Age as the city-state where some of the world's greatest thinkers and writers resided, Athens lost importance first of all during the Byzantium period and later during its possession by the Ottoman Empire. In the early days of the Greek Revolution (1821-1830), control of the Acropolis (and the flag flown on it) passed back and forth between Greek and Ottoman forces, until well after the formation of the new Greek state.

Athens was not originally chosen as the capital city of modern Greece, partly owing to its tiny population and relative unimportance at that time. In 1834 Athens replaced Nafplio as Greece's capital. Today, Athens and its suburbs house more than 4 million people, or over one third of the country's population, and is indisputably the locus of power and commerce in modern Greece.

History

Unification of Attica

Athens was one of the few Greek cities whose habitation was not interrupted by the end of the Bronze Age. Athens was relatively prosperous in the Proto-Geometric and Geometric Periods. It is unproven whether any of its political institutions survived the Bronze Age.

Attica (The Athenian hinterland) consisted of several plains divided by hills. The central plain held the city of Athens and a strip of coast, including the Bay of Phaleron. Farter west was the plain of Thria, on which the largest settlement was Eleusis. Eastern Attica consisted partly of low lying territories and partly of hills; and it also held several settlements.

A process of Attic unification composed of two stages. In the first, the strongest settlement in each plain acquired control over the other towns of its plain; thus, three of four states emerged. In the second stage, Athens, that already controlled the central plain, absorbed the communities of the outlying districts. The second stage was completed around the first half of the 7th century BC.

What resulted was a unitary state: the political organs of Athens were the sole focus of Attic activity. In the 7th century, public authority was still weak; real power belonged to local powerful families, each commanding numerous dependants. At least some of the political conflicts of the 7th and 6th century were of a regionalist type, i.e., struggles from leading families in the outlying districts against the central plain, Athens.

Pre-Solonian Political Institutions

The chief political institutions of the unitary state were an executive board governed by nine Archons, a Council and a public assembly. Tradition held that Athens had once being ruled by kings but whose powers had been diminished in two ways: other offices were created to take over their functions, and the term of all the officers was reduced to one year. There is no clear evidence on how the archons were selected for office.

The Council came to be called the ‘The Council of The Areopagus’, because it met on a hill west of the Acropolis of the same name. The council consisted of all who had held any of the nine archonships. It had begun as a council advising the kings. Athenian writers of the 5th and 4th centuries knew that the council had once been powerful, but their attempts to define its former functions produced little more than vague generalities. Probably its ascendancy in the Archaic Period rested not on specific powers but on a personal factor. The minimum age for the nine archons was 30 years. As one of the archons, a man had only one year in office, but thereafter he could expect 30 years as a councilor. The system was one of reverence towards the Council, as the archons would soon be members of that body.

Around 632 BC, an uprising led by Cylon tested the stability of the state. Cylon had married the daughter of Theagenes, the tyrant of Megara. Encouraged by an oracle, Cylon gathered his friends and a force from his father in law and seized the Acropolis during the Olympic festival. The Athenians rallied behind the archons however, and Cylon escaped without his followers. His followers made terms with the archons, who agreed to spare their lives; however, as the Cylonians came down from the Acropolis, the archons killed them. Later, those responsible for the breach of faith were exiled as being cursed, but later were allowed to return. The scandal of the curse was revived against their descendants, such as Cleisthenes.

Cylon hoped to make himself tyrant, but attempts to regard him as a champion of popular discontent have little evidential support. Rather, it is more likely that he was a rival of the powerful Alcmaenoid Family, who dominated politics in Athens at the time.

Mystery surrounds the activities attributed to Draco in 621 BC. Later Athenian tradition said he wrote down all the laws that subsequently were repudiated by Solon during his reforms. Draco dealt mainly with homicides in his laws. The law provided that if a man killed another unintentionally his case should be judged by a ‘court of fifty-one’, called The Ephetai; if they upheld his plea, the relatives of the victim could grant him pardon by a unanimous vote, but if the relatives declined, the state provided the killer with a safe-conduct to the border. By recognizing the killer’s intention as distinct from his act, the law became more sophisticated; by providing a safe-conduct to the border, the state asserted its authority.

By the 4th century BC, Athens had around five homicide courts, including the Areopagite council, which dealt with intentional homicide. This system of courts observed other distinctions besides those based on intention; for example, it recognized a category of lawful homicide, and it treated the killer of a slave or foreigner differently from the killer of a citizen. It is unclear whether all or parts of the system were attributed to Draco or not. Nevertheless, the state had, by 621 BC, asserted itself in the originally private sphere of killing and the blood feud.

Bibliography

• Connolly, Peter, and Hazel Dodge. The Ancient City: Life in Classical Athens and Rome (2000) excerpt and text search
• Fornara, Charles W., and Loren J. Samons II. Athens from Cleisthenes to Pericles University of California Press, 1991 online free
• Korres, Manolis et al. Athens: From the Classical Period to the Present Day (5th Century B.C.-A.D. 2000). Oak Knoll, 2003. 521 pp.
• Ostwald, Martin. From Popular Sovereignty to the Sovereignty of Law: Law, Society, and Politics in Fifth-Century Athens (1989) excerpt and text search