It was in the 450s that the new structure of Athenian democracy was consolidated. The Assembly could now make laws on any subject, raise taxes, supervise their spending, and conduct all aspects of foreign policy. It met at regular intervals, four times in each of the ten months of the year. The first meeting of each month had a fixed agenda that included reports on the state of the grain supply and issues of national defence. Extra meetings could be called in emergencies. As only male citizens, over 18, could attend, women, children, foreigners, and, of course, slaves were excluded, and in this sense the Assembly was an elitist power house. Nevertheless, as many as 30,000 citizens were eligible to attend, although the Assembly’s meeting place, the Pnyx, a hill to the west of the city, probably only had room for about 6,000 until it was enlarged in about 400 Bc (after which 8,000 might have been squeezed in). In practice those who lived far out in the countryside and had land to work would have found it difficult to attend.
Once the formal rituals of opening had been concluded the President of the Assembly would ask, ‘Who wishes to address the Assembly?’ In principle anyone could now stand up, although naturally, when the moment came, it would only be a few who would have the courage to do so. Business was conducted by majority vote (in effect a show of hands) after listening to speeches. This, and appropriate applause and heckling, must have been the limit to most citizens’ participation. There were no political parties and although leaders must have the backing of close friends they had no reliable majority and no way of organizing continuing support.
Pericles was a superb speaker. He needed to be, no one was safe from the rowdy crowd. Athens’s most famous orator, Demosthenes (384-22), would be howled down when he made his first attempts to address the Assembly, and debates during the Peloponnesian War (431-404 Bc) often got completely out of hand with decisions made on the spur of the moment that were soon regretted. The tone was quieter in Pericles’ day but the rhetorical skills needed if a speaker was to be listened to were considerable. Often described by his critics as aloof, Pericles came alive before an audience. His speeches were eloquent and meticulously prepared. An early success in arranging payments for the sailors and members of juries must have earned him a groundswell of popular support
Although little is known of his achievements in the 450s, Pericles gradually extended his influence. The historian Thucydides, an admirer, told how at first he had been ‘submissive to the people, ready to obey and give in to the desires of the masses as a steersman yields to the winds’ but, as his confidence grew, he was much tougher, even to the extent of getting angry and forcing the people to do his will. ‘He was never compelled to flatter the people, but, on the contrary enjoyed so high an estimation that he could afford to anger them by contradiction,’ as Thucydides put it. When there were disasters for his city he had a knack of presenting them as victories. Overall he responded with good humour to the attacks on him, the lampoons that mocked the shape of his head. He was especially abused for his relationship with Aspasia, a free-speaking and highly intelligent woman from Miletus who became his consort after his divorce.
Yet despite the many provocations, Pericles never attempted to subvert the democratic system he had created, or abuse his power, except in the one case where he made his son by Aspasia a citizen despite the law he had introduced himself that both parents of a child must be citizens to pass on citizenship. He could do nothing to save the great sculptor Pheidias from imprisonment when the latter was accused of embezzling gold from his statue of Athena. Nor could he prevent a motion, probably made at the same time as the accusation against Pheidias, that he too was involved in financial misbehaviour, although he seems to have fought it off. However, it was just this refusal to subvert the system that allowed Athenian democracy in all its raucous glory to survive not only through Pericles’ lifetime but through the much more tumultuous years of the Peloponnesian War. This was his most important legacy.
Between the meetings of the Assembly there had to be continuity of government, and this was provided by the Boule, the Council of Five Hundred. Each of the ten tribes put forward volunteers, and fifty of these were selected by lot to make the total of 500. Each served for a year and could only serve twice in total (and then not in consecutive years). The Boule met most days of the year in its own council house. There is some evidence that membership was biased towards richer and more influential citizens, presumably because they could support themselves.
The duty of the Boule was to oversee the running of the state, and, in particular, to prepare business for the Assembly and then ensure that its decisions were carried out. No issue could be raised in the Assembly if it had not first been discussed by the Boule. When news reached Athens in 339 that Philip of Macedon was advancing into Greece, the citizens rushed to the Assembly but had to wait there until the Boule had deliberated first. It has been argued that the Boule acted as a restraining force on the Assembly through the way it chose business and framed motions, though its continually changing membership would have militated against it achieving any sustained influence. In between meetings of the Boule the fifty members from each tribe took it in turn to stay on permanent call. They were put up at state expense in their circular meeting house, the Tholos, which stood alongside the main council house in the Agora. (The foundations of the Tholos have been found. For an excellent survey of other finds in recent excavations see John Camp, The Archaeology of Athens, New Haven and London, 2004.)
By the mid-century Athens was a wealthy and cosmopolitan city. Its citizens formed only a minority of a population that included large numbers of slaves (perhaps some 100,000 out of a total population of 250,000 for Attica) and several thousand foreigners (metics, from the Greek metoikoi, ‘those who had changed homes’). Although the metics could not own land or become citizens, they were welcome for their skills and formed an important part of the city’s labour resources. (Forty per cent of those working on the Parthenon were metics.) In 451, in a law attributed to Pericles, eligibility for citizenship was narrowed by making it a requirement that only those born to parents who were both citizens could acquire citizenship themselves. So the fruits of citizenship were channelled towards a smaller, more select group, perhaps a response of the democrats to the aristocratic custom of seeking wives from abroad. (Ironically, as already mentioned, Pericles managed to make an exception for his son, also Pericles, by his mistress Aspasia, who was given citizenship by a special decree after Pericles’ legitimate sons had died.)
The complexity of the city’s affairs can be gathered from the fact that there were no less than 600 administrative posts to be filled each year. All, with the exception of the ten generals, were chosen by lot from those citizens aged 30 or more who had good credentials. In the case of the generals, where proven ability was essential, election was by simple majority in the Assembly and repeatable—Pericles was re-elected general every year from 443. The ten generals exercised collective control over military affairs but a named general might be appointed to lead a specific campaign. Other posts included the nine archons (originally the chief magistrates of the city and still responsible between them for festivals, the religious life of the city, and the administration of justice), financial officials, guardians of the prisons, and, at the bottom of the scale, those responsible for cleaning the streets. All these posts eventually became paid ones.
Once selected, officials were examined before they took office and then, standing on a stone slab, had to take an oath. (The slab was rediscovered as recently as 1970.) At the end of their year all officials had to hand in accounts to be scrutinized by a committee of the Boule, but any citizen could bring a complaint against any official at any time. Pericles’ son, who turned out to be hostile to his father’s achievements, complained that this right only encouraged antagonism:
They [the Athenians] are more abusive of each other and more envious among themselves than they are towards other human beings. In both public and private gatherings, they are the most quarrelsome of men; they most often bring each other to trial; and they would rather take advantage of each other than profit by cooperative aid.
However, public accountability at this level must have been essential in maintaining the standards of public service.
Those who were accused of offences had to appeal to their fellow citizens. There was no independent judiciary in Athens and the citizen body as a whole took responsibility for enforcing the law both as judge and jury. Although the Areopagus still presided over accusations of deliberate murder and of sacrilege, most cases were heard by juries of ordinary citizens. A roll of 6,000 citizens was drawn up for each year and from these a jury was selected for each case. The more serious the charge the larger was the jury, with a maximum of 2001 with smaller numbers, typically 500, the norm. It would have been impossible to bribe so many. Jury sitting was virtually a full-time job, with jurors sitting up to 200 days a year, and Pericles recognized the burden early in the 450s by introducing pay.
The law courts were not criminal courts with clearly defined laws against which the guilt of the accused was judged. Any citizen could accuse another of an ‘offence’ which was usually vaguely phrased, a general charge of ‘impiety’ being a particular
Fig. 4 The Athenian Agora. The Agora was cleared in the early sixth century and was then gradually lined with public buildings including those for officials and the council (bouleuterion). The larger stoas were later Hellenistic additions. The route of the Panathenaic festival, to the Acropolis, ran across the square. Note also the temple to Hephaestus on higher ground to the west.
Favourite, and in fact the action was often an extension of political rivalries. The aim of the prosecutor was to denigrate his opponent by bringing in a range of accusations, especially that he had been disrespectful of the gods or failed in some way to be an effective citizen. ‘Only recently he [one Timarchus] threw off his cloak in the Assembly and his body was in such an appalling and shameful condition thanks to his drunkenness and his vices that decent men had to look away,’ was one typical taunt. Other accusations involved a man being the passive partner in a homosexual relationship, the son of a prostitute, or a coward in a battle. One unfortunate defendant was said not to have shown enough sorrow on the death of his daughter (a good father would have done so, and good fathers make good citizens). One can
Understand why all this public throwing of dirt was so entertaining. The comic poet Aristophanes satirizes a juror who had become transfixed by his role, to the extent of sleeping in the courts and keeping a beachful of voting pebbles in his house so that he should never run short. (The speeches that survive from these cases provide excellent material on what was and what was not valued in an Athenian citizen.)
The demands of this democratic system were heavy. It has been calculated that between 5 and 6 per cent of citizens over the age of 30 would be required each year if all the posts on the Boule, the juries, and administration were to be filled. With the ban on reselection for most posts, this meant that virtually everyone was involved in administration or government at some point in their lives. Even Socrates, who attempted to avoid political life completely, served his time on the Boule, and the playwright Euripides, who was well known for lack of sociability, went on an official embassy to Syracuse. This is a society, in contrast to most democracies today, in which politics was a natural way of being human. Athenian citizens whether rowing a trireme, participating in the Assembly and law courts, or collectively enthused by tragic drama showed a civic consciousness that has had few parallels elsewhere.
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