Professor Donald
Kagan: We were examining
Sparta, the most important,
I think, of the early
poleis,
certainly once you get into the
seventh and sixth centuries.
And I was describing the formal
constitution of the Spartans,
having mentioned the kings and
the gerousia,
the council of elders
consisting of twenty-eight
elected men over sixty and the
two kings to create a body of
thirty.
Then there is the Spartan
Assembly which consists of all
the adult male Spartan citizens,
and as in most states,
it really originated from the
idea of having the fighting men
participate in decisions and
they're the kinds of decisions
that undoubtedly were the first
decisions the assemblies made.
And in the case of Sparta,
I would guess almost the only
decisions they made were
questions of whether to go to
war,
whether to make peace,
whether to make alliances and
so forth.
Now, it's worth mentioning
that that assembly--you want to
distinguish that assembly from
what I'll describe shortly about
the Athenian Assembly.
In this assembly,
it is true that all adult male
Spartans were participants,
and let me also say that they
came to the meeting dressed in
their military uniform,
apparently including their
shields, because when a question
was put to the Spartans,
the way they responded was by
shouting and banging on their
shields.
Whereupon, the presiding
official would try to determine
which side had the loudest
noise.
It's like a voice vote in one
of our own meetings,
only a little bit more
colorful.
And only, of course,
if the presiding official
decided that he couldn't tell
which side had the most noise,
would they resort to a
separation like the British
Parliament, those in favor over
on that side,
those opposed on the other
side, and he would count and out
would come the result.
It looks as though the
debates in the assembly were
probably infrequent,
because as best we can figure
it out,
we would guess that most issues
that came before the
assembly--let me back up and say
probably not very many issues
came before the assembly,
but those that did,
if there was an agreement on
the part of the gerousia
and the kings,
in other words,
the upper groups in society,
if they agreed there would be
no need to go,
there might be some legal need
to go to the assembly,
but there would be no debate
and the matter would simply go
forward.
However, some scholars go far
too far in suggesting that there
never was a debate in the
assembly.
There are debates reported to
us in Thucydides,
which make it perfectly clear
that they did,
but it is worth pointing out
that so far as our information
goes, the only people who spoke
at those assemblies were the
kings,
the gerousia,
or a group of people I haven't
mentioned to you yet,
the ephors,
the five ephors.
I'll describe their situation
for you, but for the moment they
are annually elected officials
of the state.
In short, the average Spartan
did not ever speak in the
assembly, it appears.
So it's not a democratic
assembly, even though every
single citizen is there,
if he wants to be.
So, that's part of the mixed
and rather confusing aspect of
the assembly.
Let me turn now to the
ephors.
These, according to Spartan
tradition, were invented
somewhat late in the development
of the Spartan constitution.
The word ephor comes
from the word which means to
oversee, to oversee what's going
on.
They were, in a certain sense,
the overseers.
One of their duties was to keep
watch on the kings and to see
that the kings didn't do
anything improper,
illegal, irreligious,
or anything of that kind,
and some scholars have focused
on that and suggested that,
at least originally,
that was what their main
function was:
to protect the Spartans from
excessive power,
excessive behavior by the
kings, and that their sort of
watching the king's thing was
always their chief function.
That, I think, is not right.
I think by the time the
Spartans appear to us in
history, let us say late in the
sixth century and fifth century,
the ephors don't do
that.
I mean, they still have the
technical constitutional
requirement to do that,
but that's not what they're up
too.
When we see them they are
usually engaged in dealing with
foreign policy.
So, if a neighboring state
wanted to communicate something
to the Spartans,
either it might be an offer of
an alliance or it might be an
order to do something or else
war would follow,
or a negotiation for peace,
any of those things,
first they would come to the
ephors,
of which there were five and
the ephors would then
decide what should be done.
I would say,
in most cases,
they would, unless it was very,
very serious,
they would be able to give some
sort of answer to it,
but when it involved something
fundamental like war and peace
or alliances,
then they would have to go to
the assembly to get their
approval.
But my guess is that it would
have been wildly reckless and
therefore never done for the
ephors not to go to the
gerousia first,
because the gerousia
was, by far, the most
significant council in the
state,
most able to have the necessary
prestige and yet to be small
enough truly to discuss what
needed to be done.
And since the gerousia
included the kings,
it involved the most important
people in the state.
So, if the ephors wanted
to do something,
it would be damn foolish not to
clear it with the
gerousia first;
although if they wished to be
reckless, they could do
otherwise.
Now, another thing about
the ephors is that
they're very different.
The people who are elected to
the gerousia are old men
who have proven themselves,
they are truly elected by a
process in which their
individual qualities are
relevant,
and so they have tremendous
prestige in the Spartan state.
This is not true necessarily
and typically of the
ephors.
Aristotle tells us that they in
fact were just any Joe Spartan,
that they were ordinary people,
not distinguished in any way.
Although we don't have a clear
picture of the way in which they
were chosen,
it is clear that they were--it
looked it was some kind of a
combination of election and
sortition;
there's a strong element of
chance involved in selecting who
was going to be an ephor.
So, you must think of them,
not as distinguished people who
have some clout in their own
person,
but ordinary people who only
achieve what clout they're going
to have by virtue of being
chosen as ephors.
They're only there for a year.
Now, the kings are there
for life and the gerousia
is there for life,
and I suppose the assembly is
there for life,
but the ephors are only
going to be ephors for a
year and only once in their
life.
These are not politically
powerful people.
I think the idea was to sort of
have a representation of the
ordinary Spartan to carry on the
functions that I have talked
about.
On the other hand,
they were given the
responsibility of seeing that
the kings were in line and they
had various techniques or
various policies and processes
which had them make judgments as
to whether the kings were doing
anything wrong,
and if they did,
they could make that point.
They could go to Delphi and ask
the god, if they were right in
thinking something was wrong,
and if they came back the kings
would be put on trial.
The ephors would be the
accusers, the trial would be
held in the gerousia,
and don't imagine that that
didn't matter.
Kings were brought to trial in
this way frequently in the
history of Sparta and very often
they were convicted,
and often exiled,
and in other ways punished.
So, there's nothing just
theoretical about this capacity
to control them and something
rather important about this
accidental element in who
becomes an ephor.
All right,
those are the elements of the
Spartan constitution and I think
it's self evident that it
deserves a title of a mixed
constitution.
At the same time,
you don't want to lose sight of
something even more basic than
that.
Remember that all the
Spartiates that there are,
whether they are ordinary
citizens,
all the way up through king,
are a small minority of all the
people who are under the control
of the Spartans.
People try to guess from the
evidence that we have what
percentage of the entire
population of the Peloponnesus
or of their own part of the
Peloponnesus the Spartans
were--well,
it looks as though the number
of Helots may have been
something like seven Helots to
every Spartan.
Then you have to add to that
the number of perioikoi
who were also not Spartiates.
So, whatever the mixed
character of the constitution
was, when you look at the whole
of Laconia and its possessions,
it is very much an oligarchy.
The Spartans normally will like
to see other states
oligarchically governed.
They will not like to see
either extreme.
They won't like democracies and
they won't like any form of
autocracy which in Greece
typically took the form of
tyranny.
So, the Spartans gain a
reputation of being--because
they often fight against
tyrants--they gain a reputation
of being hostile to tyranny,
which brings our attention to
the subject of foreign policy,
very important for Sparta and
for the Greek world,
because as I think I mentioned
before, the Spartans became the
first state to be in command,
or in control,
or to be the leaders of a
coalition of states.
Not for a specific purpose
only, but a permanent coalition
of states which the ancient
Greeks referred to as the
Spartans and their allies,
which modern scholars have come
to call the Peloponnesian
League, and I guess I will use
that term and you'll see it all
over the place.
It's an imprecise term
because some of the members of
the--let me say a better term
for it would be the Spartan
alliance,
which is what pretty much the
Greeks called it,
because not everybody in the
Peloponnese was a member of the
Peloponnesian League and not
every member of the league was
in the Peloponnesus,
but still we all will know what
we're talking about when we
speak of the Peloponnesian
League.
I shall try to remember to
speak of the Spartan alliance
most of the time.
Well, how did it come to
exist?
Again, as in most things in
Greek history,
the beginnings are shrouded in
legend and are not absolutely
clear,
but perhaps the place to start
is to say maybe around 570 B.C.
The Spartans who had been
successful apparently in turning
around, to some considerable
degree their defeat back in the
seventh century in fight with
Argos and were expanding their
influence and power in the
Peloponnesus,
suffered a defeat in the region
of Arcadia to the north of
Laconia--that by the way is
mountainous country and poor
typically,
relatively speaking and it
provided some of the toughest
warriors in the Greek world.
So, it's no miracle that the
Spartans had a hard time up
there.
It looks as though at that
point, that somebody in Sparta
came up with a bright idea which
changed the nature of the
Spartan situation,
and also introduced something
new into the Greek world at the
same time.
They defeated the town of
Tegea, which is located just to
the north of Laconia.
It's a very important state for
the Spartans,
not just because it's the
neighbor right to the north of
them,
but because remember what I
told you, if you want to get to
Mycenae from Sparta you can't go
across those mountains,
you got to go up north and then
go left, go west into Mycenae.
Tegea is right there where the
road turns west.
So, its strategic importance is
very great.
The Spartans got into this war
with Tegea and they gained
control of Tegea where they
claimed to have discovered the
bones of the great Homeric hero,
Orestes and taken it away from
Tegea, the bones I mean,
and buried them at Sparta.
Also, there was a legend
that maybe they propagated that
showed up in some poetry we
have,
that Agamemnon had moved from
his home base in Mycenae to
Sparta, an attempt,
in other words,
to connect these Dorian
Spartans with the legends of the
great men of the Achaean world
described by Homer.
Finally, we are told late in
the sixth century,
King Cleomenes who was one of
the aggressive Spartan rulers
who expanded the power of
Sparta,
said on one occasion,
"I am no Dorian,
I am an Achaean."
What's this all about?
Well, it looks like as the
Spartans begin to extend this
league that I will be telling
you about in a minute,
they want to reduce the amount
of resistance that they're going
to get into.
Dorian's versus Achaeans still
seems to have some meaning to
the Greeks.
Remember the business about
what happened in Sicyon when the
tyrants of Sicyon made this
sharp distinction in favor of
Achaeans against Dorians.
It suggests that that division
among the Greek peoples hadn't
died down yet and I think that's
what's going on here.
Spartans are trying to claim
union with the Achaeans not
dominance over them.
Anyway, nonetheless,
the Spartans start taking on
other Greek states trying to
establish their domination and
are very successful.
They defeated the powerful and
important state of Argos.
And in the process they took
away a piece of land that is
between the area of Argos and
Sparta,
the name of it is Cynuria and
they took it away,
next to their own state.
That's interesting,
because the Argives never
forgave that and never gave up
on the idea of getting it back.
You find the Argives and the
Spartans fighting each other at
least once a century and what
they're fighting about is
gaining control of Cynuria.
Its common people referred to
Cynuria as the Alsace-Lorraine
of the Peloponnesus.
Everybody who doesn't have it
and wants it back between these
two states.
Finally, the Spartans also take
the island just off the
southeastern edge of the
Peloponnesus called Cythera,
which gives them a good
strategic base there as well,
so they are expanding.
Now, what happens--I'll go
back to Tegea for a moment
because that's the first case we
hear and it's the model.
When they defeat the Tegeans,
instead of simply annexing
their territory,
subordinating the people,
or subjecting the people to
Spartan rule,
they do something different.
They offer the Tegeans an
alliance.
The character of the alliance,
certainly in the full fledged
history of the Spartan
alliance--we can't be sure
whether the words I'm going to
speak to you now were all there
in the original oath that the
Spartans made their allies
swear,
but it was there by the end of
the fifth century anyway.
I think something like it,
either was in the oath or was
understood, and that is:
the state that was defeated
said,
agreed to accept the leadership
of Sparta, and the word that's
involved here is
hegemonia and the leader
is called a hegemon and
that is something different from
being your master here,
your despotes.
It's a little bit less,
or at least you want it to seem
that way and to have the same
friends and enemies as the
Spartans had,
and to follow them wherever the
Spartans should lead.
A short way of saying it
was that they turned their
foreign policy over to the
Spartans and accepted their
leadership in war.
What do they get in exchange?
One, the Spartans didn't take
away their land,
destroy their houses,
make them slaves or anything
like that.
Besides that,
they also provided them,
promised them and provided them
protection against attack from
somebody else.
When the Peloponnesian League
is in place, one of its
consequences for most of the
time,
is the end of warfare between
the states inside the
Peloponnesus,
at least that was the
theoretical situation.
As we shall see,
it will be broken from time to
time, but still it's generally
true.
So now, what does this mean?
The Spartans have done
something that is similar to
what the Romans would do
centuries later and really an
enormous achievement if you can
do it.
When you conquer people,
one of the problems you have,
is every state you conquer is
potentially a problem.
You have to rule it,
and that's going to take more
soldiers and you will have to do
something with them.
You acquire responsibilities
that are greater than they used
to be, but the point is,
normally you don't gain any
fighting men.
Spartan way of doing it means
you gain more troops for your
army.
When the Spartans go to their
allies, and they want to go war,
they tell them send your
allotment of troops to the place
we tell you,
on the day we tell you.
That allotment could well be
two-thirds of their army.
They will go to where the
Spartans want to go and the
general of the army overall will
be a Spartan,
and they will be fighting for
Spartan purposes,
unless the Spartans have chosen
to fight for their allies'
purposes.
But the Spartans now have
increased their military
strength enormously by the
invention of this new thing,
the Spartan Alliance.
Now, the debate continues
to exist as to just what that
alliance was really like.
Were the Spartans free to do
anything that they liked in
foreign affairs or did they need
to have the approval of their
allies before going to war?
I'm talking now about a
constitutional question rather
than reality question.
Scholars bat it around both
ways;
my prejudices are that the
leagues' constitution,
whatever it may have been,
was less important than
reality.
That is to say,
not all states in the Spartan
Alliance were equal.
Some were large and numerous,
and strong militarily.
Some were also wealth,
and some were at some distance
from Sparta.
Others were small,
weak, poor, and close to
Sparta.
I would say,
and I think the evidence will
support this as a fact,
whatever the theory may have
been,
that the closer you were to
Sparta the smaller you were,
the weaker you were,
the more you did what the
Spartans told you.
How's that for a shock?
And vice versa.
The stronger,
the more distant,
the wealthier you were,
the more independent you were
of the Spartans.I would say
much of the time,
most of the time,
people did what the Spartans
wanted them to do.
But we have many occasions in
which states refused to do so
and even get in the way of the
Spartans.
Now, I think the Spartans very
often when they had to do
something called a meeting of
the Spartan Alliance,
consulted their allies,
but it's not necessary true
that they took a vote as to what
the allies thought;
sometimes they did.
I think sometimes they didn't;
it all depended on the
situation.
If you want your allies to come
and fight with you it's better
to have them to do so willingly
than under orders,
and so that will explain,
in my opinion,
some of the reasons for calling
it a Peloponnesian League
meeting,
not necessarily that they were
required to do so.
But I've given you a mixed and
rather vague picture,
and I think that's the real
picture.
I think you can't be very
sure, either because this
evidence doesn't allow us to be
sure how the league was supposed
to work and how it really did
work,
but I also think nobody could
tell in advance how it was going
to work, whatever the understood
constitution was.
After all, one of the most
important things that is
involved in membership in the
league,
is that when the Spartans say,
I want you to come and fight
with me for these purposes,
you come and you bring your
army to do it,
but we have a period in
Thucydides' account of the
Peloponnesian War in which
important states like Corinth
and Thebes,
among others, simply say "no."
And when the Spartans say,
why aren't you doing what
you're supposed to do,
they come up with a very nice
cock-and-bull story supported by
theoretically religious motives
why they can't do what they're
supposed to do and the Spartans
have to put up with it;
there's nothing they can do
about it.
So I think,
now that I've mentioned the
constitutional technicalities,
I think the real thing to ask
in each case is what are the
realities of the situation,
and by which I mean mainly,
questions of power that
determine what's going to
happen.
All right, but by the end of
the sixth century there is this
Spartan alliance and Sparta
alone,
among the Greek states,
is a hegemonal power and able
to use, by Greek standards,
a much vaster military force
than the Greeks have ever known,
so that when the Persian Wars
come upon them,
there will be no hesitation and
no doubt;
the Greek league that will
fight the Persians,
will be led by the Spartans.
So great was their respect in
which they were held that not
only did they command the
armies,
even though they had no navy
and no naval tradition,
they were even put in charge of
the fleet,
although they often had the
brains to use other people who
had more experience to do the
actual leading.
But Sparta is in this position
and I think that's important.
Well, let's step back a
moment and take a look at the
Spartan state as we've been
describing it and ask what is it
that motivates the Spartans as a
state,
first of all,
in its foreign policy?
Because, as we shall see,
there's this remarkable thing
that even though they are by far
the strongest military force
among the Greeks,
they are more than usual
reluctant to fight,
and they don't like to fight
wars if they can avoid them,
especially they don't like to
go any great distance to fight a
war away from home and they
don't like to fight for any long
period of time if they have to
be away from home.
The reasons for that are really
what I want to make you see.
At the core of it all,
according to Thucydides,
it was the fear of the Helots.
It's not just that the Helots
were so numerous compared to the
Spartans, but I want to remind
you again of their tremendous
dissatisfaction with their
situation,
their backs may have been
broken, but their spirits were
not.
They always were hoping to have
a rebellion in which they could
undue this extraordinarily heavy
burden that they carried,
and somehow in spite of the
hundreds of years in which this
has been going on,
they did not lose sight of
their nationality,
of the fact that they were
Mycenaeans and that they were a
people,
and that they had to throw off
Spartan control of them if they
could possible could.
Their feelings towards the
Spartans were as you might
expect.
There's a story of a rebellion
I think I mentioned this to you
earlier, early in the fourth
century in Sparta,
somebody is trying to stir up
the people against the Spartan
government and he mentions to
the people he's trying to enlist
in his side the Helots,
he says, who would gladly eat
the Spartans raw.
I think that's what you have to
have in your mind,
if you want to understand what
the Spartans think.
If we take our whole army,
leave town, go three days march
away, how do we know we'll find
anybody alive when we get back?
That's always on their minds
and Helot rebellions,
although they don't take place
every day,
take place very sparsely,
but they keep happening so that
the fear is never irrational.
To that is added the
permanent enmity of Argos,
which never gives up the idea
of returning to the great days
of Pheidon with Argos as the
dominant state in the
Peloponnesus and that means that
the Spartans have to be defeated
for that to happen and so the
Argives come back to the
Spartans time after time,
good stretches in between,
because the Spartans always
beat them and do great harm so
that it takes a long time for
them to come back.
But they're there,
they don't go away;
it's a problem.
So, the Spartans,
of course, have a need of a
collection of states that stand
between them and their potential
enemies of whom the Argives are
the most important.
So, you can look at the
Peloponnesian league in general
as the way in which the Spartans
dealt with the danger they felt
internally and externally.
Another element that the
Spartans always worry
about--remember why are the
Spartans so successful?
Numerically they aren't many,
enough to actually just defeat
anybody by numbers.
It is, because they are the
best.
Why are they the best?
It's because of this training
system, these values,
this way of life that is the
purely Spartan way.
So, there are always,
I would argue,
likely to be a majority at
least of Spartans who are
suspicious of and hostile to any
kind of change internally
certainly,
and externally,
because external things have
internal implications.
They're always worried about
corruption seeping into the
Spartan system.
Corruption normally has the
concept of money,
wealth behind it.
If money comes into the picture
and people start being bought by
it, they will cease to be
thinking the way good Spartans
should think,
only of the state,
but they will think of
themselves and their wealth and
so on.
Another thing that corrupts
is the search for power beyond
what is appropriate in the
Spartan system.
Remember that incredible
contradiction where everybody is
a similar, almost an equal,
but each one isn't vying for
honor, which is not available
universally to all,
and so that means if you are a
conservative Spartan,
and the two words are
practically the same,
you're going to be worrying
about that.
That leads to conservatism in
foreign policy.
War, if you win,
you are going to have booty;
loot of some kind will come
back into Sparta.
Moreover, some people will gain
reputations because of their
fighting in the battle will
bring them excessive honor,
will fill their heads with a
sense of their own greatness,
and again, threaten the
stability of the Spartan state.
So, all of that is going to
explain the paradox of the
greatest military power in the
Greek world,
reluctant to fight and their
power is not used to acquire
economic benefits.
What they focus on is
discipline and the state versus
freedom, individuality,
and even family.
There you have this strange
society, a closed society that
does not normally permit people
to come and visit Sparta,
and even those that it permits
to come to Sparta during one
period of the year,
they actually force all
foreigners out of town and do
whatever strange things they do.
Now, when we're talking about
the fully developed Spartan
state there are no exercises of
the arts, such as existed before
this system was created.
There are no luxuries legally
in Sparta.
There are few creature comforts.
Again, I suspect at some fairly
early time, there were
violations of these things,
as individuals who had the
power to do so,
might well try to enjoy these
things in spite of their being
barred.
But the main thing is,
if you had them you couldn't
really show them,
you couldn't flaunt it,
because that would be
disastrous.
Why?
Because in a way,
necessity becomes a
virtue.We human
beings--that's one of our
typical ways of dealing with
things.
That is, we need to do
something, we have to and so one
way we cope is to do it and say
it's the greatest thing in the
world to do,
and doing anything else is no
good.
That's what the Spartans did.
Their way of life was imposed
upon them by the decision to
maintain their command of the
Helots, after that it all makes
perfect sense.
Look what they had to give up,
to do it.
They said, of course,
we gave that up,
because that's what makes us
the great people we are and
that's the system that was the
Spartan way of life.
I remind you again that
even though this is very extreme
and other Greeks say that
they're not going to live that
way,
they admire it tremendously,
because it suits the ideology
of all polis that
subordinates individual family
concerns to those of the
community at large.
As I mentioned earlier,
the utopian philosophers of the
fourth century,
Plato being the most striking,
Aristotle to a lesser degree,
they admire this,
although they have their
wrinkles about how it's going to
be.
Nothing could be greater as a
contrast to this way of thinking
than the way that the Athenians
will develop when they go
through their growth as a
polis.
So let's take a look now at
Athens to see how they came
along.
Athens, I hope you'll
remember from your maps,
is located in the southeastern
portion of the Greek peninsula.
It sticks out there into the
Aegean Sea.
Its geography--it's about 1,000
square miles is Attica.
I think we talked about it
already.
The city is Athens;
the region in which they live
is Attica;
the people are Athenians and
that's an important point I
think I made too,
which is everybody who is a
citizen who lives in Attica is
an Athenian,
no matter if he lives sixty
five or seventy miles away from
the city.
He's still an Athenian.
One of the things they achieved
early was the unification of
that whole region and they made
it one polis,
although that certainly doesn't
mean that there are no
independent villages and towns
in the polis of Athens,
because they certainly are.
Now, Attica was not one of
the most desirable,
certainly agriculturally rich
areas in Greece.
It was relatively speaking
rather barren.
Now, there are of course great
exceptions;
the central valley so to speak,
of Attica has the richest soil
and in the ancient world it was
able to grow the very best
grain, including wheat.
But very much of the Athenian
soil is mountainous and pretty
close to barren,
so that you don't have a lot of
rich soil.
This is not one of the most
admirable places to come.
On the other hand,
it has certain advantages that
the Athenians used well to
achieve wealth and power and
greatness.
First of all,
it has one splendid harbor;
up in the northwestern part of
Attica is Piraeus.
It is the port of Athens.
Once Athens becomes a naval
state and it is both spacious,
it has three nice little
harbors,
and it is very easily defended,
because these harbors can be
closed off and attacks can be
prevented.
So, that is one strength.
Another,
and this is very rare,
among Greek states,
Attica contained silver mines
in the south of the peninsula,
and that gave the state,
because these mines were
ultimately owned by the state,
it gave the state a source of
income that was very,
very unusual among the Greek
city states,
and the availability of that
silver would turn out to be
crucial at various moments in
Athenian history.
One reason why the soil wasn't
so great for agriculture was
that a lot of it is red clay,
but that turns out to be
wonderful for making pottery and
of course Athenian pottery,
and I'm thinking especially
about painted pottery,
fine ware, stuff that is meant
for the upper classes,
stuff that artists will work on
that will be exported,
all of that is made of that
great red clay,
the basis for the pottery that
the Athenians did.
Another natural resource of
great value and great blessing
to those of us who can still see
the remains of the Athenian
experience is the marble that
comes from Mount Penteli.
The Greeks call it now Pendel,
and Pentelikon is what the
ancient Greeks called it.
In the northeastern portion of
the Attica Peninsula and it
produce--you can still go see it
wonderful,
beautiful fine grain,
white marble and that's the
stuff that the Parthenon and all
the other buildings,
temples, on the Acropolis and
around Attica was made of and
that enabled the Athenians to
build those temples as few
cities could,
because there it was sitting in
their territory,
not a source of the kind of
tremendous expense it would be
for other states that would have
to buy it and bring it in.
Now, on the other hand,
Athens was able as I told you--
let's start in the early days to
grow wheat and other grains,
but more to the point,
it was very good for olive
trees and for grapevines,
so as we will see when the
Athenians begin to exploit all
of their land,
not just the bottom land that
works for grain,
but also the less desirable
land and produced wine and olive
oil, that was a source of
agricultural wealth that would
play an important part in their
history.
Now, their own story about
their past was something like
this.
They, unlike the other
inhabitants of southern Greece,
according to their story,
never experienced a Dorian
invasion.
Now, the Dorians did come down
and sort of bang at the door of
Attica, but they were driven by
the Athenians and never made
their way into it.
So, the Athenians claimed that
they were, in a certain sense,
the purest of the pure Greeks
and they went to great lengths.
One of their stories claims
they were, as the Greek word
goes autochthonous,
that is, they were sprang from
their own soil.
In fact, they said they were in
Attica before the creation of
the moon.
Guess you don't have to believe
that, but on the other hand,
it's their picture;
we were always here,
the original indigenous people.
Their tradition,
and this one is surely right,
is that at an early time in
their history,
Attica became a refuge for
people escaping what they would
have regarded as the Dorian
invasion.
There's no doubt that people
from the Peloponnesus after the
fall of the Bronze Age
civilizations did a lot of
running away and some of them
ran to Attica and were greeted
and settled down there
permanently.
Some of the most important and
most aristocratic Athenians
traced their ancestry not to the
Athenians who were there before
the moon was created,
but to people who had come in
this flight sometime after the
end of the Bronze Age.
It is a tradition not of
producing conflict but of
producing harmony.
These exiles,
we are told,
were brought into the Athenian
people and lived among them as
Athenians, no split,
no division.
Similarly, there is nothing
like the helot class in Athens.
There are no serfs,
there is no suppressed
population waiting to get at
their rulers,
so that there's a kind of a
historical good fortune,
which says Athens is going to
be without internal strife.
I don't mean totally but to a
great degree compared to the
other Greek states.
Now, one important example of
what happens in Athens that
doesn't happen in other states
is this.
There's a tradition in Athens
of an event called
synoikismos;
it's on the site so you can
look it up, which means
unification.
It really, if you take the word
apart, it means the bringing of
households together.
There is no set of local
rebellions against the major
city, no need to go to war.
Now, there were obviously wars
back there in the early days of
the polis when the city
of Athens became the dominant
city,
but we know so little of them,
it's as though the memory has
been entirely forgotten and the
picture that is painted is one
of everybody sort of happily
living together,
no conflict.
Compare that to Sparta
where it's obvious Sparta gained
control of the Peloponnesus
through war and that many of the
people there were very unhappy
with them,
not to mention the Helots.
But in neighboring Boeotia,
the chief city of Thebes,
traditionally was at war trying
to subdue the other major cities
of Boeotia,
in order to make themselves the
boss and they never were fully
successful in this.
So, Boeotia is torn,
to some degree,
by this internal conflict,
which makes it harder for
Thebes to achieve the kind of
power in its own home territory
that the Athenians are able to
achieve.
Let's take a look at the
earliest society of Athens as
first we come to know it.
One thing about this is that
the story often comes to us
through people like Aristotle
who liked to make things neater
and put them nicely together,
rather than to leave little
bumps or anything like that.
The society we're talking
about, this earliest society,
is aristocratic and remember
it's important to notice the
difference between aristocratic
and oligarchic.
Aristocratic implies means
ruled by the best,
and best in that time means
simply best by birth.
It means best by birth and that
means if you're going to be in
the ruling group,
in a dominant,
an aristocrat--the only way to
get there is if your father was
an aristocrat.
Doesn't matter how rich you
are, doesn't matter what a
magnificent warrior you are,
all that matters is birth and
that is different from oligarchy
which gives rule to a few but
that usually means,
I would say just about every
case, that wealth plays a role
that you can be one of the few
in the ruling group if you're
rich enough.
I don't mean that they didn't
have aristocrats within an
oligarchy, I'm sure that they
did, it's that that was not the
critical element.
Now, also in the Athenian
aristocracy, you can imagine
that most aristocrats are rich
but some of them are not,
and that's the distinction that
matters and we will come back to
that point as we see Athens move
out of the aristocratic
condition and into one that is
more based on wealth,
than it is merely on birth.
Well, we are told that in
the earliest times,
Athens was divided up;
the people of Athens were
divided up into four tribes just
as were all the other Ionian
cities and the Athenians of
course were Ionians;
this is a point worth making,
because most Ionians lived on
the coast of Asia Minor or on
the Islands of the Aegean and
the Athenians were pretty
much--I'm exaggerating but
mostly the only Ionians on the
mainland.
They sort of were an
interesting middling group
between the Dorians of the
Peloponnesus and the Greeks of
other types elsewhere,
and the Athenians sort of stood
between the mainland where they
existed, where they were,
and the islands and across the
seas.
Each one of these four
traditional tribes contained,
according to this tradition,
three subdivisions that were
called phratres.
An easy way to translate
phratres is brotherhood.
Notice it's again about family
and birth.
You are in phratres;
you're in that phratres,
because so is your father and
you inherit it,
and these phratres were
very important.
I should have mentioned that
the tribes had important
religious functions that also
the army consisted of four
regimens, one for each tribe.
So, these tribes had great
reality for the Spartans.
You went not only to the
religious festivals of the
entire state,
but you went to those only for
your fellow tribesmen,
which gave you a sense of
belonging in that tribe,
and I think that's important.
The phratres were
smaller versions of the same
thing;
phratres had religious
rites of their own,
and in fact,
the phratres appears to
have been the unit that really
mattered in terms of the place
where you sort of established
your belonging.
I mean, if somebody came
along to an Athenian in the
seventh century and said,
you say you're an Athenian,
how do I know you're an
Athenian?
Well, after you got through
saying, well you can ask my
friends, my neighbors.
Yeah what do they know?
You say, well how would you do
it?
Well, I guess come down to a
meeting of my phratres,
they will have a record of my
being a member of that
phratres and that makes
me an Athenian.
So that's the importance,
in a way, one part of the
importance of the
phratres.
Now, the phratres,
because it was established by
birth and tradition,
was an aristocratic stronghold.
Everywhere you can imagine,
tribe, phratres,
and so on, some aristocratic
family or families would have
had a leading role by tradition.
The Greek religion did have
priests, but it didn't have a
separate priestly class and
during the aristocratic period,
and I would say probably
throughout its history,
Athenian religion had the
priesthoods,
the chief religious places in
the state were held by
aristocrats, which in a
primitive society in itself,
gives them tremendous prestige
and a lot of clout.
Probably,
although I'm not sure we have
hard evidence on this,
probably the phratres
fought side by side in the
tribal regiments as well;
of course they would always be
commanded by aristocratic
leaders.
Another way the Athenian people
were divided involved names of
classes of people and we'll come
back to that in another context,
but one class,
the highest class in the
aristocratic state were the
eupatrids,
it means the well-born,
the well-sired and it turns out
that in the early polis,
no surprise,
they dominated the best
farmland, they had the chief
jobs in religion,
they were the government,
because as early as we can tell
that there was a regime after
the legendary kings are gone,
the number one governmental
organization,
you might call it,
is the council of the
Areopagus;
gets its name from the place
where it meets.
If you look to the west side of
the Acropolis,
immediately there's a pretty
good size hill which is the
Areopagus, the hill of Ares,
the war god.
There the council of the
Areopagus met and did what it
had to do, and it's clear that
the members of the Areopagus in
its earliest stage were
noblemen.
We don't know enough to
know whether it was all noblemen
or just the leaders of the clans
or whatever, but that's where
decisions were made.
It's important though to
realize that in these early days
of the polis they
probably had very little to
decide and very little to do.
Most of the real life of the
state in the earliest days would
have been out in the countryside
where the overwhelming majority
of the people lived.
You must imagine that it is
something like,
nothing like precisely,
but something like the feudal
manners that we find in western
Europe after the fall of the
Roman Empire.
These noblemen would
typically have held a lot of
land and have been well to do,
have had all the powers I've
described, and were looked up to
and were listened to.
They would have led the
military units into battle when
that was necessary and we know
that one of the things that they
did was to serve as the source
of justice in the state.
If there was a quarrel between
a couple of guys,
they would bring it to a court.
You think of Hesiod,
his complaints where his
noblemen, his barons were
crooked, but that doesn't mean
they all were.
In any case,
that's where you went.
They settled any disputes that
you didn't settle by feud or by
some other primitive technique.
It was pretty clear that it was
right to have the noblemen do
it, not just because they're
aristocrats but because they
would know what the law was
since there was no writing
before the eighth century and it
was very rare after that,
there was nothing like a
written law code until the
seventh century.
Before that,
if you wanted to get justice
you went to a nobleman,
and if you wanted to go beyond
that,
you went to the Areopagus,
which is made of noblemen.
That's the picture in the
earliest polis as best we
can reconstruct it.
Now, Aristotle tells us
that beginning in the early
seventh century,
the date he gives us,
of course we shouldn't put too
much credence in it,
it's too precise,
but it's 683 B.C.
This is the date he gives us
and he tells us on that
occasion, we are introduced to a
new thing,
magistrates are chosen from the
aristocracy to do various jobs
in the city.
In Athens, the magistrates were
called archons.
It means, in the most technical
sense, rulers,
but it means really important
magistrates in the state.
One of these was called the War
archon,
polemarch,
presumably he led the army.
Next came the archon who
was actually the most important
archon,
the one who gave his name to
the year.
I think I mentioned the Greeks
did not have a system of dating,
which has a starting point,
and so you can say one,
two, three, four,
five.
Instead, like many ancient
peoples, they named the year
after the leading archon,
the leading magistrate of the
state;
Mesopotamian cities did the
same thing.
So that archon was
called the archon
eponymous, the one who gives his
name to the state.
So, if you wanted to know
when did a thing happen,
somebody would say it was in
the archonship of so and so,
and so and so.
Well, you wouldn't have that in
your head, you would have to go
someplace and look it up where
there was a list of
archons.
Anyway, he was the most
important.
A third archon was known
as the King archon,
the archon
basileus.
His responsibilities were
mainly religious,
but I should point out that all
the archons,
whatever else they did,
every one of them also did
justice, that is,
they had courts to which people
could come to get their quarrels
settled.
Sometime after that,
after these three major figures
that I have mentioned to you,
there was established a body of
men called thesmothetes,
you'll see this on the list of
words,
which were six men whose
functions were apparently
strictly judicial.
They presided over courts that
you could to for specified
purposes.
Every one of these nine
archons--they are
sometimes referred to as the
college of nine archons.
They had a secretary which
would have brought them up to
ten, but only nine were true
archons.
They were elected from the
aristocracy by the assembly of
all Athenian adult males.
That means mainly not
aristocrats;
they chose from among the
aristocrats for these
archons,
who served for one year and not
again.
That's a very important concept.
Nobody in Athens holds an
office at this time,
or as far as I can tell,
at any time--well,
back up, at this time,
for more than a year.
The only thing in town that has
continuity, that can develop
power and influence over a
period of time,
is the council of the Areopagus
and that's what aristocratic and
oligarchic regimes do.
They are very nervous about
individuals who acquire too much
power, popularity,
influence which will threaten
the character of the
aristocracy.
Aristocracies--this may
seem funny, but aristocracies
love equality;
equality among aristocrats,
and then tremendous inequality
between them and everybody else,
sort of the way Yalies feel
about things.
Yalies are very nervous about
anybody sticking his head up
above the crowd,
because the question is always
why not me?
You have high expectations of
yourself and so sometimes unless
you're invaded by later
religious ideas that the Greeks
didn't have,
you're not humble,
you're vying for honor.
I always seek Greeks in front
of me when I see Yalies.
An aristocratic republic is
what we have,
not a monarchy,
but a republic.
Dominated insofar as it's
dominated by anybody but
individual aristocrats,
by the areopagus,
and at some point in the
history of that institution it
consists now of men who have
been archon.
The year after their
archonship they automatically go
into the areopagus and
remain areopagites for
life.
Well, that gives the counsel of
the areopagus even more
power and influence,
because they consist now,
exclusively after awhile,
of people who have been chosen
for their individual qualities
to be the leading magistrates in
the state and now they will
oversee what's going on,
and you can bet they will be
looking very carefully over the
shoulders of the aristocratic
archons whenever they are
in power to see that they're not
screwing up,
but also to see that they are
not getting too mighty and too
powerful.
The weight and the power of
the Areopagus must have been
enormous in this system.
So the rich and the well-born,
because they are pretty much
the same in the early days of
the polis,
run the state in this official
constitutional way,
but I would also remind you
that on their estates out there
in the country they run the
thing just as well with the
farmers and everybody else out
there,
kowtowing to them and seeking
their favorite.
That's the kind of world that
we have at the start.
Then it comes to Athens as it
did to every other Greek state,
a little bit later it looks
like in Athens,
all of the change and turmoil
that we've seen in Argos and
Corinth and other place.
If we are right in talking
about something like a hoplite
revolution, it occurs in Athens
too.
Athens grows slowly,
and again late,
but it begins to engage in
commerce to a greater degree
than before,
and in ancient handcrafted
manufacturing,
and just as it does elsewhere,
it leads to new wealth and new
class distinctions,
which are now based not on
birth but on wealth.
We hear new terms,
not all of them new,
a couple of them new that come
into the picture.
We hear about Athenians divided
into different classes.
One of these you remember
was the Eupatridae,
the well-born,
that's the old story and they
were really only two,
those who were and those who
weren't.
But now we hear about people
called hippeis,
and it means horseman,
cavalryman.
Well, you can't own a horse and
ride a horse unless you have a
lot of money.
Horses are expensive.
So, there are rich people now
who are these cavalrymen.
Well, they've had cavalry in
the past, they've always been
aristocrats, but what we will
see in the future is that men
who are hippeis who are
not necessarily aristocrats.
At the bottom of the barrel
we hear about people called
thetes.
They've always been around,
they are the poor;
they don't own land.
They live at the mercy of
chance;
they work for other people.
They do anything they can to
stay alive.
But now comes the new thing,
people called zeugitai.
What does it mean?
It means yoke fellows.
Now, there are two senses of
the work yoke that seem to be
involved in this.
You could say that,
and this is one way that makes
sense, these were men who were
sufficiently well off that they
could own a team of oxen,
two oxen, who were yoked
together to pull the plow.
That would make them
respectably well off farmers.
We are talking about people of
the hoplite class.
Another theory is that they
were indeed named that,
because they were
hoplites,
because they lined up in the
phalanx and they were
yoked together,
so to speak,
by their shields touching one
another.
It hardly matters which of
the stories you prefer or
whether you choose both;
we're talking about the same
people and that tells us the
important fact,
that this new class of
independent family farmer has
arrived in Athens,
and as in other states is not
satisfied with his position in
the state, as his own importance
to the state becomes greater and
greater.
We will come back to this story
when we talk about Solon,
but think about these changes
as happening,
as the next change that I want
to tell you about occurs.
A change that didn't happen,
but if it had,
it would have changed the
entire course of events.
According to tradition in
the year 632,
an Athenian nobleman who had
become famous because of his
victory in an athletic contest
and who had married the daughter
of a very wealthy and powerful
tyrant in Megara,
right next door to Attica.
So, this guy was a young big
shot of extraordinary character
named, Cylon,
attempted a coup
d'état trying to
establish a tyranny in Athens,
just as his father-in-law had
established one in Megara.
His father-in-law's name was
Theagenes.
Well, as the story goes,
he tried his best to gain
control of the city.
What did you do in Athens in
the early days,
if you wanted to take control
of the city,
is you take an armed force up
onto the Acropolis,
seize the Acropolis,
make it your fortress,
and proclaim yourself boss and
see if you can make it stick.
Well, he couldn't,
he was resisted by enough of
his opponents that he was
defeated.
The leader of the resistance
was the family known as the
Alcmaeonidae.
We will hear a lot about them
in this course.
But they went up there,
locked up Cylon and his
supporters in the Acropolis,
in a temple.
You couldn't go into the temple
for the purpose of killing
somebody, that would be
sacrilegious and so they were at
a standstill.
Still if you're inside that
temple and trying to avoid being
killed, you still need food and
drink, and most important drink.
So, how could they manage it?
Well, they took a cord,
tied it to the temple,
held onto the cord,
and went down to the well and
got their water claiming that
they were just as sacrosanct as
they had been before,
and for a while it worked.
But the Alcmaeonidae said,
baloney.
They cut the cord and killed
the Cylonians.
That put an end to the
Cylonian conspiracy but it
brought something to
Alcmaeonidae as well,
a curse.
The Alcmaeonids were declared
accursed and driven from the
city.
Well, that's for the time
being, later on we will hear
they're back again and they're
very important.
But the curse continues to be
attached to the family,
and as we get to the last end
of the last third of the fifth
century and the Peloponnesian
War is about to break out,
the enemies of Pericles will
pull out the curse of the
Alcmaeonidae to use against him,
because his mother was of
Alcmaeonids family.
For the moment,
what we're talking about here I
think though,
is here's the first sign that
we see of trouble in paradise.
Nice, calm, happy
synoecisized Athens has
got trouble right here in River
City.
I mean in Athens.
Why?
I think we must imagine that
there are the kinds of
discontents that we have been
talking about which find the
leader in the form of a man who
is an outstanding figure for
some reason,
who is willing to try to
establish a tyranny,
and use armed force to try to
achieve their goals.
That it fails,
I think, is an indication that
the same forces haven't reached
the power in Athens that they
had reached in Megara,
Corinth, Sicyon,
and places like that,
but it's a warning about
troubles ahead and I'll turn to
those troubles in the next
hour.
 
