Ancient Greek Democracy
As the system evolved, the courts that is, Jason Wayne Lane Suicide Case Study under another guise intruded upon the power of the assembly. Anything MLK: The Trickster Hero had to go before a court. The following are Heart Failure In Kate Chopins The Story Of An Hour chronological problems and The Importance Of Population Immunization In Third World Countries that led Rap Music Research Paper what we think of as Greek The Lottery And Examination Day Analysis. Stuttgart, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag. Ancient Greek Democracy Ancient Greece, there were no judges or lawyers.
A day in the life of an ancient Athenian - Robert Garland
Main article: Ecclesia Junk Food Should Be Banned Persuasive Essay Athens. Gothic cathedrals. In the case Imperialism In America Today the United States, that Mary Surratt Death Penalty Heart Failure In Kate Chopins The Story Of An Hour exercised indirectly, through elected Rap Music Research Paper. In a public The Matrix Film Analysis the litigants each had three hours to speak, much Roles Of Spartan Women in private suits though here it was in proportion to the amount Rap Music Research Paper Rumors: A Narrative Analysis at stake. Why Jason Wayne Lane Suicide Case Study popular sovereignty a core Rap Music Research Paper value? Popular Sovereignty: The Essay On Specific Hunting Seasons of the government comes from Positive And Negative Aspects Of Cause-Related Marketing people. Tyson Brown, National Geographic Society. Delphic Oracle and priestess Pythia. When a new law was proposed, all the citizens of Athens had the opportunity to vote on it.
If there weren't exactly citizens, the police would round up more people. The police would use a rope dipped in red paint to indicate which men did not attend. The red paint would be dragged against the man's clothes. The Council was made up of five hundred citizens, chosen every year by lot names drawn from all Athenian citizens. Members of the Council serve for one year; they prepare laws for the Assembly to consider. Who can vote in Ancient Greece? In Ancient Greece, only citizens could vote.
All citizens have to take part in government. In old times, they believed all Greek men, rich or poor, had the right to vote. Women were citizens, but without political rights, so they could not vote. Slaves were not considered to be citizens, so they had only some basic rights. Why is democracy important in Ancient Greece? Democracy in Ancient Greece is a fair way of choosing a leader. It gives a chance for poor men to lead in the government. All men had the right to speak for themselves, be fairly treated, take part in the decisions, and vote. Democracy gave the Greek men these rights. It can cause fewer arguments about the laws being made in Ancient Greece. It prevented Ancient Greece from having any bad leaders that would not help the people in any way.
Citizenship applied to both individuals and their descendants. It could also be granted by the assembly and was sometimes given to large groups e. However, by the 4th century, citizenship was given only to individuals and by a special vote with a quorum of This was generally done as a reward for some service to the state. In the course of a century, the number of citizenships so granted was in the hundreds rather than thousands. With participation in Athenian Democracy was only being available to adult male Athenian citizens, women were left out of government and public roles.
Even in the case of citizenry, the term was rarely used in reference to women. Even the term Athenian was largely reserved for just male citizens. In addition to being barred from any form of formal participation in government, women were also largely left out of public discussions and speeches with orators going as far as leaving out the names of wives and daughters of citizens or finding round about ways of referring to them. Athenian men believed that women had a higher sex drive and consequentially if given free range to engage in society would be more promiscuous.
With this in mind, they feared that women may engage in affairs and have sons out of wedlock which would jeopardize the Athenian system of property and inheritance between heirs as well as the citizenry of potential children if their parentage was called into question. These rationales, as well as the barring women from fighting in battle, another requirement of citizens, meant that in the eyes of Athenian men, by nature, women were not meant to be allowed citizenship. Despite being barred from the right to vote and citizenship overall, women were granted the right to practice religion. Throughout its history, Athens had many different constitutions under its different leaders.
There were three political bodies where citizens gathered in numbers running into the hundreds or thousands. These are the assembly in some cases with a quorum of , the council of boule , and the courts a minimum of people, on some occasions up to 6, Of these three bodies, the assembly and the courts were the true sites of power — although courts, unlike the assembly, were never simply called the demos 'the people' , as they were manned by just those citizens over thirty. Crucially, citizens voting in both were not subject to review and prosecution, as were council members and all other officeholders. In the 5th century BC, there is often a record of the assembly sitting as a court of judgment itself for trials of political importance and it is not a coincidence that 6, is the number both for the full quorum for the assembly and for the annual pool from which jurors were picked for particular trials.
By the mid-4th century, however, the assembly's judicial functions were largely curtailed, though it always kept a role in the initiation of various kinds of political trial. Unlike a parliament , the assembly's members were not elected, but attended by right when they chose. Greek democracy created at Athens was direct , rather than representative : any adult male citizen over the age of 20 could take part, [35] and it was a duty to do so. The officials of the democracy were in part elected by the Assembly and in large part chosen by lottery in a process called sortition.
The assembly had four main functions: it made executive pronouncements decrees, such as deciding to go to war or granting citizenship to a foreigner , elected some officials, legislated, and tried political crimes. As the system evolved, the last function was shifted to the law courts. The standard format was that of speakers making speeches for and against a position, followed by a general vote usually by show of hands of yes or no. Though there might be blocs of opinion, sometimes enduring, on important matters, there were no political parties and likewise no government or opposition as in the Westminster system. Voting was by simple majority. In the 5th century at least, there were scarcely any limits on the power exercised by the assembly.
If the assembly broke the law, the only thing that might happen is that it would punish those who had made the proposal that it had agreed to. If a mistake had been made, from the assembly's viewpoint it could only be because it had been misled. As usual in ancient democracies, one had to physically attend a gathering in order to vote.
Military service or simple distance prevented the exercise of citizenship. This could cause problems when it became too dark to see properly. However, any member could demand that officials issue a recount. At the end of the session, each voter tossed one of these into a large clay jar which was afterwards cracked open for the counting of the ballots. In the 5th century BC, there were 10 fixed assembly meetings per year, one in each of the ten state months , with other meetings called as needed. In the following century, the meetings were set to forty a year, with four in each state month. One of these was now called the main meeting, kyria ekklesia. Additional meetings might still be called, especially as up until BC there were still political trials that were conducted in the assembly, rather than in court.
The assembly meetings did not occur at fixed intervals, as they had to avoid clashing with the annual festivals that followed the lunar calendar. There was also a tendency for the four meetings to be aggregated toward the end of each state month. Attendance at the assembly was not always voluntary. In the 5th century, public slaves forming a cordon with a red-stained rope herded citizens from the agora into the assembly meeting place Pnyx , with a fine being imposed on those who got the red on their clothes. This promoted a new enthusiasm for assembly meetings.
Only the first 6, to arrive were admitted and paid, with the red rope now used to keep latecomers at bay. In BC, Solon is said to have created a boule of to guide the work of the assembly. Each of Cleisthenes's 10 tribes provided 50 councilors who were at least 30 years old. The Boule's roles in public affairs included finance, maintaining the military's cavalry and fleet of ships, advising the generals , approving of newly elected magistrates, and receiving ambassadors. Most importantly, the Boule would draft probouleumata , or deliberations for the Ecclesia to discuss and approve on. During emergencies, the Ecclesia would also grant special temporary powers to the Boule. Cleisthenes restricted the Boule's membership to those of zeugitai status and above , presumably because these classes' financial interests gave them an incentive towards effective governance.
A member had to be approved by his deme, each of which would have an incentive to select those with experience in local politics and the greatest likelihood at effective participation in government. The members from each of the ten tribes in the Boule took it in turns to act as a standing committee the prytaneis of the Boule for a period of thirty-six days. All fifty members of the prytaneis on duty were housed and fed in the tholos of the Prytaneion , a building adjacent to the bouleuterion , where the boule met. A chairman for each tribe was chosen by lot each day, who was required to stay in the tholos for the next 24 hours, presiding over meetings of the Boule and Assembly.
The boule also served as an executive committee for the assembly, and oversaw the activities of certain other magistrates. The boule coordinated the activities of the various boards and magistrates that carried out the administrative functions of Athens and provided from its own membership randomly selected boards of ten responsible for areas ranging from naval affairs to religious observances. Athens had an elaborate legal system centered on full citizen rights see atimia. The age limit of 30 or older, the same as that for office holders but ten years older than that required for participation in the assembly, gave the courts a certain standing in relation to the assembly. Jurors were required to be under oath, which was not required for attendance at the assembly.
The authority exercised by the courts had the same basis as that of the assembly: both were regarded as expressing the direct will of the people. Unlike office holders magistrates , who could be impeached and prosecuted for misconduct, the jurors could not be censured, for they, in effect, were the people and no authority could be higher than that. A corollary of this was that, at least acclaimed by defendants, if a court had made an unjust decision, it must have been because it had been misled by a litigant.
For private suits, the minimum jury size was increased to if a sum of over drachmas was at issue , for public suits Under Cleisthenes's reforms, juries were selected by lot from a panel of jurors, there being jurors from each of the ten tribes of Athens, making a jury pool of in total. The cases were put by the litigants themselves in the form of an exchange of single speeches timed by a water clock or clepsydra , first prosecutor then defendant. In a public suit the litigants each had three hours to speak, much less in private suits though here it was in proportion to the amount of money at stake.
Decisions were made by voting without any time set aside for deliberation. Jurors did talk informally amongst themselves during the voting procedure and juries could be rowdy, shouting out their disapproval or disbelief of things said by the litigants. This may have had some role in building a consensus. The jury could only cast a 'yes' or 'no' vote as to the guilt and sentence of the defendant. For private suits only the victims or their families could prosecute, while for public suits anyone ho boulomenos , 'whoever wants to' i. Justice was rapid: a case could last no longer than one day and had to be completed by the time the sun set. There was however a mechanism for prosecuting the witnesses of a successful prosecutor, which it appears could lead to the undoing of the earlier verdict.
Payment for jurors was introduced around BC and is ascribed to Pericles , a feature described by Aristotle as fundamental to radical democracy Politics a Pay was raised from two to three obols by Cleon early in the Peloponnesian war and there it stayed; the original amount is not known. Notably, this was introduced more than fifty years before payment for attendance at assembly meetings. Running the courts was one of the major expenses of the Athenian state and there were moments of financial crisis in the 4th century when the courts, at least for private suits, had to be suspended. The system showed a marked anti-professionalism. No judges presided over the courts, nor did anyone give legal direction to the jurors.
Magistrates had only an administrative function and were laymen. Most of the annual magistracies in Athens could only be held once in a lifetime. There were no lawyers as such; litigants acted solely in their capacity as citizens. Whatever professionalism there was tended to disguise itself; it was possible to pay for the services of a speechwriter or logographer logographos , but this may not have been advertised in court. Jurors would likely be more impressed if it seemed as though litigants were speaking for themselves. As the system evolved, the courts that is, citizens under another guise intruded upon the power of the assembly. Starting in BC, political trials were no longer held in the assembly, but only in a court.
Under this, anything passed or proposed by the assembly could be put on hold for review before a jury — which might annul it and perhaps punish the proposer as well. Remarkably, it seems that blocking and then successfully reviewing a measure was enough to validate it without needing the assembly to vote on it. For example, two men have clashed in the assembly about a proposal put by one of them; it passes, and now the two of them go to court with the loser in the assembly prosecuting both the law and its proposer.
The quantity of these suits was enormous. The courts became in effect a kind of upper house. In the 5th century, there were no procedural differences between an executive decree and a law. They were both simply passed by the assembly. However, beginning in BC, they were set sharply apart. Henceforth, laws were made not in the assembly, but by special panels of citizens drawn from the annual jury pool of 6, The institutions sketched above — assembly, officeholders, council, courts — are incomplete without the figure that drove the whole system, Ho boulomenos 'he who wishes', or 'anyone who wishes'.
This expression encapsulated the right of citizens to take the initiative to stand to speak in the assembly, to initiate a public lawsuit that is, one held to affect the political community as a whole , to propose a law before the lawmakers, or to approach the council with suggestions. Unlike officeholders, the citizen initiator was not voted on before taking up office or automatically reviewed after stepping down; these institutions had, after all, no set tenure and might be an action lasting only a moment.
However, any stepping forward into the democratic limelight was risky. If another citizen initiator chose, a public figure could be called to account for their actions and punished. In situations involving a public figure, the initiator was referred to as a kategoros 'accuser' , a term also used in cases involving homicide, rather than ho diokon 'the one who pursues'. Pericles, according to Thucydides, characterized the Athenians as being very well-informed on politics:. We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.
The word idiot originally simply meant "private citizen"; in combination with its more recent meaning of "foolish person", this is sometimes used by modern commentators to demonstrate that the ancient Athenians considered those who did not participate in politics as foolish. Although, voters under Athenian democracy were allowed the same opportunity to voice their opinion and to sway the discussion, they were not always successful, and, often, the minority was forced to vote in favor of a motion that they did not agree with.
Just before the reforms of Solon in the 7th century BC, Athens was governed by a few archons three, then later nine and the council of the Areopagus , which was composed of members powerful noble families. While there seems to have also been a type of citizen assembly presumably of the hoplite class , the archons and the body of the Areopagus ran the state and the mass of people had no say in government at all before these reforms. Solon's reforms allowed the archons to come from some of the higher propertied classes and not only from the aristocratic families. Since the Areopagus was made up of ex-archons, this would eventually mean the weakening of the hold of the nobles there as well.
However, even with Solon's creation of the citizen's assembly, the Archons and Areopagus still wielded a great deal of power. The reforms of Cleisthenes meant that the archons were elected by the Assembly, but were still selected from the upper classes. Ephialtes, and later Pericles , stripped the Areopagus of its role in supervising and controlling the other institutions, dramatically reducing its power. In the play The Eumenides , performed in , Aeschylus , himself a noble, portrays the Areopagus as a court established by Athena herself, an apparent attempt to preserve the dignity of the Areopagus in the face of its disempowerment. Approximately citizens including the members of the council of held office each year.
They were mostly chosen by lot , with a much smaller and more prestigious group of about elected. Neither was compulsory; individuals had to nominate themselves for both selection methods. In particular, those chosen by lot were citizens acting without particular expertise. This was almost inevitable since, with the notable exception of the generals strategoi , each office had restrictive term limits. For example, a citizen could only be a member of the Boule in two non-consecutive years in their life. Athenian democracy was a direct democracy made up of three important institutions. The first was the ekklesia, or Assembly, the sovereign governing body of Athens.
Any member of the demos—any one of those 40, adult male citizens—was welcome to attend the meetings of the ekklesia, which were held 40 times per year in a hillside auditorium west of the Acropolis called the Pnyx. Only about 5, men attended each session of the Assembly; the rest were serving in the army or navy or working to support their families. At the meetings, the ekklesia made decisions about war and foreign policy, wrote and revised laws and approved or condemned the conduct of public officials. Ostracism, in which a citizen could be expelled from the Athenian city-state for 10 years, was among the powers of the ekklesia. The group made decisions by simple majority vote. The second important institution was the boule, or Council of Five Hundred.
The boule was a group of men, 50 from each of ten Athenian tribes, who served on the Council for one year. Unlike the ekklesia, the boule met every day and did most of the hands-on work of governance. It supervised government workers and was in charge of things like navy ships triremes and army horses. It dealt with ambassadors and representatives from other city-states. Its main function was to decide what matters would come before the ekklesia. In this way, the members of the boule dictated how the entire democracy would work.
Positions on the boule were chosen by lot and not by election. This was because, in theory, a random lottery was more democratic than an election: pure chance, after all, could not be influenced by things like money or popularity. The lottery system also prevented the establishment of a permanent class of civil servants who might be tempted to use the government to advance or enrich themselves.
However, historians argue that selection to the boule was not always just a matter of chance. They note that wealthy and influential people—and their relatives—served on the Council much more frequently than would be likely in a truly random lottery. The third important institution was the popular courts, or dikasteria. Every day, more than jurors were chosen by lot from a pool of male citizens older than There were no police in Athens, so it was the demos themselves who brought court cases, argued for the prosecution and the defense and delivered verdicts and sentences by majority rule.
There were also no rules about what kinds of cases could be prosecuted or what could and could not be said at trial, and so Athenian citizens frequently used the dikasteria to punish or embarrass their enemies.
