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Ancient Agora Of Athens

Ancient Agora of Athens

The Ancient Agora of Athens is the most well-known agora, located in Athens, Greece. The agora in Athens had private housing, until it was reorganized by Pisistratus in the 6th century BCE. Although he may have lived on the agora himself, he removed the other houses, closed wells, and made it the centre of Athenian government. He also built a drainage system, fountains, and a temple to the Olympian gods. Cimon later improved the agora by constructing new buildings and planting trees. In the 5th century BC there were temples constructed to Hephaestos, Zeus, and Apollo. The Areopagus and the assembly of all citizens met elsewhere in Athens, but some public meetings, such as those to discuss ostracism, were held in the agora. Beginning in the period of the radical democracy (after 509 BCE), the Boule, or city council, the Prytaneis, or presidents of the council, and the Archons, or magistrates, all met in the agora. The law courts were located there, and any citizen who happened to be in the agora when a case was being heard, could be forced to serve as a juror; the Scythian archers, a kind of mercenary police force, often wandered the agora specifically looking for jurors. The agora in Athens again became a residential area during Roman and Byzantine times. Byzantine

External links and references

- [http://www.culture.gr/2/21/211/21101a/e211aa03.html Hellenic Ministry of Culture: The Ancient Agora of Athens] - official site with a schedule of its opening hours, tickets and contact information.
- [http://www.agathe.gr Agora Excavations] - American School of Classical Studies Agora excavation project.
- [http://plato-dialogues.org/tools/agora.htm Map of the Agora of Athens in Socrates and Plato's time] Category:Ancient Greek structures Category:History of Athens Category:Buildings and structures in Athens

Athens

Athens (Greek: Αθήνα, Athína; IPA ) is the capital of Greece, and of the Attica prefecture of Greece. Modern Athens is a large and cosmopolitan city; Ancient Athens was a powerful city-state and renowned center of learning. It was named after its patron goddess from ancient Greek mythology, Athena. Athens is located at (38.00°, 23.72°). The metropolitan area of Athens is home to some 3.5 million people. Currently the city (metropolitan area) is growing eastwards across Attica (Greater Athens).

Name

In ancient Greek, the name of Athens was -Athēnai, plural of -Athēnē, the Greek name of the goddess Athena. The city's name was used in the plural like those of -Thēbai (Thebes) and -Mykēnai (Mycenae) because it consisted of several parts. In the 19th century, this name was formally re-adopted as the city's name. Since the official abandonment of Katharevousa Greek in the 1970s, however, the popular form Athína has become the city's official name. See also a list of alternative names for Athens.

History

Main article: History of Athens History of Athens History of Athens Athens was the leading city in Greece during the greatest period of Greek civilization during the 1st millennium BC. During the "Golden Age" of Greece (roughly 500 BC to 300 BC) it was the Western world's leading cultural, commercial and intellectual center, and indeed it is in the ideas and practices of ancient Athens that what we now call "Western civilization" has its origins. After its days of greatness, Athens continued to be a prosperous city and a centre of learning until the late Roman period. Athens had a estimated peak population of 310,000 in the year 430 BC. The schools of philosophy were closed in AD 529 by the Christian Byzantine Empire, which disapproved of the schools' pagan thinking. During the Byzantine era, Athens gradually lost a great deal of status and, by the time of the Crusades, it was already reduced to a provincial town. It faced a crushing blow between the 13th and 15th centuries, when the city was fought over by the Greek Byzantines and the French and Italian Crusaders. In 1458 the city fell to the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Mehmet II the Conqueror. As the Emperor entered the city, he was greatly struck by the beauty of its ancient monuments and issued a firman (imperial decree) that Athen's ruins not be disturbed, on pain of death. The Parthenon was in fact converted into a splendid mosque. Despite the Sultan's good intentions to preserve Athens as a model Ottoman provincial capital, the city's population went into decline and conditions worsened as the Ottoman Empire declined as well starting in the late 18th Century. As time went by, the Turks slackened their care for Athens' old buildings; the great Parthenon itself was used as a warehouse for ammunition during the Venetian siege of Athens in 1687, and consequently the temple was severely damaged when a chance Venetian shell set off several casks of gunpowder stored in the main hall. The Ottoman Empire relinquished control of Athens after the Greek War of Independence. The city was inhabited by just 5,000 people by the time it was made the capital of the newly established kingdom of Greece in 1833. During the next few decades the city was rebuilt into a modern city applying mainly to the Neoclassic style. In 1896 Athens was the host city of the 1896 Summer Olympics.The next large expansion occurred in the 1920s when suburbs were created to house Greek refugees from Asia Minor. During World War II the city was occupied by Germany and fared badly in the war's later years. After the war the city started to grow again.

Location and setting

Germany Germany With its suburbs, Athens has a population of about 3.5 million representing around 35% of the total population of Greece. Athens has grown very rapidly in the years after the war until ca. 1980 and suffered from overcrowding, traffic congestion and air pollution; it is one of the most polluted cities in Europe. These problems still persist, although the massive investment of recent years in infrastructure has had a significant effect in easing the problem. Athens sprawls across the central plain of Attica, which is bound by Mount Aegaleo on the west, Mount Parnitha on the north, Mount Penteli to the northeast, Mount Hymettus on the east, and the Saronic Gulf on the southwest. Athens has expanded to cover the entire plain, and is thus unlikely to grow significantly in area in the future, because of the natural boundaries. The geomorphology of Athens frequently causes temperature inversion phenomena partly responsible for its air pollution problem (Los Angeles has similar geomorphology and similar problems). The ancient site of the city is centered on the rocky hill of the Acropolis. In ancient times the port of Piraeus (modern name Pireas) was a separate city, but it has now been absorbed into greater Athens. The centre of the modern city is Syntagma Square (Constitution Square), site of the former Royal Palace, the Greek Parliament and other 19th century public buildings. Most of the older and wealthier parts of the city are clustered around this area, which is also where most of the tourist attractions and museums are located. Syntagma Square Athens was host to the 2004 Summer Olympics. Athens was also the host of the 1896 Summer Olympics and of the 1906 Intercalated Games. The old campus of the University of Athens, on Panepistimiou Avenue is one of the finest buildings in Athens, together with the National Library building and the Athens Academy building. These three form the so-called "Athens Trilogy", built in the late 19th century. However, most of the university's functions have been moved to a larger modern campus east of the city centre, near Zográfou. The second most significant city institution is the Athens Polytechnic School (Ethniko Metsovio Politechnio), where more than 20 students were killed in 1973 during demonstrations against the Greek military junta (1967-1974). Greek entry into the European Union in 1981 brought new investment to the city along with problems of greatly worsened congestion and air pollution. Throughout the 1990s a series of measures were taken successfully to combat pollution. In preparation for the 2004 Olympic games the city spruced up its image with the introduction of a state-of-the-art transport infrastructure, a new airport, pedestrianised areas, and new museums and public squares. The city's increasingly multi-ethnic population enjoys a vibrant night-life and world-class shopping.

Tourist attractions

1981]] 1981 Athens has been a tourist destination since antiquity. Visitors from all over the world have always been eager to visit its famous monuments. Over the past eight years, the infrastructure and social amenities of Athens have been transformed as a result of the city's successful bid to stage the 2004 Olympic Games. The Greek state aided by the E.U. have poured money into infrastructure projects such as the new "Eleftherios Venizelos" International Airport, the massive expansion of the Metro system, and the new Attiki Odos ring-road. There has also been a great expansion of private investment on hotels and other tourist developments. Most importantly from the point of view of tourism, the area around the Acropolis has been remodelled, and a great pedestrian area from the Temple of Olympian Zeus to Plaka, Monastiraki and the Psirri square has been constructed. This allows the visitor space for calm walks among the ancient monuments, ruins and trees, from the Acropolis, to the Agora (the meeting place of the ancient Athenians) and then to the narrow streets of the old city of Athens (the Plaka), away from the noise of the city centre. Near the Syntagma square (described above) is the Kallimarmaro Stadium, the place where the first modern Olympic Games took place in 1896. It is a replica of the ancient Athens Stadium. It holds a special interest, not only for romantic reasons but also because it is the only major stadium (60,000 spectators) made entirely of white marble from Penteli, the same as the one used for the construction of the Parthenon. Penteli The classic museums like the National Archaeological Museum (which holds the world's greatest collection of Greek art), the Benaki Museum (including its new Islamic Art branch) [http://www.benaki.gr], the Byzantine Museum, the Museum of Cycladic Art (strongly recommended for its collection of elegant white metamodern figures, more than 3,000 years old) [http://www.cycladic-m.gr] have all been renovated in view of the 2004 Olympics. A new Acropolis Museum is being built [http://www.culture.gr/2/21/215/21502/e21509c.html] according to a design by acclaimed architect Bernard Tschumi [http://www.culture.gr/2/21/215/21502/e21509c.html]. Not to be missed is also the very impressive Athens Planetarium [http://www.eugenfound.edu.gr], one of the world's largest. As for the night life, Athens has a great number of multiplex as well as romantic open air garden cinemas, more theatres than any other European city (including ancient marble ones that are home to the Athens Festival from June to July) and many music venues including a state of the art music hall known as "Megaron" [http://www.megaron.gr] that attracts world-famous artists all year round. The coastline - now connected to the city centre with a gleaming new tram way - boasts a series of exciting venues next to the beaches where, during the day, Athenians swim and sunbathe. The Psirri neighborhood - aka Athens' 'meat packing district'- has acquired many new bars and restaurants and is a center for young Athenians. The Plaka remains the traditional tourist destination, with many tavernas featuring 'traditional' music, but the food, though good, is expensive compared to other parts of the city. The chic Kolonaki area, near Syntagma Square, is full of boutiques catering to well-heeled customers by day and bars and restaurants by night. Some central areas (south of Omonia Square) are mainly peopled by immigrants and are full of colorful ethnic restaurants and shops. The Gazi area, one of the latest in full redevelopment, is located around a historic gaz factory that has been converted into the Technopolis (Athens's new cultural multiplex)and has a number of small clubs, bars and restaurants as well as Athens' nascent gay village. Kolonaki Casinos operate on Mount Parnitha (accessible by car or cable car) and the near town of Loutraki (accessible by car or suburban railway). An entirely new attraction is the massively upgraded Olympic Stadium Complex (known by its Greek initials OAKA). The whole area has been remodelled by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava with monuments, gardens, futuristic passages and a characteristic new blue glass roof which was added to the main Stadium. A second olympic area, next to the sea at the beach of Kallithea (Faliron), also boasts futuristic stadiums, shops and an elevated esplanade. Athens is close to sand beaches and a very clean sea, and is surrounded by four very green and easily accessible mountains that are protected national parks (Lycabetus in the centre, Parnitha and Penteli to the north and Ymittos to the southeast) some of which feature also unmissable historic sites (Lycabetus,Ymittos). Lycabetus is a large hill in Athens that is said to have been a boulder thrown down by Athena as the legend goes. Lycab(v)etus is pronounced (LEE-KAH-VEE-TOS). Mountain Parnitha 25 km from the centre of Athens) has tens of well-marked paths, gorges, springs, torrents and caves and you may meet a deer in the forest. The nearby islands of Salamina, Aigina, Poros, Hydra and Spetses are also sites of spectacular natural beauty and historical architecture. Work is underway to transform the grounds of the old Athens Airport -named Hellinikon- in the southern suburbs into a massive landscaped park (considered to be the largest in Europe when ready). The Athens municipality maintains a site of tourist interest: http://www.cityofathens.gr/

20th century architecture in Athens

- East terminal by Eero Saarinen, at former Hellenikon airport, 1960-63
- American embassy by Walter Gropius, at Vassilis Sophias Avenue, 1961
- Athens Olympic Sports Complex, by Santiago Calatrava] ([[1998]]-[[2004) ([http://users.auth.gr/~lvorgias/ sketches and models])
- Bridge at Metro-station Katehaki by Santiago Calatrava

Transportation

Santiago Calatrava Santiago Calatrava] Santiago Calatrava The public transport system in Athens consists of bus, metro, tram and suburban railway [http://www.proastiakos.gr] services. The Athens Metro is one of the most modern systems in the world. It has four lines three of them which are distinguished by the colours used in maps and signs (green, blue and red). The green line, which is the oldest and for the most part runs on the ground, connects Piraeus to Kifissia. The other two lines were constructed mainly during the 1990s and the first sections were put to service in 2000. They run entirely underground. The blue line goes from Monastiraki to Doukissis Plakentias and the Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport, and the red line from Aghios Antonios to Aghios Dimitrios. Extensions to both lines are under construction, most notably to Marousi and Old Hellinikon Airport East Terminal (future Metropolitan Park). The fourth line is the Proastiakos (suburban) which runs from the Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport to Athens Central train station. It is managed by three different companies (ISAP line 1), Attiko Metro (lines 2 & 3), Proastiakos (line 4). The whole Metro system of Athens has currently 91 km. Considering this issue shows how the mass transport system in Athens has improved in the last years, since until 1999 the length of the system was of just 25 km and comprised by one line. It's expected that for the 2008 it will reach 110 km, after the extensions of the first phase of expansion get concluded. The bus service consists of a network of lines on which normal buses, electric buses, and natural gas buses run (the largest fleet of natural gas run buses in Europe). There are plenty of bus lines serving Athens and the suburbs, and they link the centre of the city with most of the suburbs and neighborhoods. The tram runs from Syntagma Square to Palaio Faliro and there the line splits in two branches, going to Glyfada and Neo Faliro. Both Syntagma - Palaio Faliro - Neo Faliro and the Glyfada branch opened on 19 July 2004. Further extensions are considered. There are many taxis in Athens, which can be recognised by the yellow color of the vehicles. They are quite cheap and during rush hours it is considered normal to halt a taxi even when it is in service (although, strictly speaking, this is forbidden); in that case, if the one halting it happens to go to the same direction as the customer and the customer does not mind (although this is never brought up or an issue, and if you are the customer, be sure to enjoy the impoliteness of the taxi drivers if you do request that they do not stop to pick up other people, despite the fact that you are late, and they will wait for 2 minutes in a queue to take another fare, bearing in mind you pay for that 2 minutes as 'waiting time'), he is also allowed in, and each one pays normally as if they were the only customer. Athens is served by the Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport at Spata, east of the city, about a 45-minute taxi ride from the city centre. There is also an express line connecting the airport to the metro system and 2 express lines connecting the airport to Pireus port and the city centre. Athens is also the hub of the Greek National Railway System, and ferries from Piraeus Port travel to all Greek islands. There are two motorways that go to the west towards Patra: (GR-8A, E94) and to the north towards Thessaloniki (GR-1, E75), and a ring motorway (Attiki Odos) which goes from Elefsina on the west to the airport after circling the city from the north, and another from Kaisariani to Glyke Nera where it meets the main road for Eleusis and the airport. Its total length is now about 70 km in 2004 up from 18 km in March 2001 when it first opened. There are about 21 exits and 4 junctions, up from 8. See Athens Mass Transit System for more on this topic.

Municipality

Athens Mass Transit System The modern city of Athens consists of what were formerly distinct towns and villages which gradually expanded to form a single large city; this expansion occurred in the 20th century. The city is now divided into 54 municipalities, the largest of which is the Municipality of Athens or Dimos Athinaion, with about 750,000 people (the next largest are Municipality of Piraeus, Municipality of Peristeri and Municipality of Kallithea). Athens can therefore refer either to the entire metropolitan area or to the Municipality of Athens. Each of the municipalities of Athens has an elected district council and a directly elected mayor. Mrs. Dora Bakoyanni of the conservative New Democracy party has been Mayor of Athens since October 2002. The Municipality of Athens is divived into 7 municipal districts or demotika diamerismata. The 7-district division however is mainly used for administrative purposes , while for Athenians the most popular way of dividing the city proper is through its neighborhoods (usually referred to as areas in english), each with its own distinct history and characteristics. For someone unfamiliar with Athens, getting to know about these neighborhoods can often come very handy for exploring and understanding the city.

Olympics 2004

2002 2002 Athens was awarded the 2004 Summer Olympics on September 5, 1997 in Lausanne, Switzerland, after surprisingly having lost the bid to organize the 1996 Summer Olympics, the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the modern Olympic Games. It was to be the second time Athens had hosted the Olympic Games. In 1997, Athens made a bid based largely on an appeal to Olympic history. In the last round of voting, Athens defeated Rome, 66 votes to 41. Before this, Buenos Aires, Stockholm, and Cape Town, had already been eliminated from consideration after receiving few votes. After that, the International Olympic Committee expressed its concern over the status of the progress of construction work of the new Olympic venues. A new Organizing Committee was formed under President Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki and preparations began at an accelerated pace. Although the heavy cost was criticized, as is not unusual with Olympic preparations, Athens was transformed into a city that uses state-of-the-art technology in transportation and urban development. Some of the most modern sporting venues in the world were created, almost all of which were fully ready on schedule. The 2004 Games were adjudged a success, as both security and organization were good and few visitors reported problems with transportation or accommodation. The only problem noted was sparse attendance at preliminary events during the first days of competition. Total attendance was more than 3.2 million tickets sold, which was higher than any other Olympics with the exception of Sydney (more than 5 million tickets).

Cities nicknamed "Athens"

See Athens (disambiguation) for other cities named "Athens".
- Athens of the East - Madurai, India
- Athens of the South - Nashville, Tennessee
- Athens of the North - Edinburgh, Scotland
- Athens of America - Boston, Massachusetts
- Spree Athens - Berlin, Germany
- Athens on the Isar - Munich, Germany
- Athens of Latin America - Bogotá, Colombia
- Athens of Finland - Jyväskylä, Finland
- Serbian Athens - Novi Sad, Serbia and Montenegro
- Athens of Ireland - Cork, Ireland

External links

- [http://www.cityofathens.gr City of Athens official website]
- [http://www.athensvirtualtour.com/ Take a short virtual tour of Athens]
- [http://www.athens-today.com/ Take a long virtual tour of Athens]
- [http://www.culture2000.tee.gr/ Athens contemporary architecture and suggested walking routes]
- [http://www.athensdg.gr/ City of Athens official entertainment guide]
- [http://www.timeoutathens.gr/englishnew/default.asp/ TimeOut Athens - Find out what's on in Athens]
- [http://www.athinorama.gr/ Athenorama: the city's oldest weekly entertainment guide (in Greek)]
- [http://www.nyloo.com/index.ath.2.asp/ Tourist info]
- [http://www.oasa.gr/ Journey planner by the city's transport authority]
- [http://www.athens2004.com/ 2004 Olympics official website]
- [http://www.chem.uoa.gr/Location/AthensMap/Athensmap.htm Interactive Map of Central Athens]
- [http://www.transport.ntua.gr/map/en/ Real time traffic map of Athens]
- [http://www.constitution.org/ari/athen_00.htm The Athenian Constitution, Aristotle]
- [http://www.holiday.gr/place5.php?place_id=13 Hotel Finder by Holiday.gr]
- [http://www.edwebproject.org/balkans/athens.html Athens photo gallery by Susanne and Andy Carvin]
- [http://www.athensguide.org/pictures-of-athens.html Athens pictures]
- [http://www.around-athens.com Athens Directory]
- [http://sabin.ro/gallery/athens Athens Photo Gallery] Category:Capitals in Europe Category:Greek prefectural capitals Category:Coastal cities Category:Host cities of the Summer Olympic Games Category:Cities and towns in Greece zh-min-nan:Athína ko:아테네 ja:アテネ simple:Athens th:เอเธนส์

Housing

:For other meanings of the word "house", see House (disambiguation). A house in its most general sense is a human-built dwelling with enclosing walls, a floor, and a roof. It provides shelter against precipitation, wind, heat, cold and intruding humans and animals. When occupied as a routine dwelling for humans, a house is called a home (though animals may often live in the house as well, both domestic pets and "unauthorised" animals such as mice living in the walls). People may be away from home most of the day for work and recreation, but typically are home at least for sleeping. A house generally has at least one entrance, usually in the form of a door or a portal,many houses have back doors that open into the back yard and may have any number of windows or none at all.

Types of house

window] :See also list of house types. There are three basic house types:
- houses standing on their own (detached houses)
- houses attached to one other house (semi-detached houses)
- houses attached to two other houses, possibly in a row (terraced (GB) or rowhouse (USA) houses). In Britain terraced or semi-detached houses are the most common type of accommodation, with 27% of all British people living in a terraced house and 32% in semi-detached houses (2002). In the USA in 2000, 61.4% of people lived in detached houses and 5.6% in semi-detached houses, the rest living in rowhouses or apartments, except 7% living in mobile homes. A treehouse is built in one or more trees; though its most common use is a fort or playhouse for children, this design is sometimes used as a house for adults.

Inside the house

adult.]] Houses consist of many specific designated rooms. Basic design consists of a living/eating area, a sleeping area, and (if indoor facilities are available) a washing/lavatory area. Often, in traditional agrarian societies, domestic animals such as chickens or larger livestock share part of the house with human beings. In the West, where plumbing is common and the standard of living fairly high, each house will at least contain a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen or kitchen area, and a living room. These rooms should be designed to meet the needs of the people who live in the house. This designing is known as interior design and it is a popular subject in universities. Feng shui, originally a Chinese method of situating houses according to such factors as sunlight and microclimates, has recently been expanded to include designing house interiors with the intention of giving harmonious effects to the people living inside the house.

Shelters

Forms of shelter simpler than a house include dugouts, yaodongs, tents (see also camp), campers, huts, roofs without walls, or a structure with roof and partial walls, such as often at a bus stop (see picture there), and a gazebo.

Construction

Popular modern house construction techniques include light-frame construction in areas with access to supplies of wood, and adobe or sometimes rammed-earth construction in arid regions with scarce wood resources. In some areas brick is used almost exclusively. Increasingly popular alternative construction methods include insulated concrete forms (foam forms filled with concrete), structural insulated panels (foam panels faced with oriented strand board or fiber cement), and light-gauge steel framing. These newer products provide labor savings, more consistent quality, and may accelerate the construction process. They are more consistently used than are the lesser used approaches described below. Lesser used construction methods which have recently gained (or regained) popularity in recent years. Examples of these are Cannabis hurd Cannabrick construction, cordwood construction, straw bale construction, and geodesic domes. These methods are not widely used and frequently are adopted by homeowners who may be actively involved in the construction process.

Animal houses

Humans often build houses for domestic or wild animals, often resembling smaller versions of human domiciles. Familiar animal houses built by humans include bird houses and dog houses, while domiciles for agricultural animals are more often called barns. However, human interest in building houses for animals does not stop at the domestic pet. People build bird houses, bat houses, nesting sites for wild ducks, and more.

Usage in language

As a verb, to house (pronounced "haʊz") is to provide a routine locale for an object, a person or an organization. Historic or artistic artifacts, for example, are said to be housed in museums. A business may be housed in a storefront, or a family may be housed in an apartment or a house. A collection of domiciles, either for persons, for organizations, for animals or for objects, is often called housing. An individual person or a single object might also find housing in an appropriate domicile. In English the word "house" on its own usually refers to a dwelling for one family, or for more than one family living together, sharing the house. In other languages the translation for "house" often covers other types of building such as tower blocks or commercial property: in German, for example, a "Haus" can also refer to a hotel or a block of flats. In English, the word "house" can be used in combination with other words to describe buildings other than residential dwellings, such as an opera house, a "monkey house" (a building for several cages) in a zoo, etc. A "madhouse" is a disparaging term for a mental hospital or insane asylum (also see House (disambiguation) for more.) The White House also has only a secondary use as a dwelling. A house is also called a home, but a house is not a home. Home has a more abstract and poetic meaning.

Heraldry

The house is an exceedingly rare charge in heraldry.

External link

- [http://y2u.co.uk/&002_Images/Downland_Museum%2001.htm Photos of rare houses at Singleton Wealdland and Downland Museum, Nr Chichester]
- [http://www.khov.com New Home Builder in North America]
- [http://www.pygmies.info/camps.html African Pygmies house] Category:Houses ja:家屋 simple:House

Pisistratus

Peisistratos is the name of a major Athenian ruler, as well as a minor character in the Odyssey. The name in Ancient Greek is Πεισίστρατος (Peisistratos). The standard spelling in English is Peisistratus; an alternate spelling (also used in Latin) is Pisistratus. The spellings Psistratus, Peistratus, or Pesistratus may also be used.

Peisistratos of Athens

Peisistratos of Athens (ca. 607-528 BC) was a Greek statesman who became the Tyrant of Athens following a (quite popular) coup and ruled in 561, 559-556 and 546-528 BC. Peisistratos was the son of a man called Hippocrates, and was named for the Peisistratos in the Odyssey. A friend of the Athenian lawgiver Solon, he assisted Solon in his endeavours, and fought bravely in the conquest of Salamis. When Solon left Athens, Peisistratos became leader of the party of the Highlands (poorer, rural people) in 565 BC. Peisistratos used a clever scheme, calling for bodyguards after he pretended to be attacked. Those bodyguards were composed of the people of the Highlands whom had entered Athens. In 560 BC he seized the Acropolis with this group of bodyguards, becoming turannos (tyrant). His rule did not last - he was driven out by Lycurgus, Megacles and others from the party of the Coast within the year. He returned in 559 BC with the help of Megacles, who had split from Lycurgus. Megacles had allied with Pisistratus on the condition that Pisistraus marry Megacles' daughter. The Athenians were persuaded by Megacles that Athena was bringing Peisistratos home and Peisistratos returned from exile in a carriage accompanied by a tall woman disguised as Athena in a suit of armor. Later, Megacles was angered by the fact that Peisistratos refused to have children with his daughter, and Peisistratos was again exiled in 556 BC by Lycurgus and Megacles. He went to Euboea and remained there for almost ten years, becoming quite rich through mining. He returned to Athens in 546 BC with a considerable force and regained power with the support of Lygdamos of Naxos. This time he worked well to retain his position. Peisistratos rewarded Lygdamos by making him tyrant of Naxos. Peisistratos consolidated his power by favouring rural citizens with new land laws, but he also kept a large force of mercenaries and took hostages. He kept the democratic forms introduced by Solon but ensured that family members held the highest offices. Pisistratus promoted the cults of Athena and Dionysus. He began the construction of the temple to Athena on the Acropolis and also promoted a number of other public works including the Lyceum, temples to Apollo and to Zeus as well as the Fountain of the Nine Springs. He also supported literature and the arts. The Panathenaic Festival (reintroduced shortly before his reign) and the city Dionysia festival flourished during his time. Athenian coinage was introduced by about 550 BC, and may reflect policy of his, though there is no reference in contemporary documents to such. According to tradition, Pisistratus commissioned the first standard written editions of the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, which had previously been passed down orally or "cribbed" in private copies. Peisistratos was succeeded by his son Hippias. But his other son, Hipparchus, is also mentioned together with Hippias, suggesting some form of joint rule. Peisistratos has been credited with the development of the first welfare state through his policy of providing a land loan to the underprivileged in society as part of an effort to encourage autarky.

Peisistratos the son of Nestor

In Greek mythology, Peisistratos was the youngest son of Nestor and became an intimate friend of Telemachus the son of Odysseus on their first meeting. Peisistratos travelled with Telemachus on his unsuccessful search for his lost father. (Odyssey III, 36, 400). Category:Characters in the Odyssey Category:607 BC births Category:528 BC deaths Category:Ancient Athenians ja:ペイシストラトス

6th century BC

(2nd millennium BC - 1st millennium BC - 1st millennium) ----

Overview

The 5th and 6th centuries BC were a time of empires, but more importantly, a time of learning and philosophy.
- Mediterranean: Beginning of Greek philosophy, flourishes during the 5th century BC
- East Asia: Chinese philosophy become the "religion" of China. Confucianism, Daoism, Legalism, and Moism flourish.
- Middle East: During the Persian empire, Zoroaster, aka Zarathustra, founded Zoroastrianism, a dualistic philosophy
- India: The Buddha and Mahavira found Buddhism and Jainism, challenging Hinduism and the caste system

Events

- Ruin of the Kingdom of Judah and the destruction of the First Temple (586 BC) marking the beginning of the full Babylonian Captivity for the Jews
- Cyrus the Great conquered many countries and created the Persian Empire.
- Persians conquer Ancient Egypt, dominate eastern Mediterranean.
- Return of some Jews from Babylonian exile about (538 BC) who build the Second Temple about seventy years after the destruction of the First Temple, from 520–516 BC.
- Fall of the Babylonian Empire (539 BC) to Cyrus the Great of Persia, marking also an end of the Babylonian Captivity for the Jews.
- The Persians under Darius I and later Cyrus invade Transoxiana.
- Carthage's merchant empire slowly dominates the western Mediterranean
- Roman Republic founded
- Gautama Buddha founds Buddhism in India. It becomes a major world religion.
- Tao Te Ching written (traditional date)
- Confucius formulates his ethical system of Confucianism, which proves highly influential in China
- The Sinhalese emigrate to Sri Lanka
- Apparent writing of the Book of Psalms
- The prophet Lehi, according to the Book of Mormon, leaves Jerusalem and settles in North America.
- Abkhazia is colonized by the Greeks.
- The celtic Bruthin or Priteni, invade Britain and Ireland the British Isles some time before the 5th century BC.
- emergence of the Proto-Germanic Jastorf culture

Significant persons

- Stesichorus of Sicily, lyric poet (c. 640–555 BC).
- Thales, Greek mathematician ( 635–543 BC). Predicts solar eclipse in 585 BC.
- Solon of Athens, one of the Seven Sages of Greece (638–558 BC).
- Mahavira of Vaishali (599–527).
- Pisistratus, Tyrant of Athens in 561, 559–556 and 546–528 BC.
- Pythagoras of Samos, Greek mathematician. See Pythagorean theorem. (582–496 BC).
- Cyrus the Great, king of Persia ( 576–529 BC, reigned 559–529 BC).
- Gautama Buddha, founding figure of Buddhism (c. 563–483 BC).
- Confucius, founding figure of Confucianism (551–479 BC).
- Aeschylus of Athens, playwright (525–456 BC).
- Darius I, King of Persia (reigned 521–485 BC).
- Lehi, legendary figure, first prophet recorded in the Book of Mormon
- Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War.

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

- First archaeological surveys of the Arabian peninsula by Babylonian king Nabonidus. Category:6th century BC ko:기원전 6세기 ja:紀元前6世紀

Athenian government

and Aristides in the 5th century BC and Demosthenes and Aeschines in the 4th — along with countless humbler citizens as well. In the background high on the Acropolis is the Parthenon, the temple of Athena, the city's protective goddess, looking down upon their deliberations.]] The Athenian democracy (sometimes called classical democracy) was the democratic system developed in the Greek city-state of Athens (comprising the physical city of Athens and its surrounding territory Attica). Athens was the very first known democracy, and the most important in ancient times. Other Greek cities set up democracies, most but not all following an Athenian model, but none were as powerful or as stable (or, relatively speaking, as well-documented) as that of Athens. It remains a unique and intriguing experiment in direct democracy where the people do not elect representatives to vote on their behalf but vote on legislation and executive bills in their own right. Participation was by no means open to all inhabitants of Attica, but the in-group of participants was constituted with no reference to economic class and they participated on a scale that was truly phenomenal. Never before had so many people spent so much of their time in governing themselves. The dates traditionally given for it are from around 508 BC with its foundation under Cleisthenes to its suppression under the Macedonians in 322 BC. The Athenians themselves however were more likely to talk about it as going back to Solon almost a century before Cleisthenes, or even to retroject it into their remotest past (Theseus). There was also a short period of revival in the 4th century BC. Nor was the democratic period entirely continuous; there were two brief takeovers by oligarchic revolutionaries. The word "democracy" combines the elements demos ("the people") and kratos ("force, power"). Kratos is an unexpectedly brutish word. In the words "monarchy" and "oligarchy", the second element arche means rule, leading, or being first. It is possible that the term "democracy" was coined by its detractors who rejected the possibility of, so to speak, a valid "demarchy". Whatever its original tone, the term was adopted wholeheartedly by Athenian democrats. (The word is attested in some of the earliest Greek prose to survive, but even this may not have been written before 440 or 430 BC. It is not at all certain that the word goes back to the beginning of the democracy, but from around 460 BC at any rate an individual is known whose parents had decided to name him 'Democrates', a name evidently manufactured as a gesture of democratic loyalty.)

Overview

Assembly

The central events of the Athenian democracy were the meetings of the assembly or ekklesia. Unlike a parliament, the assembly's 'members' were not elected, but attended by right when and if they chose. It was open only to adult male citizens, but to all of them: unlike earlier schemes there was no property qualification. Although the entire citizen body never gathered in one place at one time, this body did not represent the people — it was them. That is to say, the version of Greek democracy created at Athens was a direct democracy and not representative democracy: there was no electorate selecting representatives to decide for them. The ekklesia had at least four functions: it made executive pronouncements (decrees, such as deciding to go to war or granting citizenship to a foreigner); it elected some officials; it legislated; and it tried political crimes. As the system evolved these last two functions were 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. Unlike in modern parliaments, the speeches were actually attempts to persuade those present. Though there might be blocs of opinion, sometimes enduring, on crucial issues, there were no political parties and likewise no government or opposition (as in the Westminister system). In effect, the 'government' was whatever speaker(s) the assembly agreed with on a particular day. 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 they would punish those who had made the proposal that they had agreed to. If a mistake had been made, from their viewpoint it could only be because they had been 'misled'.

Officeholders

Administration was in the hands of officeholders, over a thousand each year. They were mostly chosen by lot, with a much smaller (and more prestigious) group elected. Neither was compulsory; individuals had to nominate themselves for both selection methods. By and large the power exercised by these officials was routine administration and quite limited. 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 could be held by the same person only once. Part of the ethos of democracy, however, was the building of general competence by ongoing involvement. In the 5th century version of the democracy, the ten annually elected generals were often very prominent, but for those who had power, it lay primarily in their frequent speeches and in the respect accorded them in the assembly, rather than their vested powers. While citizens voting in the assembly were the people and so were free of review or punishment, those same citizens when holding an office served the people and could be punished very severely. All of them were subject to a review beforehand that might disqualify them for office and an examination after stepping down. Officeholders were the agents of the people, not their representatives.

Council of 500

The council (boule) of 500, the largest board of officeholders, formed a steering committee for the assembly, drafting legislation and setting its agenda. A citizen could serve on the council twice in their lifetime. Any citizen could submit proposals to the council for drafting. Technically it was forbidden for the assembly to vote on measures without a pre-proposal (probouleuma) from the council. These might be concrete, worked-out proposals or 'open', that is little more than items on the agenda. The council, or rotating sections of it, also served as a kind of front desk for the state, on duty in the council chamber 24 hours a day. Every day of the year one of these councillors was head of state for the day (for instance, holding the keys to the treasury and the seal of the city and being responsible for greeting foreign envoys, and in the 5th century presiding over the assembly and council meetings). It has been calculated that one quarter of all citizens must at one time in their lives have held the post. This head of state position could be held once only in a lifetime.

Courts

Courts consisting of massive juries (smallest 200, largest 6000) heard cases argued by litigants (both citizen and non-citizen) without the involvement of lawyers or judges. In particular there was no state prosecutor: all cases, even the most public (e.g. for treason) had to be brought by citizens acting on their own initiative. These juries formed a second site for the expression of popular sovereignty: as in the assembly, citizens acting as jurors acted as the people and were immune from review or punishment. (Notably when the jurors are addressed by speakers as "you", they can be referred to as having committed any act ever committed by the 'Athenian people', such as battles fought before any of them were born or court decisions made by other juries whose membership may have had no overlap with those currently addressed.) Jurors however had a minimum age of 30 (not 18 as for the assembly) and they were under oath. From an Athenian perspective, where the young are rash and age brings wisdom and where an oath is a serious matter, both of these requirements gave jurors more weight than the citizens attending the assembly. Here only the legislative function of courts will be described, though this by no means exhausts the relevance of the courts to the workings of the democracy.

Shifting balance between Assembly and Courts

As the system evolved, the courts (that is, citizens under another guise) intruded upon the power of the assembly. From 355 BC political trials were no longer held in the assembly, but only in a court. In 416 BC the graphe paranomon ("indictment against measures contrary to the laws") was introduced. Under this anything passed by the assembly or even proposed but not yet voted on, 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 a measure blocked before the assembly voted on it did not need to go back to the assembly if it survived the court challenge: the court was enough to validate it. Once again it is important to bear in mind the lack of 'neutral' state intervention. To give a schematic scenario by way of illustration: two men have clashed in the assembly about a proposal put by one of them; it passed, 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: in effect the courts became a kind of upper house. In the 5th century there was in effect no procedural difference between an executive decree and a law: they were both simply passed by the assembly. But from 403 BC they were set sharply apart. Henceforth laws were made not in the assembly, but by special panels of 1000 citizens drawn from the annual jury pool of 6000. They were known as the nomothetai, the lawmakers. Here again it is not anything like a legislative commission sitting down to discuss the pros and cons and drafting proposals, but the format is that of a trial, voting yes or no after a clash of speeches.

Citizen-initiator

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 law suit (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 vetted before taking up office or automatically reviewed after stepping down — it had after all no set tenure and might be an action lasting only a moment. But any stepping forward into the democratic limelight was risky and if someone chose (another citizen initiator) they could be called to account for their actions and punished. The degree of participation among citizens varied greatly, along a spectrum from doing virtually nothing towards something like a fulltime committent. But for even the most active citizen the formal basis of his political activity was the invitation issed to everyone (every undisqualified free male Athenian citizen) by the phrase "whoever wishes". There are then three functions: the officeholders organized and saw to the complex protocols; Ho boulomenos was the initiator and the proposer of content; and finally the people, massed in assembly or court or convened as lawmakers, made the decisions, either yes or no, or choosing between alternatives.

Participation and exclusion

Size and make-up of the Athenian population

The population of Attica can only be roughly guessed at as the Athenians themselves never conducted a complete census. Numbers of slaves and metics (resident aliens) in particular will have fluctuated. During the 4th century BC, the population of Athens may well have comprised some 250,000—300,000 people. Citizen families may have amounted to 100,000 people and out of these some 30,000 will have been the adult male citizens entitled to vote in the assembly. In the mid-5th century the number of adult male citizens was perhaps as high as 60,000, but this number fell precipitously during the Peloponnesian war. This slump was permanent due to the introduction of a stricter definition of citizen described below. From a modern perspective these figures seem pitifully small, but in the world of Greek city-states Athens was huge: most of thousand or so Greek cities could only muster 1000-1500 adult male citizens and Corinth, a major power, had at most 15,000. The non-citizen component of the population was divided between metics and slaves, with the latter perhaps somewhat more numerous. Around 338 BC the orator Hyperides (fragment 13) claimed that there were 150,000 slaves in Attica, but this figure is probably not more than an impression: slaves outnumbered those of citizen stock but did not swamp them.

Citizenship in Athens

Only adult male Athenian citizens who had completed their military training as ephebes – effectively twenty years and over – had the right to vote in Athens. This excluded a majority of the population, namely slaves, women and resident foreigners (metics). Also disallowed were citizens whose rights were under suspension (typically for failure to pay a debt to the city: see atimia); for some Athenians this amounted to permanent (and in fact inheritable) disqualification. Still, in contrast with oligarchical societies, there were no real property requirements limiting access. (The property classes of Solon's constitution remained on the books, but they were a dead letter). Given the exclusionary and ancestral conception of citizenship held by Greek city-states, a relatively large portion of the population took part in the government of Athens and of other radical democracies like it. At Athens some citizens were far more active than others, but the vast numbers required just for the system to work testify to a breadth of particpation among those eligible that greatly exceeded any present day democracy. Athenian citizens had to be legitimately descended from citizens—after the reforms of Pericles in 450 BC on both sides of the family, excluding the children of Athenian men and foreign women. Although the legislation was not retrospective, five years later the Athenians removed 5000 from the citizen registers when a free gift of corn arrived for all citizens from an Egyptian king. Citizenship could be granted by the assembly and was sometimes given to large groups (Plateans in 427 BC, Samians in 405 BC), but by the 4th century only to individuals and by a special vote with a quorum of 6000. This was generally done as a reward for some service to the state. In the course of a century the numbers involved were in the hundreds rather than thousands. This reflected the general conception of the polis as a community, somewhat like an extended family, rather than as a territorial state. Modern democracies too have their own exclusions: resident foreigners (legal and otherwise), individuals below a certain age and in some cases incarcerated citizens and those who have committed felonies. The modern form has other limitations as well: the right of voting is usually restricted to once every several years, and voters merely get to choose their representatives in the legislative or executive branches—and it is these representatives, not the voters themselves, who make policy decisions (with the exception of occasional referenda).

Main bodies of governance

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 6000), the council of 500 (boule) and the courts (a minumum of 200 people, but running at least on some occasions up to 6000). Of these three bodies it is the assembly and the courts that were the true sites of power — although courts, unlike the assembly, were never simply called the demos (the People) as they were manned by a subset of the citizen body, those over thirty. But crucially citizens voting in both were not liable to review and prosecution as were council members and all other officeholders. In the 5th century BC we often hear of the assembly sitting as a court of judgement itself for trials of political importance and it is not a coincidence that 6000 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. The council of the 500 served as a kind of steering committee for the assembly and so the two can be considered together. It is important, however, to understand that the Council of 500 was not sovereign in the sense that the assembly and the courts both were. Structurally, the members of the Council of 500 hundred belong the office holders, considered below.

Assembly

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. Voting was usually by show of hands (cheirotonia, "arm stretching") with officials 'judging' the outcome by sight. With thousands of people attending, counting was impossible. For a small category of votes a quorum of 6000 was required, principally grants of citizenship, and here coloured balls were used, white for yes and black for no. Probably 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. (Ostracism required to voters to scratch names onto pieces of broken pottery, though this did not within the assembly as such.) 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 as the main meeting, kuria ekklesia.) Additional meetings might still be called, especially as up until 355 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 dodge the annual festivals that were differently placed in each of the twelve lunar months. There was also a tendency for the four meetings to bunch up toward the end of each state month. Attendance at the assembly was 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 for those who got the red on their clothes. This, however, cannot compare with the compulsory voting schemes of some modern democracies. It was rather an immediate measure to get enough people rapidly in place, like an aggressive form of ushering. After the restoration of the democracy in 403 BC, pay for assembly attendance was introduced for the first time. At this there was a new enthusiasm for assembly meetings. Only the first 6000 to arrive were admitted and paid, with the red rope now used to keep latecomers at bay. These two uses of the red rope are known from Aristophanes's comedy Acharnians 17-22, the forcing in, and his Ekklesiazousai 378-9 for the keeping out.

Council of 500

The preparations for an Assembly meeting, and matters of administrating the policy decided on by the Assembly, were done by the Boule - a council of 500 citizens randomly selected by lot. Fifty members of the boule, called prytanies, were required to live in state housing, so that they might always be at hand in an emergency. The president of the Boule was selected by lot every day; a man might be a prytany twice in his life, but only once president.

Athenian Courts

Athens had an elaborate legal system centred on the dikasteria or jury courts: the word is derived from dikastes, 'judge/juror.' These jury courts were manned by large panels selected by lot from an annual pool of 6,000 citizens. To be eligible to serve as juror, a citizen had to be over 30 years of age and in possession of full citizen rights (see atimia). The age limit, 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: for the Athenians older was wiser. Added to this was the fact that jurors were under oath, which was not a feature of attendance at the assembly. However, the authority exercised by the courts had the same basis as that of the assembly: both were regarded gesestsas 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 in words spoken before the jurors, if a court had made an unjust decision, it must have been because it had been misled by a litigant Essentially there were two grades of suit, a smaller kind known as dike or private suit, and a larger kind known as graphe or public suit. For private suits the minimum jury size was 201 (increased to 401 if a sum of over 1000 drachmas was at issue), for public suits 501. For particularly important public suits the jury could be increased by adding in extra allotments of 500. One thousand and 1500 are regularly encountered as jury sizes and on at least one occasion, the first time a new kind of case was brought to court (see graphe paranomon), all 6,000 members of the juror pool were put onto the one case. In public suits the litgants each had something like three hours to speak, less in private suits. The cases were put by the litigants themselves in the form of an exchange of single speeches timed by water clock, 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. Nothing, however, stopped jurors from talking 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.e. any citizen with full citizen rights) could bring a case since the issues in these major suits were regarded as affecting the community as a whole. Justice was rapid: no case could last no longer than one day. Some convictions triggered an automatic penalty, but where this was not the case the two litgants each proposed a penalty for the convicted defendant and the jury chose between them in a further vote. No appeal was possible. 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 462 BC and is ascribed to Pericles, a feature described by Aristotle as fundamental to radical democracy (Politics 1294a37). Pay was raised from 2 to 3 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 shows a marked anti-professionalism. No judges presided over the courts nor was there anyone to give legal direction to the jurors, as the magistrates in charge of the courts had only an administrative function and were themselves in any case amateurs (most of the annual magistracies at Athens could only be held once in a lifetime). There were no lawyers as such, but the 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 (logographos) but this was not advertised in court (except as something your opponent in court has had to resort to), and even politically prominent litigants made some show of disowning special expertise.

Officeholders

Citizens active as office holders served in a quite different capacity from when they voted in the assembly or served as jurors. The assembly and the courts were regarded as the instantiation of the people of Athens: they were the people, no power was above them and they could not be reviewed, impeached or punished. However, when an Athenian took up an office, he was regarded as 'serving' the people. As such, he could be regarded as failing in his duty and be punished for it. There were two methods of selecting people as officeholders, lottery or election. Something like 1100 citizens (including the memebrs of the council of 500) held office each year and about a 100 of these were elected.

Selection by lot (Allotment)

Selection by lottery was the standard means as it was regarded as the more democratic: elections will favour those who are rich, noble, eloquent and well-known, while allotment spreads the work of administration throughout the whole citizen body, engaging them in the crucial democratic experience of, to use Aristotle's words (Politics 1317b28-30), "ruling and being ruled in turn." The allotment of an individual was based on citizenship rather than merit or any form of personal popularity which could be bought. Allotment therefore was seen as a means to prevent the corrupt purchase of votes and it gave citizens a unique form of political equality as all had an equal chance of obtaining government office. Individuals who were interested in holding office had to nominate themselves as available for selection the year before. Officeholders were paid a stipend, but it was intended as a small sum to cover loss of income fixed at the lowest end of the scale. That is, virtually anyone able to work could earn more elsewhere. Payment is confirmed for the 5th century; was cancelled under the oligarchs in 404; may or may not have been restored after democracy was reinstituted. The random assignment of responsibility to individuals who may or may not be competent has obvious risks, but the system included features meant to obviate possible problems. Athenians selected for office served as teams (boards, panels). In a group someone will know the right way to do things and those that do not may learn from those that do. During the period of holding a particular office everyone on the team is observing everybody else. There were however officials such as the nine archons, who while seemingly a board carried out very different functions from each other. There were in fact some limitations on who could hold office. Age restrictions were in place with thirty (and in some cases forty) years as a minimum, rendering something like a third of the adult citizen body ineligible at any one time. An unknown proportion of citizens were also subject to disenfranchisement (atimia), excluding some of them permanently and others temporarily (depending on the type). Furthermore, all citizens selected were reviewed before taking up office (dokimasia) at which they might be disqualified. Competence does not seem to have been the main issue, but rather, at least in the 4th century BC, whether they were loyal democrats or had oligarchic tendencies. After leaving office they were subject to a scrutiny (euthunai, literally 'straightenings') to review their performance. Both of these processes were in most cases brief and formulaic, but they opened up in the possibility, if some citizen wanted to take some matter up, of a contest before a jury court. In the case of a scrutiny going to trial, there was the risk for the former officeholder of suffering severe penalties. Finally, even during his period of office, any officeholder could be impeached and removed from office by the assembly. In each of the ten "main meetings" (kuriai ekklesiai) a year, the question was explicitly raised in the assembly agenda: were the office holders carrying out their duties correctly? No office appointed by lot could be held twice by the same individual. The only exception was the boule or council of 500. In this case, simply by demographic necessity, an individual could serve twice in a lifetime. This principle extended down to the secretaries and undersecretaries who served as assistants to magistrates such as the archons. To the Athenians it seems what had to be guarded against was not incompetence but any tendency to use office as a way of accumulating ongoing power. The powers of officials were precisely defined and their capacity for imitative limited. They administered rather than governed. When it came to penal sanctions, no officeholder could impose a fine over fifty drachmas fine. Anything higher had to go before a court.

Elected

Something like a hundred officials were elected rather than chosen by lot. There were two main categories in this group: those required to handle large sums of money, and the 10 generals, the strategoi. One reason that financial officials were elected was that as they will almost certainly be rich any money embezzled can be extracted from their estates. Generals were elected not only because their role required expert knowledge but also because they needed to be people with experience and contacts in the wider Greek world where wars were fought. In the 5th century BC, principally as seen through the figure of Pericles, the generals could be among the most powerful people in the state. Yet in the case of Pericles it is wrong to see his power as coming from his long series of annual generalships (each year along with nine others). His office holding was rather an expression and a result of the influence he wielded. That influence was based on his relation with the assembly, a relation that in the first instance lay simply in the right of any citizen to stand and speak before the people. Under the 4th century version of democracy the roles of general and of key political speaker in the assembly tended to be filled by different persons. In part this was a consequence of the increasingly specialised forms of warfare practiced in the later period. Elected officials too were subject to review before holding office and scrutiny after office. And they too could be removed from office any time the assembly met. In one case from the 5th century BC the 10 treasurers of the Delian league (the hellenotamiai) were accused at their scrutinies of misappropriation of funds. Put on trial, they were condemned and executed one by one until before the trial of the tenth and last an error of accounting was discovered, allowing him to go free. (Antiphon 5.69-70)

Individualism in Athenian democracy

Another interesting insight into Athenian democracy comes from the law that excluded from decisions of war those citizens who had property close to the city walls - on the basis that they had a personal interest in the outcome of such debates because the practice of an invading army was at the time to destroy the land outside the walls. A good example of the contempt the first democrats felt for those who did not participate in politics can be found in the modern word 'idiot' that finds its origins in the ancient Greek word (idiōtēs) meaning a private person, a person who is not actively interested in politics; such characters were talked about with contempt and the word eventually acquired its modern meaning.

Criticism of the democracy

Athenian democracy has had many critics, both ancient and modern. Modern critics are more likely to find fault with the narrow definition of the citizen body, but in the ancient world the complaint if anything went in the opposite direction. Ancient authors were almost invariably from an elite background for whom giving poor and uneducated people power over their betters seemed a reversal of the proper, rational order of society. For them the demos in democracy meant not the whole people, but the people as opposed to the elite. Instead of seeing it as a fair system under which 'everyone' has equal rights, they saw it as the numerically preponderant poor tyrannising over the rich. They viewed society like a modern stock company: democracy is like a company where all shareholders have an equal say regardless of the scale of their holding; one share or ten thousand, it makes no difference. They regarded this as manifestly unjust. In Aristotle this is categorised as the difference between 'arithmetic' and 'geometric' (i.e. proportional) equality. Democracy was far from being the normal style of governance and the beliefs on which it was based were in effect a minority opinion. Those writing in later centuries generally had no direct experience of democracy themselves. To its ancient detractors the democracy was reckless and arbitrary. They had some signal instances to point to, especially from the long years of the Peloponnesian war.
- In 406 BC, after years of defeats in the wake of the annihilation of their vast invasion force in Sicily, the Athenians at last won a naval victory at Arginusae over the Spartans. After the battle a storm arose and the eight generals in command failed to collect survivors: the Athenians sentenced all of them to death. Technically, it was illegal, as the generals were tried and sentenced together, rather than one by one as Athenian law required. Socrates happened to be the citizen presiding over the assembly that day and refused to cooperate, though to little effect. Standing against the idea that it was outrageous for the people to be unable to do whatever they wanted. Later they repented the executions, but made up for it by executing those who had accused the generals before them. (A long account in Xenophon Hellenica 1.7.1-35)
- Years earlier, the ten treasurers of the Delian league (Hellenotamiai) had been accused of embezzlement. They were tried and executed one after the other until, when one only was still alive, the accounting error was discovered and that last surviving treasurer was acquitted. Perfectly legal in this case, but an example of the extreme severity with which the people could punish those who served them. (Antiphon 5.69-70)
- In 399 BC Socrates himself was put on trial and executed for 'corrupting the young and believing in strange gods'. His death gave Europe its first ever intellectual hero and martyr, but guaranteed the democracy an eternity of bad press at the hands of his disciple Plato. In the Gorgias written years later Plato has Socrates contemplating the possibility of himself on trial before the Athenians: he says he would be like a doctor prosecuted by a pastry chef before a jury of children. Two right wing coups briefly interrupted democratic rule during the Peloponnesian war, both named by the numbers in control: the Four Hundred in 411 BC and the Thirty in 404 BC. The focus on number speaks to the drive behind each of them: to reduce the size of the electorate by linking the franchise with property qualifications. Though both ended up as rogue governments and did not follow through on their constitutional promises, they began as responses from the Athenian elite to what they saw as the inherent arbitrariness of government by the masses. (Plato in the Seventh Epistle does remark that the Thirty made the preceding democratic regime look like a Golden Age.) Whether the democratic failures should be seen as systematic, or as a product of the extreme conditions of the Peloponnesian war, there does seem to have been a move toward correction. A new version of democracy was established from 403 BC, but it can be linked with both earlier and subsequent reforms (graphe paranomon 416 BC; end of assembly trials 355 BC). For the first time a conceptual and procedural distinction was made between laws and decrees. Increasingly, responsibility was shifted from the assembly to the courts, with laws being made by jurors and all assembly decisions becoming reviewable by courts. That is to say, the mass meeting of all citizens lost some ground to smaller gatherings (of only a thousand or so!) which were under oath, free of men in their impetuous 20's and with more time to focus on just one matter (though never more than a day). One downside was that the new democracy was less capable of rapid response. Another tack of criticism is to notice the disquieting links between democracy and a number of less than appealing features of Athenian life. Although it predated it by over thirty years, democracy is strongly bound up with Athenian imperialism. For much of the 5th century at least democracy fed off an empire of subject states. Thucydides the son of Milesias (not the historian), an aristocrat, stood in opposition to these policies, for which he was ostracised in 443 BC. At times the imperialist democracy acted with extreme brutality, as in the decision to execute the entire male population of Melos and sell off its woman and children simply for refusing to became subjects of Athens. The common people were numerically dominant in the navy, which they used to pursue their own interests in the form of work as rowers and in the hundreds of overseas administrative positions. Further they used the income from empire to fund payment for officeholding. This is the position set out by the anti-democratic pamphlet known whose anonymous author is often called the Old Oligarch. On the other hand the empire was, more or less, defunct in the 4th century BC so it cannot be said that it was democracy was not viable without it. Only then in fact was payment for assembly attendance, the central event of democracy. (Similarly for the period before the Persian wars, but for the very early democracy the sources are very meagre and it can be thought of as being in an embryonic state.) A case can be made that discriminatory lines came to be drawn more sharply under Athenian democracy than before or elsewhere, in particular in relation to woman and slaves, as well as in the line between citizens and non-citizens. By so strongly validating one role, that of the male citizen, it has been argued that democracy compromised the status of those who did not share it.
- Male citizenship had become a newly valuable, indeed profitable, possession, to be jealously guarded. Under Pericles in 450 BC restrictions were tightened so that a citizen had to be born from citizen parentage on both sides. Metroxenoi, those with foreign mothers, were now to be excluded. Traditionally for the poorer citizens local marriage was the norm, while the elite had been much more likely to marry abroad as a part of aristocratic alliance building. A habit of one group in society was thus codified as a law for the whole citizen body, which thus lost one axis of openness. Many Athenians prominent earlier in the century would have lost citizenship, had this law applied to them: Cleisthenes, the founder of democracy, had a non-Athenian mother, and the mothers of Cimon and Themistocles were not Greek at all, but Thracian. As Athens attracted an increasing number of resident aliens (metics), this shift in the definition of citizen worked to keep the immigrant population more sharply distinguished politically.
- Likewise the status of women seems lower in Athens than in many Greek cities. At Sparta women competed in public exercise — so in Aristophanes' Lysistrata the Athenian women admire the tanned, muscular bodies of their Sparten counterparts — and women could own property in their own right, as they could not at Athens. Misogyny was by no means an Athenian invention, but it has been claimed that in regard to gender democracy generalised a harsher set of values derived, again, from the common people. Democracy may well have been impossible without the contribution of women's labour (Hansen 1987: 318).
- Slave use was more widespread at Athens than in other Greek cities. Indeed the extensive use of imported non-Greeks ("barbarians") as chattel slaves seems to have been an Athenian development. This triggers the parodoxical question: Was democracy "based on" slavery? It does seem clear that possession of slaves allowed even poorer Athenians — owning a few slaves was by no means equated with wealth — to devote more of their time to political life. But whether democracy depended on this extra time is impossible to say. The breadth of slave ownership also meant that the leisure of the rich (the small minority who were actually free of the need to work) rested less than it would have on the exploitation of their less well-off fellow citizens. Working for wages was clearly regarded as subjection to the will of another, but at least debt servitude had been abolished at Athens (under the reforms of Solon at the start of the 6th century BC). By allowing a new kind of equality among citizens this opened the way to democracy, which in turn called for a new means, chattel slavery, to at least partially equalise the availability of leisure between rich and poor. In the absence of reliable statistics all these connections remain speculative. However, as Cornelius Castoriadis pointed out, other societies also kept slaves, yet did not develop democracy. Even with respect to slavery the new citizen law of 450 BC may have have had effect: it is speculated that originally Athenian fathers had been able to register for citizenship offspring had with slave women (Hansen 1987:53). This will have rested on an older, less categorical sense of what it meant to be a slave. Contemporary opponents of majoritarianism (arguably the principle behind Athenian democracy) call it an illiberal regime (in contrast to liberal democracy) that allegedly leads to anomie, balkanization and xenophobia. Proponents (especially of majoritarianism) deny these accusations, and argue that any faults in Athenian democracy were due to the fact that the franchise was quite limited (only male citizens could vote - women, slaves and non-citizens were excluded). Despite this limited franchise, Athenian democracy was certainly the first - and perhaps the best - example of a working direct democracy.

References

- Hansen M.H. 1987, The Athenian Democracy in the age of Demosthenes. Oxford.
- Manville B. and J. Ober 2003, A company of citizens : what the world's first democracy teaches leaders about creating great organizations. Boston.
- Meier C. 1998, Athens: a portrait of the city in its Golden Age (translated by R. and R. Kimber). New York.
- Ober J 1989, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology and the Power of the People. Princeton.
- Ober J and C. Hendrick (edds) 1996, Demokratia : a conversation on democracies, ancient and modern. Princeton.
- Rhodes P.J.(ed) 2004, Athenian democracy. Edinburgh.

External links

- [http://www.constitution.org/ari/athen_00.htm The Athenian Constitution, Aristotle]
- [http://www.stoa.org/projects/demos/home?greekEncoding=UnicodeC Dēmos: Classical Athenian Democracy], A digital
- [http://www.whyjesusiswhite.com/democracy/athens/shortfalls] encyclopedia: the history, institutions, and people of democratic Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, Christopher Blackwell, ed. Category:Ancient Greece Category:Political systems

5th century BC

(2nd millennium BC - 1st millennium BC - 1st millennium) ----

Overview

The 5th and 6th centuries BC are a period of philosophical brilliance among advanced civilizations. Ancient Greek philosophy develops during the 5th century BC, setting the foundation for Western ideology.

Events

- Demotic becomes the dominant script of ancient Egypt
- Persians invade Greece twice (Persian Wars)
- Battle of Marathon (490)
- 486 BCE First Buddist Council at Rejgaha, under the patronage of King Ajatasattu. Oral tradition established for the first time.

Significant persons

- Pythagoras of Samos, Greek mathematician. See Pythagorean theorem. (582 - 496 BC).
- Gautama Buddha, founding figure of Buddhism (ca. 563 - 483 BC).
- Confucius, founding figure of Confucianism (551 - 479 BC).
- Aeschylus of Athens, playwright (525 - 456 BC).
- Darius I, King of Persia (reigned 521 - 485 BC).
- Sophocles of Athens, playwright (496 - 406 BC).
- Pericles of Athens, politician (ca. 495 - 429 BC).
- Herodotus of Halicarnassus, historian (ca. 485 BC).
- Euripides of Athens, playwright (ca. 480 - 406 BC).
- Socrates of Athens, philosopher (470 - 399 BC).
- Aristophanes of Athens, playwright (ca. 446 - 385 BC).
- Darius II, king of Persia (reigned 423-404 BC)
- Ezra and Nehemiah active in Judea.
- Tollund Man, Human sacrifice victim on the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark, possibly the earliest known evidence for worship of Odin.
- Empedocles

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

- Cast iron is first used in Wu.

Decades and years

Category:5th century BC ko:기원전 5세기 ja:紀元前5世紀

Apollo

Apollo (Greek: Απόλλων, Apóllōn; Απελλων) is a god in Greek and Roman mythology, the son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin of Artemis (goddess of the hunt), one of the most important and many-sided of the Olympian divinities. In later times he became in part confused or equated with Helios, god of the sun, and his sister similarly equated with Selene, goddess of the moon in religious contexts. But Apollo and Helios/Sol remained quite separate beings in literary/mythological texts. In Etruscan mythology, he was known as Aplu.

Worship

Apollo is considered to have dominion over plague, light, healing, colonists, medicine, archery, poetry, prophecy, dance, reason, intellectualism, Shamans, and as the patron defender of herds and flocks. Apollo had a famous oracle in Crete and other notable ones in Clarus and Branchidae.Branchidae.]] Apollo is known as the leader of the Muses ("musagetes") and director of their choir. His attributes include: swans, wolves, dolphins, bows and arrows, a laurel crown, the cithara (or lyre) and plectrum. The sacrificial tripod is another attribute, representative of his prophetic powers. The Pythian Games were held in his honor every four years at Delphi. Paeans were the name of hymns sung to Apollo. The most usual attributes of Apollo were the lyre and the bow; the tripod especially was dedicated to him as the god of prophecy. Among plants, the bay, used in expiatory sacrifices and also for making the crown of victory at the Pythian games, and the palm-tree, under which he was born in Delos, were sacred to him; among animals and birds, the wolf, the roe, the swan, the hawk, the raven, the crow, the snake, the mouse, the grasshopper and the griffin, a mixture of the eagle and the lion evidently of Eastern origin. The swan and grasshopper symbolize music and song; the hawk, raven, crow and snake have reference to his functions as the god of prophecy. The chief festivals held in honour of Apollo were the Carneia, Daphnephoria, Delia, Hyacinthia, Pyanepsia, Pythia and Thargelia. Among the Romans the worship of Apollo was adopted from the Greeks. There is a tradition that the Delphian oracle was consulted as early as the period of the kings during the reign of Tarquinius Superbus, and in 430 a temple was dedicated to Apollo on the occasion of a pestilence, and during the Second Punic War (in 212) the Ludi Apollinares were instituted in his honour. It was in the time of Augustus, who considered himself under the special protection of Apollo and was even said to be his son, that his worship developed and he became one of the chief gods of Rome. After the battle of Actium, Augustus enlarged his old temple, dedicated a portion of the spoil to him, and instituted quinquennial games in his honour. He also erected a new temple on the Palatine hill and transferred the secular games, for which Horace composed his Carmen Saeculare, to Apollo and Diana. As god of colonization, Apollo gave guidance on colonies, especially during the height of colonization,750-550 BC. According to Greek tradition, he helped Cretan or Arcadian colonists find the city of Troy. However, this story may reflect a cultural influence which had the reverse direction: Hittite cuneiform texts mention a Minor Asian god called Appaliunas or Apalunas in connection with the city of Wilusa, which is now regarded as being identical with the Greek Illios by most scholars. In this interpretation, Apollo’s title of Lykegenes can simply be read as "born in Lycia", which effectively severs the g

Ancient Agora of Athens

External links and references

Athens

Name

History

Location and setting

Tourist attractions

20th century architecture in Athens

Transportation

Municipality

Olympics 2004

Related topics

Cities nicknamed "Athens"

External links

Housing

Types of house

Inside the house

Shelters

Construction

Animal houses

Usage in language

Heraldry

See also

Articles

Lists

External link

Pisistratus

Peisistratos of Athens

Peisistratos the son of Nestor

6th century BC

Overview

Events

Significant persons

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

Athenian government

Overview

Assembly

Officeholders

Council of 500

Courts

Shifting balance between Assembly and Courts

Citizen-initiator

Participation and exclusion

Size and make-up of the Athenian population

Citizenship in Athens

Main bodies of governance

Assembly

Council of 500

Athenian Courts

Officeholders

Selection by lot (Allotment)

Elected

Individualism in Athenian democracy

Criticism of the democracy

See also

References

External links

5th century BC

Overview

Events

Significant persons

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

Decades and years

Apollo

Worship