why did athenian democracy fail
Our latest articles delivered to your inbox, once a week: Our mission is to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide. The majority won the day and the decision was final. 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. As the new Alexander, he may also have seen the conquest of Greece as a natural move. After all, at the time of writing, Athens was the greatest single power in the entire Greek world By 413, however, the argument from success in favour of radical democracy was beginning to collapse, as Athens' fortunes in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta began seriously to decline. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. 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. In 411 and again in 404 Athens experienced two, equally radical counter-coups and the establishment of narrow oligarchic regimes, first of the 400 led by the formidable intellectual Antiphon, and then of the 30, led by Plato's relative Critias. In 229, when the Macedonian King Demetrius II died, leaving nine-year-old Philip V as his heir, the Athenians took advantage of the power vacuum and negotiated the removal of the garrison at Piraeus. How Rome Destroyed Its Own Republic - HISTORY Inside Piraeus, Archelaus countered by building towers for his siege engines. The . For only $5 per month you can become a member and support our mission to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide. Under Macedonian control, Athens had dwindled to a third-rank power, with no independence in foreign affairs and an insignificant military. Inside homes, the Romans discovered a sight that must have horrified even the most hardened among them: human flesh prepared as food. World History Encyclopedia. Solon, (born c. 630 bcedied c. 560 bce), Athenian statesman, known as one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece (the others were Chilon of Sparta, Thales of Miletus, Bias of Priene, Cleobulus of Lindos, Pittacus of Mytilene, and Periander of Corinth). The stalemate continued. One which is so bad that people ultimately cry out for a dictator. After all, at the time of writing, Athens was the greatest single power in the entire Greek world, and that fact could not be totally unconnected with the fact that Athens was a democracy. Then, early in the first century BC, a political crisis engulfed Athens when its eponymous archon, or chief magistrate, refused to abide by the Athenian constitutions one-term limit. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law; when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses. Critics and Critiques of Athenian Democracy - Logo Of The BBC a unique and truly revolutionary system that realized its basic principle to an unprecedented and quite extreme extent: no polis had ever dared to give all its citizens equal political rights, regardless of their descent, wealth, social standing, education, personal qualities, and any other factors that usually determined status in a community. The Athenian statesman Pericles defined democracy as a system which protects the interests of all the people, not just a minority. The masses were, in brief, shortsighted, selfish and fickle, an easy prey to unscrupulous orators who came to be known as demagogues. The main interest for us centres on the arguments of the first speaker, in favour of what he calls isonomy, or equality under the laws. However, in reality, it was actually Persia who had won the war. The famous Long Walls that had connected the two cities during the Peloponnesian War had since fallen into disrepair. This money was only to cover expenses though, as any attempt to profit from public positions was severely punished. His political opponents had seized control of Rome, declared him a public enemy, and forced his wife and children to flee to his camp in Greece. Less than two years separate these scenes. Sulla ordered another retreat, and turned his attention to Athens, which by now was a softer target than Piraeus. To protect their money, some Athenians buried coin hoards. We contribute a share of our revenue to remove carbon from the atmosphere and we offset our team's carbon footprint. That was one, class-based sort of objection to Greek-style direct democracy. (Ostracism, in which a citizen could be expelled from the Athenian city-state for 10 years, was among the powers of the ekklesia.) People rushed to greet him as he was carried into the city on a scarlet-covered couch, wearing a ring with Mithridatess portrait. Plutarch also claims that Aristion took to dancing on the walls and shouting insults at Sulla. The name of "democracy" became an excuse to turn on anyone regarded as an enemy of the state, even good politicians who have, as a result, almost been forgotten. Now all citizens could participate in government, not just aristocrats. The resulting decision to try and condemn to death the eight generals collectively was in fact the height, or depth, of illegality. (Only about 5,000 men attended each session of the Assembly; the rest were serving in the army or navy or working to support their families.). According to Appian, Sulla ordered an indiscriminate massacre, not sparing women or children. Many Athenians were so distraught that they committed suicide by throwing themselves at the soldiers. Athenion at first feigned a reluctance to speak because of the sheer scale of what is to be said, according to Posidonius. Not only do we pay for our servers, but also for related services such as our content delivery network, Google Workspace, email, and much more. This "slippery-fish diplomacy" helped it survive military defeats and widespread political turbulence, but at the expense of its political system. Suffering dearly, the Greek cities on the Anatolian coast went looking for help and found a deliverer in Mithridates VI, king of Pontus in northeastern Anatolia. Direct involvement in the politics of the polis also meant that the Athenians developed a unique collective identity and probably too, a certain pride in their system, as shown in Pericles' famous Funeral Oration for the Athenian dead in 431 BCE, the first year of the Peloponnesian War: Athens' constitution is called a democracy because it respects the interests not of a minority but of the whole people. Athenian democracy was a direct democracy made up of three important institutions. The first concrete evidence for this crucial invention comes in the Histories of Herodotus, a brilliant work composed over several years, delivered orally to a variety of audiences all round the enormously extended Greek world, and published in some sense as a whole perhaps in the 420s BC. A mass slaughter followed. It was here in the courts that laws made by the assembly could be challenged and decisions were made regarding ostracism, naturalization, and remission of debt. Cartwright, Mark. Archaic Greece saw advances in art, poetry and technology, but is known as the age in which the polis, or city-state, was read more, In the late 6th century B.C., the Greek city-state of Athens began to lay the foundations for a new kind of political system. Arriving at Delos, Archelaus quickly took the island. By Athenian democratic standards of justice, which are not ours, the guilt of Socrates was sufficiently proven. But where Athenion failed, Mithridates was determined to succeed. Chronological order of government in ancient Athens. We are committed to protecting your personal information and being transparent about what information we hold. The mighty Persian empire (founded in Asia a generation earlier by Cyrus the Great and expanded by his son Cambyses to take in Egypt) is in crisis, since a usurper has occupied the throne. Becoming more desperate, they gathered wild plants on the slopes of the Acropolis and boiled shoes and leather oil-flasks. democratic system failed to be effective. The End of Athens: How the City-State's Democracy was Destroyed Sulla had the tyrant and his bodyguard executed. As he advanced, Thebes and the other Greek cities that had allied with Archelaus nimbly switched back to the Roman side. But in 200, Philip, having come of age and claimed the crown, dispatched an army toward Athens to regain the port. Sulla attacked again the next morning with his entire army, hoping the wet mortar of the lunettes would not hold. The mass involvement of all male citizens and the expectation that they should participate actively in the running of the polis is clear in this quote from Thucydides: We alone consider a citizen who does not partake in politics not only one who minds his own business but useless. The Romans quickly got to work on their own tunnel, and when the diggers from both sides met, a savage fight broke out underground, the miners hacking at each other with spears and swords as well as they could in the darkness, according to Appian. Solon | Biography, Reforms, Importance, & Facts | Britannica The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. Athens declared the Delos harbor duty-free, and the island prospered as a major trading center. Other city-states had, at one time or another, systems of democracy, notably Argos, Syracuse, Rhodes, and Erythrai. Draco writing the first written law code in Athens was the initiating event that brought democracy to Athens. This executive of the executive had a chairman (epistates) who was chosen by lot each day. When a Roman ram breached part of the walls of Piraeus, Sulla directed fire-bearing missiles against a nearby Pontic tower, sending it up in flames like a monstrous torch. According to a fragmentary account by the historian Posidonius, Athenion's letters persuaded Athens that "the Roman supremacy was broken." The prospect of the Anatolian Greeks throwing off Roman rule also sparked pan-Hellenic solidarity. From Democrats To Kings is published by Icon Books. Cleisthenes formally identified free inhabitants of Attica as citizens of Athens, which gave them power and a role in a sense of civic solidarity. Ancient Athenian democracy differs from the democracy that we are familiar with in the present day. Hes just returned to the city-state from a mission across the Aegean Sea to Anatolia, where he forged an alliance with a great king. After defeating the Bithynians, Mithridates drove into the Roman province of Asia. Soon after, Roman soldiers overheard men in the Athenian neighborhood of the Kerameikos, northwest of the Acropolis, grousing about the neglected defenses there. The Pontic troops had built other lunettes inside, but the Romans attacked each wall with manic energy. Mithridates swiftly retaliated, invading and overrunning Bithynia. Regardless, Sulla benefited greatly. The Pontic king sent his Greek mercenary, General Archelaus, into the Aegean with a fleet. Originally published in the Spring 2011 issue of Military History Quarterly. 'Oh, run away and play', rejoins Pericles, irritated; 'I was good at those sorts of debating tricks when I was your age.'. World History Encyclopedia, 03 Apr 2018. Antiphon's regime lasted only a few months, and after a brief experiment with a more moderate form of oligarchy the Athenians restored the old democratic institutions pretty much as they had been. The Pompeion was ravaged beyond repair and left to decay. Blood flows in the narrow streets, as the Romans butcher the Athenianswomen and children included. This time, they burst through Archelauss hastily constructed lunette. Then there was the view that the mob, the poor majority, were nothing but a collective tyrant. The boule was a group of 500 men, 50 from each of ten Athenian tribes, who served on the Council for one year. In the words of historian K. A. Raaflaub, democracy in ancient Athens was. Running a website with millions of readers every month is expensive. Some 2,000 of Archelauss men were killed. In these intellectuals' view, government was an art, craft or skill, and should be entrusted only to the skilled and intelligent, who were by definition a minority. For example, in Athens in the middle of the 4th century there were about 100,000 citizens (Athenian citizenship was limited to men and women whose parents had also been Athenian citizens), about 10,000 metoikoi, or resident foreigners, and 150,000 slaves. Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. That at any rate is the assumed situation. The number of dead is beyond counting. The Greek idea of democracy was different from present-day democracy because, in Athens, all adult citizens were required to take an active part in the government. This newfound alliance initially benefited Athens. Intellectual anti-democrats such as Socrates and Plato, for instance, argued that the majority of the people, because they were by and large ignorant and unskilled, would always get it wrong. Democracy of the Ancient Athens | Short history website Plato realized why democracy failed - even in ideal conditions, such as the direct democracy of ancient Athens. Athens, humbled in recent years by the Romans, can seize control of its destiny, Athenion declares. In the year 507 B.C., the Athenian leader Cleisthenes introduced a system of political reforms that he called demokratia, or rule by the people (from demos, the people, and kratos, or power). Those defeats persuaded Mithridates to end the war. Thank you! BBC 2014 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. The group made decisions by simple majority vote. "use strict";(function(){var insertion=document.getElementById("citation-access-date");var date=new Date().toLocaleDateString(undefined,{month:"long",day:"numeric",year:"numeric"});insertion.parentElement.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(date),insertion)})(); FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. Paul Cartledge is Professor of Greek History at the University of Cambridge. Immediately following the Bronze Age collapse and at the start of the Dark . Third, was the slave population which . Greek myths explained everything from religious rituals to the weather, and read more, The term Ancient, or Archaic, Greece refers to the years 700-480 B.C., not the Classical Age (480-323 B.C.) One unusual critic is an Athenian writer whom we know familiarly as the 'Old Oligarch'. With the Persians closing in on the Greek capitol, Athenian general read more, The story of the Trojan Warthe Bronze Age conflict between the kingdoms of Troy and Mycenaean Greecestraddles the history and mythology of ancient Greece and inspired the greatest writers of antiquity, from Homer, Herodotus and Sophocles to Virgil. The Romans placed a proxy on the Bithynian throne and encouraged him to raid Pontic territory. Others brought up rams and entered the breach theyd made in the walls earlier. Athens' democracy in fact recovered from these injuries within years. Buildings in the Agora and on the south side of the Acropolis remained damaged for decades, monuments to the poverty in postwar Athens. Perhaps the most notoriously bad decisions taken by the Athenian dmos were the execution of six generals after they had actually won the battle of Arginousai in 406 BCE and the death sentence given to the philosopher Socrates in 399 BCE. Most of all, Pericles paid artisans to build temples read more, Ancient Greek mythology is a vast and fascinating group of legends about gods and goddesses, heroes and monsters, warriors and fools, that were an important part of everyday life in the ancient world. This is a form of government which puts the power to rule in the hands of . To the Persians, he emphasized his descent from ancient Persian kings. The ancient Greeks have provided us with fine art, breath-taking temples, timeless theatre, and some of the greatest philosophers, but it is democracy which is, perhaps, their greatest and most enduring legacy. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. To subscribe, click here. The contemporary sources which describe the workings of democracy typically relate to Athens and include such texts as the Constitution of the Athenians from the School of Aristotle; the works of the Greek historians Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon; texts of over 150 speeches by such figures as Demosthenes; inscriptions in stone of decrees, laws, contracts, public honours and more; and Greek Comedy plays such as those by Aristophanes. Ancient Greece is often referred to as "the cradle of democracy.". The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes: Structure, Principles Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. Any citizen could speak to the assembly and vote on decisions by simply holding up their hands. It dealt with ambassadors and representatives from other city-states. Then there was also an executive committee of the boul which consisted of one tribe of the ten which participated in the boul (i.e., 50 citizens, known as prytaneis) elected on a rotation basis, so each tribe composed the executive once each year. Athenian Democracy - World History Encyclopedia When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. Certainly, he was an oligarch, but whether he was old or not we can't say. Indeed, there was a specially designed machine of coloured tokens (kleroterion) to ensure those selected were chosen randomly, a process magistrates had to go through twice. By Professor Paul Cartledge Originally Answered: Did Athenian democracy failed because of its democratic nature? They didnt act immediately; a fight over who would lead the army against Mithridates was settled only when Consul Lucius Cornelius Sulla secured the command by marching on Rome, an unprecedented move. Illustrating the esteem in which democratic government was held, there was even a divine personification of the ideal of democracy, the goddess Demokratia. 2023 A&E Television Networks, LLC. When the Romans destroyed the Macedonian Kingdom in 168, the Senate awarded Athens the Aegean island of Delos. The constitutional change, according to Thucydides, seemed the only way to win much-needed support from Persia against the old enemy Sparta and, further, it was thought that the change would not be a permanent one. A marble relief showing the People of Athens being crowned by Democracy, inscribed with a law against tyranny passed by the people of Athens in 336 B.C. The Roman leaders, he said, were prisoners, and ordinary Romans were hiding in temples, prostrate before the statues of the gods. Oracles from all sides predicted Mithridatess future victories, he said, and other nations were rushing to join forces with him. War between Pontus and Romethe First Mithridatic Warbroke out in 89 BC over the petty state of Bithynia in northwestern Anatolia. The classical period was an era of war and conflictfirst between the Greeks and the Persians, then between the read more. The word democracy (dmokratia) derives from dmos, which refers to the entire citizen body: the People. The assembly met at least once a month, more likely two or three times, on the Pnyx hill in a dedicated space which could accommodate around 6000 citizens. Rome responded, rushing 20 warships and 1,000 troops to Piraeus to keep Philip V at bay. Some Rights Reserved (2009-2023) under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license unless otherwise noted. The Romans built a huge mobile siege tower that reached higher than the citys walls, and placed catapults in its upper reaches to fire down upon the defenders. Aristion didnt hold out long: He surrendered when he ran out of drinking water. By the end, it was hailing its latest ruler, Demetrius, as both a king and a living God. Our publication has been reviewed for educational use by Common Sense Education, Internet Scout (University of Wisconsin), Merlot (California State University), OER Commons and the School Library Journal. Indeed, for the Athenian democrats, elections would have struck at the heart of democracy: They would have allowed some people to assert themselves, arrogantly and unjustly, against the others. Athenian Government Study Guide Flashcards | Quizlet There were 3 classes in the society of ancient Athens. In Athenian democracy, not only did citizens participate in a direct democracy whereby they themselves made the decisions by which they lived, but they also actively served in the institutions that governed them, and so they directly controlled all parts of the political process. Ideals such as these would form the cornerstones of all democracies in the modern world. Democracy, however, was found in other areas as well and after the conquests of Alexander the Great and the process of Hellenization, it became the norm for both the liberated cities in Asia Minor as well as new . Sulla had siege engines built on the spot, cutting down the groves of trees in the Athenian suburb of the Academy, where Plato had taught some three centuries earlier. Since the 19th-century read more, The term classical Greece refers to the period between the Persian Wars at the beginning of the fifth century B.C. The Romans looted even the great shrine at Delphi dedicated to Apollo. When Athenion sent a force to seize control of Delos, a Roman unit swiftly defeated it. Under this system, all male citizens - the dmos - had equal political rights, freedom of speech, and the opportunity to participate directly in the political arena.