Attica is a peninsula jutting out into the sea at that point where the land of the Balkans comes to an end. Naturally protected by a wreath of mountains, it is open only to the west, to the sea, ensuring mild winters. Its soil has always been poor owing to the lack of regular rainfall, and because what little seasonal rain did fall would erode the soil, washing it away with the waters of the Kefissos and Illisos Rivers into the Bay of Phaleron.
As in all primitive societies, when the first inhabitants abandoned the nomadic life, they settled in groups creating the first villages. These groups, the clans, were led by a chieftain to whom they all owed blind obedience. Since they were but rudimentary cultivators and had to be hunters as well, the members of the clan had common ownership of the lands, their produce, the children who were born, and the game they killed. Each clan had some animal as a cult idol or totem which they considered to be their initial forefather. There were unwritten laws of mutual defence within the clan and if by chance an enemy clan insulted them, retaliation was everyone's business. It is the same primitive idea of the vendetta which still exists in closed societies such as in Crete, Mani and Sicily.
Epic Security
When the clan grew too large for the few communal fields to feed all its members, some would leave and settle in nearby regions under a new chieftain. Many clans of common descent constituted a tribe. The members of the tribe no longer owned the lands communally and the interests of each clan began to weaken the early bonds; nor did the collective punishment of enemies exist any more, but rather this duty devolved on the individual. But the totem remained powerful and a charismatic priest became an anax (king) with absolute authority, as he was considered to be the representative of unknown divine powers.
The competition which inevitably developed among tribe members led to the distinction between the more powerful, capable defenders of their weaker close relatives, establishing the principle of the individual family. There were of course still the anaktes (kings), but gradually groups began to take shape of powerful people related by blood. These were the phratries which created a primitive form of society.
In 1627 an inscribed marble plaque, now in Oxford, was found on the island of Paros. It proved to be an account of inestimable value as it tells us both the chronology of all the important events that took place, mainly in Attica, as well as the dates of important people's birth and death. It starts with Kekrops, whom it places in the prehistoric 16th century BC, and ends in 264 AD; the chronology is based on the dating of the Olympic Games which began to be held in 776 BC. Thus, in addition to the information which comes down to us through myth, we also have the Parian Marble which tells us about the evolution of archaic society in Attica. First the clan, with its totemic, mythic chieftain Kekrops in the form of a snake, then the tribe whose hereditary king was the strongest man among the clans. Among these was Theseus who is believed to have ruled in the 13th century BC.
This was the era when the tribe began to grow weaker as groups of worthy newcomers began being incorporated into the society, despite the fact that they came from other regions. Names ending in -eus, such as Aegeus, Theseus and later Achilleus and Odysseus were regarded as being foreign, Pelasgian names. There is a reference in Rhapsody B of the Iliad, when Achilles, pouring a libation to the great god Zeus, called him "Pelasgian" and "Dodonian".
The newcomers, initially few in number and peaceful, became many and violent in later centuries under pressure from new warlike tribes who invaded, conquered, and then settled in the vanquished territories. In ancient Athens, the institution of the monarchy continues up to Kodros, who was not of Attic origin. His father Melanthus was descended from the royal clan in Pylos and subsequently exiled by the Dorian conquerors. Upon reaching Attica, he won the throne through treachery. In the 11th century BC, Kodros himself came up against the Dorian invasion, and in obedience to a command from the oracle, allowed himself to be sacrificed to save his city. He was the last hereditary king. In his honor, the Athenians decided to elect their kings from then on, at first every ten years, and then every year.
The Dorian invasion brought massive changes, one of the most significant of which was that the Earth-mother cult evolved into the worship of the almighty Father, a stern, war loving figure. The king was thrust aside by the brave warriors who had won the choicest lands by force of arms, and who then installed their former owners on their own land to cultivate it as serfs. The admiration for the warrior class which came into being then became visible in the 8th century Homeric epics and in the depiction of the kouroi: sturdy young men destined to predominate in a military society. The elected monarch had to prove his might in order to survive and the young braves who accompanied him had always to be prepared for disputes and battles. By then, two classes had emerged: the warriors, who became possessors of the earth and enjoyed its fruits, and the people who worked this land but had no rights. It was a purely feudal society.
Many of the original inhabitants preferred to move on, taking their families, their sacred objects and the cults and customs of their forefathers with them, rather than remain as serfs on land which was no longer theirs. Following familiar winds and currents, they relocated on the opposite coasts of the Mediterranean, building maritime towns that would soon prosper. Colonists began setting forth vigorously, since the class of seamen and merchants was gaining ground over the traditional families of the countryside who had remained on the land of their fathers. But here too there was a remarkable development; the local descendants of those primeval hunters who had become peace-loving farmers of the land and then abruptly found themselves conquered cultivators managed to assimilate all manner of newcomers so that the latter, too, in their turn ultimately came to regard themselves as local people. Thus they all became children of the same gods.
The centuries that followed the Dorian invasion were relatively calm as the population movements ceased. We do not know much about the early centuries, apart from the fact that the clans of the tribe, although living in separate areas, all came under some primitive form of organised politeia (society). According to Thucydides, the first synoikismos (co-settlement) is thought to have been in existence as early as the reign of Theseus. This was also the period when myths were taking shape about earlier times in order to support the contemporary men of power who governed as aristoi (notables), creating the aristocratic (aristocracy). This was a return to the broader concept of the patriarchal clan, where the phratries had their own sacred objects, graves, and particular customs. All together they took care to elect the Basileus (king) who represented religion, the Polemarchos (war chief) who was responsible for the inhabitants' security and the Archon who ruled over all. There were also annually elected representatives of the phratries who, after their term was over, became life members of the Boule (council of citizens) which would meet in the Prytaneion (public hall).
Later historians speculated that Theseus had founded the first Prytaneion, although we do not know its precise location. It must have been somewhere between the entrance to the fortified acropolis and the rock of the Areopagus. This little hill was highly significant during the early history of Athens. One myth says that the god Ares took refuge there during a period of temporary banishment from Olympus owing to a death he had caused; it is said that the rock has been called Areopagus since then.
Another myth identifies it as the spot where Orestes was tried for the heinous crime of matricide. The terrible Erinyes (Furies), also known as Ares (curses), were said to have pursued him to that place where they had an ancient sanctuary in a cave at the foot of the rock inwhich they were worshipped under the mollifying name of the Semnai (the Modest Ones). That Orestes was relieved of his guilt by his protectress Athena meant the abolition of the personal vindictive punishment and the beginning of a commonly accepted justice based on the judgment of the majority.
The existence of a Prytaneion in which ordinary people sat in judgment, and the sessions of a Boule on the Areopagus for the hearing of significant wrong-doing meant that the Polis was on its way to becoming organized, even though tribal justice was still strong in the minds of the people. Dracon's first attempt to create laws was based on this form of justice, and punishments were so harsh (draconian) that his laws were said to have been written in blood. The rule by powerful families favored the oligarchy (rule of the few) while the idea of submission to the power of the strongest was passed down to the people through epic poetry, together with the moral precept of avoiding arrogance. The ethical principles of the tribe were still very much alive, as can be seen in the judgment in the case of Kylon which, at least theoretically, imposed eternal punishment on those who dared to violate the sacred rights of the suppliant.
It all started in the mid-7th century BC when a certain Kylon, victor in the Olympic Games, wanted to become dictator. He failed and fled with his followers to the sanctuary of Athena Polias on the Acropolis. After assurances from his adversaries that they would respect the sacred tradition of sanctuary, the would-be dictators were bound by a cord to a statue of the goddess and brought down from the sanctuary. But their wrathful enemies cut the cord and killed them. So heinous was this act judged to be that the state decided to punish the perpetrators and their descendants by lifelong exile, although later this punishment was forgotten. Political disputes followed, and out of this turbulence and anarchy appeared the figure of Solon.
Born of a wealthy family in the middle of the 7th century BC, Solon was a remarkable example of a man who excelled in all fields: poet, traveler, merchant, law-maker, a man of moderation and reason, strict but profoundly humanitarian, he is justly regarded as one of the Seven Sages of antiquity. Enjoying the esteem of all his fellow citizens, as Aristotle informs us, he undertook to organise Athenian society on more solid grounds.
Solon's first move was to ban the custom whereby poor people and their children became slaves to their creditors. This abolition of serfdom and release from debts was called seisachtheia, because it removed the burden of debt from the shoulders of the poor. At the same time, however, Solon ruled that young people from the working classes had to be trained in a craft, and instituted a punishment for those who avoided work. There could be no justification for not working, as the son was obliged to take up his father's trade. A merchant, as his father had been, Solon was well aware of the power of money. For this reason he dared to displease the traditional tribal aristocracy by introducing a revenues policy.
Euripides' tragedy Ion tells us of the four initial tribes of Attica who were descended from Apollo's son of that name. The four tribes were: the Geleontes (nobles), the Hoplites (military), the Argadeis (workers) and the Aegikoreis (shep herds). Putting aside the tribes, Solon divided the Athenians into four classes according to the amount of their income: the Pentakosiomedimnoi (wealthy), the Hippeis (knights), the Zeugitai (small land-owners) and the Thetes (workers). Of all these, only the first had the right of archontia, i.e. the right to be elected to the highest offices by their own class and the two immediately below it. Although the members of the more numerous thetes did not have this privilege, they were exempted from taxes and, above all, they were permitted to be present at the assemblies. There they were given the right to an equal vote in electing citizens to lower offices and in taking decisions about enforcing the laws. At that point, they were all considered to be equal citizens and anyone who managed to acquire a higher income could aspire to a higher social plane.
The Ionian colonists had already developed their philosophical thought, a consequence of economic well-being. From the Phoenicians, the capable Mediterranean merchants with whom they traded, the Ionians had taken a form of script which they adapted to their own speech. After the 8th century, with the evolution of the phonetic alphabet, concepts such as that of Anaximandros' Apeiron (infinite) and Heraclitus' "Ta panta rei" (everything is in a state of constant flux) became widespread. The use of script helped Solon to impose his innovations. He gave the order for his decisions to be written on kyrbeis, which were polygonal wooden columns, and made all citizens swear that they would obey what was written. In a selected spot close to the city gates, a stoa (portico) was built in which these laws were kept for all to see. After instituting these profound changes in the social life of the city, Solon departed for ten years, leaving the Athenians to go through a trial period of adjustment. Peace reigned for just five of those years, but the foundations for the Republic had already been laid.
The initial rural society had by then become a commercial one with its centre in the Agora. All transactions took place there, as well as all gatherings of citizens, because logos (discourse) was the child of the city and the agora became the place in which people took part in public affairs. The society now had two focal points around which the life of its inhabitants revolved: religion had its sanctuaries and the state acquired the Agora. The Asty had come into being.
Ancient Athens
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