The March of Freedom

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Institute for Philosophical Research

Apostolos L. Pierris

April 15^th, 2008

CYCLE A

The Making of a Miracle

I. The Beginning of a Great Revolution

II. The March of Freedom

III. Power – Building (Themistocles)

IV. Factors of Greatness (Agora – Acropolis – Peiraeus – Eleusis – Laureion)

V. Mind, the Ruler of All

VI. A Strategy of Contentment at the Pinnacle of Glory (Pericles)

VII. Failure!

VIII. Lessons for Today (The Athenian Fatal Error and the American Manifest Destiny)

Institute for Philosophical Research

Apostolos L. Pierris

April 15^th, 2008

CYCLE A: THE MAKING OF A MIRACLE

PART II

The March of Freedom

Text

(First Draft)

Institute for Philosophical Research

Apostolos L. Pierris

April 15^th, 2008

CYCLE A

The Making of a Miracle

I. The Beginning of a Great Revolution

II. The March of Freedom

III. Power – Building (Themistocles)

IV. Factors of Greatness (Agora – Acropolis – Peiraeus – Eleusis – Laureion)

V. Mind, the Ruler of All

VI. A Strategy of Contentment at the Pinnacle of Glory (Pericles)

VII. Failure!

VIII. Lessons for Today (The Athenian Fatal Error and the American Manifest Destiny)

Institute for Philosophical Research

Apostolos L. Pierris

April 15^th, 2008

CYCLE A: THE MAKING OF A MIRACLE

PART II

The March of Freedom

Text

(First Draft)

You looked in our first episode at the manifold beginnings of a single, colossal factor that was going to transform human existence, to fulfil man’s nature as a “rational animal” and to determine human history thereafter in multiple ways direct and indirect. We called that new birth the start of the Revolution of Logos, and we compared it in significance for human evolution to the Neolithic Revolution. Such a mighty step forward it represented towards the fullest self-realisation of man’s potential, which is the ultimate end of history, its final cause.

What happened was in a nutshell this. Man started to recognise the inherent structure of reality, on a level undreamt of before. Being was lighted and man’s mind consequently became enlightened. We are privileged to observe the “Naissance” there and then of what as “Renaissance” was going to mould modern history a very long time afterwards. And this is the awareness that being is intelligible and reality orderly in a manner that can be grasped by the human intellect. The intrinsic correspondence of the intelligibility of being on the one hand and of the intelligence of man on the other is fundamental for the ancient Greek concept of “Reason” - Logos. We are in, and of, the world of existence. And this is why we are able to see its workings from within; or, better, to have its secrets revealed to us. We can thus penetrate deeper into the mystery of being; and therefore we can be lifted higher up in the scale of our self-realisation. Just as by a closer understanding of the order of nature we can overcome the law of gravity in the furtherance of our purposes without of course annulling it.

The order of existence started then to become intelligible not merely in the symbolic way of the religious awareness of things but in the more transparent intellectual manner that was pregnant with consequences which were going to transform human life. The symbol of the mysteries begun to be replaced by the concept of knowledge. And the general correlations that were felt even before to exist between the world of gods and the world of nature and man, were illuminated by the novel understanding of rational order and systematically articulated as to cover the specifics of the corresponding systems. The divine order was construed as the fundamental order of reality. This construal turned of course to be a double-edged sword: at first, it cut both ways. Before long, however, the scales started to be tipped in the one sense rather than in the other. One would sooner explain the structure of the world of gods by means of the new philosophical insight into the nature of the “cosmos”, rather than the other way round. Theology became more and more metaphysical, and the revelations of mystery assumed the form of conceptual clarity and rational coherence as highest marks of beingness. It all ended up in allegory, the potent weapon of coordinating symbolic and scientific thought.

In the first episode of the series, we surveyed the first significant appearances of the new spirit of rationality, the basic manifestations of the starting revolution, in areas like art, economy, ways of thinking, societal order and war. We noticed the emergence and early evolution of a novel visual understanding of meaningful form, of new genres and forms of poetry and music, of coinage as monetary unit unifying all functions of money and of a fully monetized economy, of philosophical speculation and scientific theorizing, of a societal integral based on functional roles and pragmatic utilities rather than on traditional groupings according to presumed origin, affiliation and adherence, of hoplite army and its battle tactics. As we unfold in the sequel the Making of the Classical Miracle more phenomena will be brought under the principle of our “Gnostic” Revolution and be thereby significantly illuminated. Meanwhile, in the present episode, we will focus on a single but complex issue of paramount importance. The gradual liberalization of all societal systems in Athens – a process that propelled her from a marginal position in the Greek city-state system to the leading intellectual, artistic, economic, military and political power in the oecumene, the then known and interconnected world. That position of “classical” eminence was accompanied by an unparallel degree of freedom in all human systems. We shall concentrate on the political developments, also as a good index of what was happening in all fields of action. Freedom proved to be the all-potent fertilizer which made the rational revolution to bear its choicest fruits. It also allowed the human person to achieve maximal self-realization. The March of Freedom in Athens was the presupposition of her rise to the pinnacle of glory.

Athens is unique in the ancient Greek world in having established the stable political integration of a relatively speaking major area (Attica) pretty early.

[Attica was bounded to the north by Mount Cithaeron and the Parnes massive (much of which belonged to it), along a line separating it from Boeotia and reaching the Euboic gulf to the north of Rhamnus. To the West its boundaries were with Megarid along a mountainous line starting from Cithaeron and ending with the rocky mass (Kακιά Σκάλα) reaching right to the sea and dividing the Thriasian from the Megaric plains. On all other sides, Attica bordered to the sea. Its internal geographical division comprised three sections: a) Pediake, The plain of Athens (with the Thriasian plain of Eleusis); 2) Paralia, the costal area, that is the south land triangle with its apex at Sounion and its basis to the south of Mounts Hymmetus and Pentelicus; and 3) Diacria or Hyperacria, the transmountain district including Parnes, Pentelicon and the Marathonian Plain. Variable parts of the eastern coastal zone down to Brauron in the south with corresponding portions of the inland (Mesogaia) were also included].

There are only two other cases in the entire network of Greek city-states that show comparable extent of territorial basis: Sparta and Thebes.

[Comparative table of territorial extent: typical Greek City-States].

But with Thebes we have a unity imposed by one city-state on many others well-developed city-states of Boeotia – and a lately achieved unity for that matter. [The ancients themselves were clearly aware of the significant difference. Xenophon, Memorabilia, III, 5, 2: Οὐκοῦν οἶσθα, ἔφη, ὅτι πλήθη μὲν οὐδὲν μείους εἰσὶν Ἀθηναῖοι Βοιωτῶν; … εὐμενεστέρους δὲ ποτέρους ἑαυτοῖς εἶναι νομίζεις; Ἀθηναίους ἔγωγε· Βοιωτῶν μὲν γὰρ πολλοί, πλεονεκτούμενοι ἀπὸ Θηβαίων, δυσμενῶς αὐτοῖς ἔχουσιν· Ἀθήνησι δὲ οὐδὲν ὁρῶ τοιοῦτον. Translation].

Sparta is again different. On the one hand, the integral is indeed more extensive covering Laconia and Messenia. On the other, territorial unification in her case was the resultof two specific events. First, of the upheaval that caused the collapse of the Mycenean system, and is associated with the Dorian Invasion of Peloponnesus. And second, of the Spartan Messenian Wars. The initial violence of the integration did not give way to a stable harmonization of old and new populations, leaderships and ways, but had to continue to act, albeit in an abated and more systematic way, as the binding force of the union. Sparta had her εἴλωτες and περίοικοι, and deep into the classical era she had to take attentive care of their potential insubordination.

Nothing of the sort in Athens. We discern the traces (but for two exceptions), either of literary tradition or of telling consequences, that would bespeak of a violent unification. On the contrary, traditions were unanimously ascribing the creation of an “Attica-State” to Theseus, that is, to even pre-Trojan times.

[We hear of strife between Aegeus’ four sons, each ruling part of what was a unified territory under their father – much like the division of Charlemagne’s empire among his three sons on territorial principles. The strife we are told was resolved by Theseus. Megaris, one of the four broad districts comprising the geographical Attica, was left beyond Theseus’ unification. But the other three, the city plain, the coastal area and the transmountainous district, were kept under a single sovereignty everafter.

The second exception to the normal pattern of peaceful coexistence in a unified political entity within Attica is provided by the reports of an Eleusinian war waged by Athens against an Eleusis assisted by Thracian presence and leadership under Eumolpus, who, according to some accounts, (he or some synonymous descendant of his) also instituted the ritual of the Mysteries. The war, however, is assigned to the time of Erechtheus, and belongs again therefore to the pre-Trojan era. Besides, the affair seems to intend to provide an explanation for the Orphic dimension of the Eleusinian cult, Orpheus being in standard tradition a Thracian. The Thracian presence in the south of Greece appears to refer to Orphic influence on the Olympian and Chthonic mainstream Greek religiosity. In any case, there is no reference to an Eleusinian-Athenian rivalry during historic times, in our sources. (Furthermore, there is archaeological evidence for Mycenean presence at the foundation of the Eleusinian Hall of Initiation ( Telesterion)). When there is real foundation for such hostile antagonism, we hear of it in them. So we learn about the Megaro-Athenian disputes over Salamis towards the end of the 7^th century B.C. Or about the First Sacred War that established the independence of Delphi from the Phocaean neighbours ( Crissa) at the beginning of the 6^th century. But we see nothing about an antagonism between Eleusis as a major sanctuary and Athens in reported history. On the whole, we should therefore probably push serious animosity between the two centers very far back, to the legendary period. Which would fit nicely with the notion that Attica’s unification was transmitted to the Greek history from the Mycenean times].

We notice also that the Athenians were notoriously proud of their autochthonous character both as population and as leadership. In the context of the general upheaval that marked the end of Bronze Age in continental Greece, that autochthonicity would mean that Attica kept rather aloof from the population movements that signalled the new beginning. The Ionians, displaced as a result of the series of adjustments that followed the Dorian invasion of Peloponnesus, passed through Attica in their eastward drive to Western Asia Minor. But whether they were of the same stock (as Athenian ideology proclaimed) or mingled smoothly with the aboriginals because of the remarkable interregional affinity of the Mycenean system as a whole, no sign of forced developments is evident in the consequences of their passage. In any case the extraordinary (to the Greek standards) stability of Attica in historical times indicates a prehistoric unification. In which case, we have here the beginning of a remarkable long Athenian tradition of continuity-in-change, where major, sometimes dramatic, transformations of the body politic were effected without breaking the societal bonds.

What were those bonds at the starting point of the development that ushered historic Athens to the proscenium of history, just at about the beginning of the Great Revolution?

Social order was established on a closely-knit nexus of (real or felt) affinities among individuals and among groups of individuals. These affinities were normally projected as community of origin (the ἀρχηγέτης) and as genealogical affiliations – hence the importance of genealogy in ancient historical studies on the first period of Greek history. Whatever the truth of those popular memories, the reality of the elaborate articulations is beyond doubt. In Athens we have the division of the people in four tribes, each tribe being subdivided into three phratries (or, later, trittys, thirds) and each phratry into thirty clans, while each clan was taken to include thirty members (the γεννῆται). So Aristotle in his “Polity of the Athenians”: φυλὰς δὲ αὐτῶν συννενεμῆσθαι δ´, ἀπομιμησαμένων τὰς ἐν τοῖς ἐνιαυτοῖς ὥρας, ἑκάστην δὲ διῃρῆσθαι εἰς τρία μέρη τῶν φυλῶν, ὅπως γένηται τὰ πάντα δώδεκα μέρη, καθάπερ οἱ μῆνες εἰς τὸν ἑνιαυτόν, καλεῖσθαι δὲ αὐτὰ τριττῦς καὶ φρατρίας. εἰς δὲ τὴν φρατρίαν τριάκοντα γένη διακεκοσμῆσθαι, καθάπερ αἱ ἡμέραι εἰς τὸν μήνα, τὸ δὲ γένος εἶναι τριάκοντα ἀνδρῶν. [Translation]. The last number, thirty member-families to each clan is obviously the effect of a systematization, but it is worth noticing that the ensuing total number of citizens is 4x3x30x30 = 9.800, about the number considered by Plato and Aristotle to be suitable for the population of a city. It corresponds to a town of the size of around 40.000 people.

A dense social nexus of affinities implied that the individual, in his capacity as communal entity, was primarily part of this nexus, and through this belonging, he was a citizen of the state. The political expression of such a societal order was a feudal aristocracy with the heads of clans wielding the primary state-authority. The important families shared the communal functions either permanently (as with crucial religious duties which devolved as hereditary possessions to such families, e.g. the Eteoboutadae, the Eumolpidae etc.) or temporarily (when civil or military functions were assigned to individual members of the aristocracy). The transition from the Mycenean kingship, where all fundamental state functions are concentrated on one person, to the system where they are shared by a standing elite, must have occurred sometime during the Greek Dark Age.

We can observe with particular clarity in the case of Athens the division of the original integral of authority to distinct functions distributed among the élite. At its fullest, the system of division appears in the Collegium of Archonship, the 9 Archons. Aristotle describes for us the process of devolution. With each creation of a new magistracy, power was taken from the king, the initial repository of unified authority, and invested on the new functionary. First the office of the Polemarch was instituted, of the War-leader. Military command was taken off the Basileus. Then civil authority was made to be wielded by the Archon, the Ruler simpliciter. The old Basileus (the Mycenean ἄναξ) was now relegated chiefly to religious affairs: he had to ensure the right relations of the social to the divine order. This included initially supervision of adherence to the divinely sanctioned ancient societal norms. But finally 6 Thesmothetai were entrusted with the scrutiny and interpretation of traditional codes of behaviour, of ordinances, customs and rites embedded in the communal awareness as norms of action. Also, perhaps, with the sanctioning of new rules (as called for by newly arising situations) consistent with the traditional norms. The Basileus was thereby further restricted to overseeing the ceremonious aspects of religion, important-though they always remained in antiquity. On the opposite end, the importance of the Archon was growing bigger and bigger, as all newly required and newly instituted governmental functions were entrusted to his jurisdiction.

Authority was not only in this way divided. It was also dispersed: the archons did not meet in common till Solon’s time. Over and above their wide-ranging individual jurisdiction within their several fields of competence was the awesome Areopagus, the Council of the governing feudal aristocracy, the House of the Lords of the State. It was the body that chose the Archons from among its members, first for life, then for a decade and, finally, from 681 B.C. onwards, on an annual basis. Hereupon, the Archon, the most important magistrate of the state, became eponymous: the year was signaled after him. We already see the first intimations of the spirit of freedom starting its inexorable march of liberalization and working its way even under the strictest conditions of feudal aristocracy.

Wealth is in its essence a progressive and revolutionary force. It does not let things settle down in fossilized, immutable patterns. It makes them collide and clash, interest versus interest, comparative advantage against comparative advantage, abilities in competition of excellence, the auri sacra fames itself, infinite as the desire of power and knowledge. But in a closed and strictly controlled system the wealth’s action is rather to accelerate the process of dissolution of what becomes more and more inefficient and corrupt as it turns more and more rigid. It magnifies the malfunctioning of the system by intensifying the unproductive distribution of roles and assets. Thus it worked in 7^th century Athens. And its action was predictably catalytic.

[Heracleitus believed that his compatriots, the Ephesians, were misbehaving politically by acting intentionally on the principle of non-excellence: ἄξιον Ἐφεσίοις ἡβηδὸν ἀπάγξασθαι πᾶσι καὶ τοῖς ἀνήβοις τὴν πόλιν καταλιπεῖν, οἵτινες Ἑρμόδωρον ἄνδρα ἑωυτῶν ὀνήιστον ἐξέβαλον φάντες· ἡμέων μηδὲ εἷς ὀνήιστος ἔστω, εἰ δὲ μή, ἄλλῃ τε καὶ μετ᾿ ἄλλων. [Translation]. He therefore curses them to be affluent so that their devious ways become manifest: μὴ ἐπιλίποι ὑμᾶς πλοῦτος, Ἐφέσιοι, ἵν᾿ ἐξελέγχοισθε πονηρευόμενοι [Translation]].

In a rigidly controlled system wealth is concentrated in those wielding political power. Accordingly, we see during the 7^th century Athens to be transformed from traditional aristocracy to a feudal plutocracy. In a mainly agricultural economy, wealth acquirement focused on more and more extended land-owning. The chief instrument dispossessing the small land-owners from their properties was lending on corporal security. The borrower pledged to offer his work for the lender, should he default. Upon experiencing continued difficulties, like a series of bad harvest years, the borrower fell under the control of the rich land-owner, and once in the snare it was difficult to get out of it, as he was no more in control of his body and his work. This together with the more usual mortgaging, led to a state of affairs where land (esp. fertile) was accumulated in the hands of few, whereas most of the people had either their plots mortgaged or themselves and members of their family rendered onto the power of their lenders in virtual slavery. Justice, we should be reminded, was administered by the same people who wielded political power and economic muscle. The Archon in particular, in its “praetorian” faculty, would dispense justice in disputed civil cases regarding contract enforcement and lawsuits involving debt obligations.

Unrest must have been growing by the middle of the century. Our surest indication as to its intensity in Cylon’s attempt, at around 630 B.C., to establish dictatorship, a tyranny. Cylon was from a noble family and an Olympic winner. Instrumental in the failure of his attempt was the powerful family of the Alcmeonidae.

Another event, about a decade later, gives the same message. The famous Draconian codification of laws must be seen as a response to, and a means of satisfying to a certain degree, people’s demand for real justice, by way of somehow curbing the arbitrariness and interested dispensation of justice by the appointed members of the oligarchic plutocracy. But as it is to be expected, little relaxation could this offer to the increasing tension, without a radical restructuring of the societal system in its entirety.

War in history is another prime mover of progress and dispenser of pragmatic justice.

[Heracleitus declared in his aphoristic style: πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι, πάντων δὲ βασιλεύς, καὶ τοὺς μὲν θεοὺς ἔδειξε τοὺς δὲ ἀνθρώπους, τοὺς μὲν δούλους ἐποίησε τοὺς δὲ ἐλευθέρους. [Translation]. War is the all-pervading principle and reality of competitive antagonism. εἰδέναι δὲ χρὴ τὸν πόλεμον ἐόντα ξυνόν, καὶ δίκην ἔριν, καὶ γινόμενα πάντα κατ᾿ ἔριν καὶ χρεών [Translation]].

The rationalization of war strategy and battle tactics in the early archaic times effected a fundamental change of emphasis on the factors ensuring victory. No more was of paramount importance the situation of heroic figures locked in mortal combat with one another. Now what primarily mattered was the hoplite formation and the genius of the general. The latter depended on a configuration of abilities centered around knowledge, insight and foresight, a configuration which was not necessarily restricted to the closed circle of a decaying feudalism. The former required a multitude of citizens in fit condition, self-confident individually but also intimately collaborating each one to all, and bound by a common trust to each other and to the ability and wisdom of their leader. These developments run counter to the conservation of the oligarchic status-quo and promoted the march of freedom.

The establishment seemed to itself to control things in the interior of the state by the suppression of Cylon’s endeavour and by the appeasement offered by Draco’s code. But external affairs ignited anew the inevitable eruption of the accumulating tension. The war over Salamis with Megara, successful finally towards the end of the century, brought to eminence new men and unleashed a new dynamic. The fight was won by the citizen-hoplites and by the political and military “phronesis” of men like Solon and perhaps Peisistratus, not by the leading land-owning oligarchs. Solon was “by nature and in reputation among the first, but in point of wealth and general means of a middling state” as Aristotle tells us. It is reported that he was for some time a merchant, too. Peisistratus’ base of economic and political influence was the transmountainous district, the third and least significant of the triple division of Attica, although of the better part of it ( Brauron).

In the end, war achieved what wealth (being controlled) could not so far realise – the beginning of a fundamental liberalization of Athenian society that was to produce in time the miracle of the golden age. Solon kept the pressure unrelentingly on, fuelling the evolving dynamics: Athens on his advice participated in the first Sacred War for Delphic independence and its international status. Peisistratus may have played considerable role in it.

Meanwhile, at the start of 6^th century, things have been brought to a crisis, social discord and political sedition could not be resolved, and revolution came to Athens. As the factions could not agree on how to reconstitute the integrity of the body politic, Solon was chosen to act as Conciliator (διαλλακτής), really as temporary dictator (αἰσυμνήτης) with plenipotential power to restructure the civil edifice. He was also elected as Archon (594/3 B.C.).

Solon proceeded in this restructuring in a thorough and systematic way. His strategy was three-pronged and he effected it in three successive stages.

First, there were measures aiming to stop the oppression and relieve the economic burden of the poorer classes, measures both structural and specific one- time arrangements. He abolished the law of borrowing on personal security. He freed all those found in condition of virtual enslavement as a result of the enforcement of that law. He freed all mortgaged land, returning it to the unencumbered possession of their original owners. And, probably, he cancelled all existing debts in general (σεισάχθεια). There was to be a new start in the economic activity of Athens henceforth. But he did not redistribute land.

Second, there were measures aiming at the permanent rearrangement of the societal system. He proceeded to a thorough and all-inclusive codification of the legislation on rational principles. The codes of laws were published. They were inscribed on wooden tablets (the famous ἄξονες and κύρβεις) and posited in the Basilean Stoa. An oath was taken that the people will keep the laws intact; and the magistrates every year were swearing that they will uphold them.

He also gave a new constitutional order for the state. His constitution is a mixed one, complex with various checks and balances. It can be appropriately described as a timocracy with democratic control. A new fourfold division of the citizens was instituted (or redeployed) according to the valuation of their property (τίμημα), this valuation itself determined by the yearly revenue from the property. The four classes (τέλη) were utilized for political and fiscal purposes. The crucial thing is that economic success systematically substituted traditional affiliations as the principle of societal order in the State for all important functions save religious ones and some specific others. And this constituted a major step forward in the liberalization of the Athenian system.

[Table of property levels for inclusion in the corresponding Census-Classes compared to Athenian arable land. Πεντακοσιομέδιμνοι - Ἱππεῖς - Ζευγῖται - Θῆται].

Eligibility to the magistracies (ἀρχαί) depended on one’s property census. The higher the magistracy the more substantial the property level had to be. The last class (the Thetes, i.e. workers, those selling their labour, the economically dependent) was excluded from direct political power – they could not serve in any magistracy. But as we shall see, highly important controlling functions, pregnant of future developments, were entrusted to them.

The timocratic principle of the constitution by itself would not suffice to break the hold of the existing feudal oligarchy. The census classes probably preexisted – at least the three lower ones. It is likely that Solon only incorporated the highest nobility (the Eupatrids) as well into the scheme by creating the class of πεντακοσιομέδιμνοι. But he also wanted to annul the power of Areopagus to appoint the magistrates, and made them chosen by lot from a preliminary list of selected candidates (κληρωτοὶ ἐκ προκρίτων). For the Nine Archons, a list of 10 candidates was made by each of the four tribes from the highest census members of the tribe. Solon’s operating principle in constructing the new constitution was to balance factors one against the other with a view of creating a complex but harmonized system. Here we see him interconnecting the old tribal divisions with the new census classes and election with choice by lot.

Further in the same direction, he introduced another division of the people starting with the four tribal groups but in place of the old affiliation system of 3 phratries and 30 clans within each tribe, he instituted a division in three “trittys” and 12 “naucraries”, probably already with some local reference. The naucraries were to be in charge of the state revenues and expenditure. Thus they balanced the magistracies of the treasurers (ταμίαι) and the poletai (πωληταί), officials who farmed out taxes and other revenues, sold confiscated property and entered into contracts for public works. The naucraries were groups of wealthier citizens with both tribal and local connections. As their name indicates (ναύς = ship, ναύκραροι, the heads of the navy), and as their descendants the classical “symmories” suggest, they were also overseeing the navy, both merchant and war vessels. In Athens individuals successful in their line of business were deemed as a principle most appropriate to supervise corresponding state functions.

Finally, and again in the same spirit, Solon instituted a counter-weight to the all-powerful Areopagus. He created a lower House, the Council (Βουλή) of the 400, one hundred from each tribe. (When the oligarchic party took power in Athens late in the 5^th century, there were 400 who controlled things. They were, too, in favour of the πάτριος πολιτεία, the old traditional constitution).

Nor was this the end of the Solonian structured innovations. He emphasized the role of the Assembly, the Council of the People, where citizens participated as citizens, without necessary reference to tribal affiliations, economic classes or local groupings. And then, there was what Aristotle rightly singles out as the most democratic constitutional measure of all: the right of appeal in any judicial case from the judgment of the officiating magistrate (chiefly the Archon in civil lawsuits) to the verdict of people’s courts.

3) The third major part of Solon’s package and the third step in his restructuring agenda consisted on the one hand in the reform of money, measures and weighs, and on the other in economic legislation.

Solon probably encouraged the systematic use of coinage in Athens. It was likely a private affair in the beginning (Wappenmünzen). He switched to the Euboic monetary standard, thus opening the Athenian trade to the Aegean and Western Asia Minor area. As a result of the appreciation of silver consequent upon its use as monetary material, he differentiated between the monetary standard and the weight standard (the latter he determined at an about 5% increase on the monetary standard). This also allowed him to keep the weight measures coordinated to the Aeginetan weight standard, which thus facilitated trade with the Peloponnesian and continental Greek economic area as well.

His reforms were bound together with a consistent policy of promoting development and economic expansion. He encouraged artisanship so as to enhance the productive basis of the Athenian economy, also as a means of expanding trade. Trying to reduce the agricultural sector, he prohibited exports of natural produce excepting oil. He knew that a rich soil was not one of Attica’s comparative advantages. He offered citizenship to all aliens who would come permanently to settle in Athens to practice their arts. An influx of economically active immigrants took place, who were naturalized. He legalized absolute freedom of enterprise and of all contractual arrangements.

[Ἐὰν δὲ δῆμος ἢ φράτορες ἢ ὀργεῶνες ἢ γεννῆται ἢ σύσσιτοι ἢ ὁμόταφοι ἢ θιαςῶται ἢ ἐπὶ λείαν οἰχόμενοι ἢ εἰς ἐμπορίαν, ὅ,τι ἂν τούτων διαθῶνται πρὸς ἀλλήλους κύριον εἶναι, ἐάν μὴ ἀπαγορεύσῃ δημόσια γράμματα]. [Translation]

Freeing economic potential (prohibition of debts on personal security; abolition of debt quasi-slavery; abolition of encumberement on persons and land; annulment of mortgages and cancellation of standing debts); deinstitutionalization of political power (appointment of the chief magistrates by lot); the timocratic principle (wealth as economic success against traditional clan affinities and feudal affiliations); the first introduction of the local factor, constitutional checks and balances systematically carried through; duplication of offices with the newly instituted boards of citizens in control of magistrates’ decisions; popular courts as ultimate and sovereign dispensers of justice; rational monetary restructuring; trade opening to all parts of the Greek world, measures to promote economic development (including opening the country to foreign ability): such was Solon’s concerted plan to break the power of the old feudal oligarchy without creating the chaos that other cities, much better positioned than Athens in their initial condition, had fallen into as a result of the social tumults of the age. It was a grand strategy of liberation, reformation and progress. It was the coherent plan of a wise man, whom his country’s need put in the helm of state.

To realize his purpose he had to stand immovable between two opposite tendencies: one to uphold the corrupt and incompetent status quo, with just minor ad hoc adjustments; the other to destroy the edifice without putting in its place any alternative likely to succeed in repolarizing the societal field. As he himself describes the situation and his role in his poems:

δήμῳ μὲν γὰρ ἔδωκα τόσον γέρας, ὅσσον ἀπαρκεῖ,

τιμῆς οὐτ᾿ ἀμφελὼν οὔτ᾿ ἐπορεξαμένος·

οἳ δ᾿ εἶχον δύναμιν καὶ χρήμασιν ἦσαν ἀγητοί,

καὶ τοῖς ἐφρασάμην μηδὲν ἀεικὲς ἔχειν.

ἔστην δ᾿ ἀμφιβαλὼν κρατερὸν σάκος ἀμφοτέροισι,

νικᾶν δ᾿ οὐκ εἴασ᾿ οὐδετέρους ἀδίκως.

[Translation]

But it was not to be as easy as that. Man, in his wisdom, has the capacity of vast visions, but also, in his ignorance, the inability to see the most obvious consequences of his choices. The factions in Athens could not see their true interest. They persisted in their sedition. Just four years after Solon’s Reforms, it proved impossible to appoint an Archon. And again 4 years later. And then Damasias as Archon overstayed his term (582-580 B.C.) and had to be pushed out of it. And then again instead of an Archon, an archontic council was appointed in his place. Its composition is revealing: five members were eupatrids, three peasants and two artisans. For the first time we see occupational concerns preponderating by the side of tribal, census and local factors. In the midst of the continuing turmoil, crucial pieces of the Solonian masterplan were left inoperative. Chief among them was the method of appointing the archons. This was destined to be implemented much later, in the wake of the Reforms of Cleisthenes. The oligarchy would not release its hold on political power.

Three were the main tendencies and corresponding political associations, (loose) parties. They have started to assume more definite forms in pre-Solonian times, probably towards the end of the 7^th century amidst the commotions marking the final intensifications of civil strife before the revolution. Significantly, their names, as they have come down to us, correspond to the main triple geographical division of Attica. There was the Party of the Plain (Athens and Eleusis) under Lycourgos. The Party of the Coast (the southern land triangle with its apex at Sounion) under Megacles. And finally, probably the last formation to appear on the political scene, the Party of the Transmountains (the mountainous north, and hilly north-east of Attica with the plain of Marathon, down to perhaps Brauron) under Peisistratus. Lycurgus belonged probably to the noble family of Eteoboutadai, based in the later city deme of Boutadai, west of the Agora. Megacles belonged to the powerful family of the Alcmaeonids, whom we have met in the Cylonian affair. They seem to have started with possessions along the coastal strip that extends from Phaleron to Sounion and then aggrandized themselves in areas lying between Athens and the coast (in the demes Agryle, Alopeke and Xypate). They were not of long-established nobility: rather their quick rise was due to trade endeavours in the east under the adventurous spirit of success that infused the more dynamic and able parts of society as a result of the revolution of reason. Finally, Peisistratus belonged to an ancient family claiming to be of Pylian and royal descent, with its basis in the Brauron district. But he was a new man, in the sense that his reputation had to do, with his personal exploits and achievements and with his connection (also a family one) to Solon.

Indicative though the localization of the parties and the party-leaders is, it is more important to see their political agenda. Lycurgus was for pure feudal oligarchy; his position was therefore in the circumstances reactionary. His party was seeing Solon to have proceeded too much with the necessary liberalization of the system. Megacles would uphold on the whole the Solonian reform initiative; he, like Solon, was favouring a “middling” policy, although not of a middling economic position. Finally Peisistratus adopted a more popular standpoint. To implement the radical transformation of the society, in ideas, structures and policies, which was needed, he knew that a differential application of force was required in order to dismantle the old system and abolish the power of those whose interests lie in the preservation of feudal oligarchy. That force he found first in the popular resentment of a system in crisis; and then in the measured violence of tyrannis.

For Athenian society could not have kept itself united in the face of the multiple challenges that followed the Great Revolution. The pressure, as everywhere in the more advanced parts of Greece, was tremendous. However, Athens had to adapt itself to the new environment, and the greatest challenge was to do it in an effective way which would unleash its dynamism towards rapid development. The astounding thing is that Solon and Peisistratus were acting as if they were having in view the Athens of Mid-fifth century, the miracle that was to come.

Peisistratus ruled Athens as tyrant in the period from 561/0 B.C. to 528/7 B.C., with two intermissions when his opponents in combination had managed to overthrow him. He did not hesitate to employ foreign aid to regain power. And the Athenians were acquiescing in, if not supporting, his rule. In power he remained in all for almost 20 years. His domination was mild to the people and conciliatory towards the powerful heads of important families – so long as they themselves would accept his rule and collaborate with him in pursuing the right policies for Athenian empowerment. (The Alcmaeonids did not cooperate and as a result were mostly in exile and active abroad against his and his sons’ rule).

Peisistratus left the constitutional arrangements and the Solonian legislation and policies intact so far as possible. (We noticed a major exception above. But that was something he himself would not have been prone to adopt. It was in his interest to originate shifts in the distribution of political power in Athens as long as he was exercising tyrannical rule). He simply took care that either he himself, or some member(s) of his family, were holding each year one of the constitutional higher magistracies. He used compulsion sparingly, in extreme and important cases. Normally, the exercise of his authority was informal, but none the less determinative for that.

In monetary matters he followed Solon’s arrangements and standardized the coinage issues. State revenues were normalized by the introduction of a flat 10% tax (δεκάτη) on agricultural produce. ( Hippias, his son who succeeded him reduced it to 5%, no doubt in order to ingratiate himself to the people). His fiscal policy met with resistance, but he put these state means into good use. He offered easy credit to small land owners and entrepreneurs. He facilitated quick and local dispensation of justice by instituting the office of demotic judges, empowered to solve disputes in the demes themselves, without recourse to the city official juridical system. He broke the hold of the old establishment not only on political power but also on land owning. He curtailed the exhibition of luxury on the part of the upper class. He instituted the practice of extensive public works, not least of imposing religious monuments. The state started to assert itself as against the feudal barons. But the state offered free rein to individual excellence, initiative and achievement. Individual success and State Power-Building began to go together.

Most remarkable is Peisistratus’ Kulturpolitik. He embarked on an ambitious program of temple-building. He invited foreign artists, poets and scholars to Athens. Under his auspices the first corpus of Homeric and Orphic poetry was composed. The Homeric poems were recited in Athenian state festivals. He raised the Panathenaea to the status of a major panhellenic festival in honour of Athena, the Goddess of Athens. Tragedy started its glorious progress under his protection (Thespis). He promoted literary activities. He also probably instituted the first library.

A rigorous foreign policy rounded off his well-thought out program. He secured bases in Northern Aegean Sea, in Macedonia, in Thrace (esp. in connection with gold and silver mines in Mount Pangaion), in the Straits, in Naxos. He interfered in Delus as by right (given the acclaimed Ionian kinship of the Athenians), the center of Apollonian worship in the Aegean. An adroit use of alliances started to put Athens more securely on the international scene, as a power to be taken note of, if not as yet to be reckoned with.

So entrenched was Peisistratus’ tyranny in the people’s acceptance, that after his death, it continued in the same spirit under his son Hippias (528/7 to 511/0 B.C.). Paradoxically in appearance, but logically in the nature of the case, the Peisistratid tyranny stabilized the March of Freedom. It provided the necessary time and the wise supervision, which allowed Athenian society to absorb creatively the new revolutionary spirit of reason, progress and freedom, without breaking the bonds of communal existence, as happened in so many other instances of the same phenomena in the Greek space with catastrophic results for the societies in question. The new took hold of society, spread deep its roots in it, overcame the resistance of the old, and transformed man’s integral by bringing into play all his hidden and up to then untapped potential. They said it was a Saturnian age reborn!

But such achievements are in history to a large extent one man’s show – and absolutely one time’s chance. They should not, cannot and did not, overstay their time. They are means to an ulterior end. They are judged by whether they succeed in stabilizing and adding momentum to the progress of man – or destabilize and obstruct it. Peisistratus passes the test – also on the testimony of an impeccable witness: Thucydides, speaking of the Peisistratids:

καὶ ἐπετήδευσαν ἐπὶ πλεῖστον δὴ τύραννοι οὗτοι ἀρετὴν καὶ ξύνεσιν, καὶ Ἀθηναίους εἰκοστὴν μόνον πρασσόμενοι τῶν γιγνομένων τήν τε πόλιν αὐτῶν καλῶς διεκόσμησαν καὶ τοὺς πολέμους διέφερον καὶ εἰς τὰ ἱερὰ ἔθυον. τὰ δὲ ἄλλα αὐτὴ ἡ πόλις τοῖς πρὶν κειμένοις νόμοις ἐχρῆτο, πλὴν καθ᾿ ὅσον αἰεί τινα ἐπεμέλοντο σφῶν αὐτῶν ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς εἶναι.

The time of tyranny passed. By a combination of repeated exile (chiefly Alcmaeonid) action, Delphic propaganda and Spartan interest, the forces finally assembled that overthrew Hippias. Athens sprang forth on the path of greatness following the banner of freedom. She had stand firm under the tremendous pressure caused by the Great Revolution of Reason. She absorbed to the fullest its spirit and dynamism, she managed to contain the violent commotions that it generated, and was able to overcome and then crash the reactionary forces that invest in the preservation of a rotten status-quo. The well-prepared potential was activated. No internal oligarchic reaction (under Isagoras) and no Spartan intervention (invasion of King Cleomenes) could forestall the ineluctable developments. Cleisthenes, an Alcmaeonid (again!), gained control of the city and passed the second wave of reforms that bear his name (508/7 B.C.). He seized the golden opportunity, and instead of merely consolidating the Solonian arrangements and the Peisistartid successes, he pushed forward decisively, along the same path and in the same spirit, but with increased determination and cutting deeper into the roots of things.

The main end of his arrangements was to destroy completely the political significance of the traditional nexus of affinities and affiliations that determined of old social status. He left existing the old divisions of the people in phratries and clans for religious purposes (cf. for instance the association of certain priesthoods with specific clans and families). But he proceeded one great leap further than Solon in substituting the local factor for the genelitician in power politics. He abolished the 4 Ionian tribes and instituted 10 new ones – using the decadic instead of the dodecadic principle in order to avoid the expectation of correlating the new tribes to the 12 Solonian trittys, equally of local character. He made a new division of the country into 30 demes, 10 to each of the major geographical divisions of Attica. Three demes, one from each region determined by lot, made up each new tribe. All civil, fiscal and military functions performed by officials of trittres, naucraries, phratries or clans (that is, of the Solonian and pre-Solonian social orders) were now entrusted to the demes and the demarchs. The citizen was henceforth primarily a member of the (locational) deme. Many alien residents (μέτοικοι) or persons of unclear or illegitimate descent, were enrolled as citizens in this way. The maxim was μὴ φιλοκρινεῖν, do not examine too closely affinities and affiliations by old tribe and clan when considering demotic membership and citizenship.

Whether the Solonian Boule was properly functioning or not during the time of tyranny, it is Cleisthenes that established it as a crucial organ of deliberation for the democracy. It thoroughly discussed and prepared proposals for all matters that were to occupy the sovereign Assembly. In a sense the collective mind of the democracy resided in the Boule. Cleisthenes increased the number of the members of the Council (Βουλή) from 400 to 500, 50 from each new tribe.

Two highly important constitutional measures are probably to be ascribed to him or to his influence, although they were implemented later on. One was the emergence (about 501 B.C.) of the Board of Ten Generals (Στρατηγοί), one from each new tribe, as the main body responsible for the conduct of war. Initially the archon Polemarch was the leader of the entire army forces, the Chief of the general staff, but soon his position became more formal. Typically for the spirit of the age in Athens, no general among the ten was appointed as chairman of the board. Rather the various operations were distributed among them on a shifting pattern, always dependent on ability, reputation and success. The generals became important functionaries in power politics, quite apart from their crucial military jurisdiction. They were elected to the office, not chosen by lot. And they could be reelected without restriction. The great politicians of 5^th century Athens were also important strategists and had personal involvement in the conduct of was as generals. Pericles’ institutional position in Athenian politics, was his successive elections for 15 years to the board of generals.

The other major legislation attributed to Cleisthenes was the one regarding the famous Athenian practice of ostracism. Initially, the measure was aimed against philotyrannical persons of influence. It was apparently conceived as bolstering the fledgling democracy against its enemies. Yet, it could not be applied for almost two decades- so strong was the influence of the Peisistratid followers. But the first to be ostracized was indeed a relative of Peisistratus, Hipparchus (488/7 B.C.). It is significant that the enactment was activated after the Battle of Marathon. We are reminded that Hippias was accompanying the Persian army in its expedition against Athens with the purpose of being reinstalled in his rule there. And within Athens there is considerable evidence of a medianizing party right to the Marathon battle. But the decisive victory then put to definite rest these movements. Soon after its first applications ( there were a few consecutive ones), the measure was directed against any politician whose agenda seemed to be inconsistent with the majoritarian will of the people in a provocative or dangerous way way. Thus in 485/4 B.C. Xanthippus was ostracized, an Alcmeonid. The situation ended up as a manner of negative election to the government of the Athenian state. Given the bipolar nature of the power politics there, with the oligarchical and democratic parties vying for influence in the Assembly, ostracism meant in effect the temporary (normally for a decade) removal of one of the two main contestants for stewardship of the state. Ostracism did not mean condemnation and was followed by none of the later’s consequences and implications. And this is how it worked in the 5^th century as we shall see in subsequent episodes.

Simultaneous with these developments, and surfing on the wave of elation produced by the Athenian victory in Marathon against even internal opposition, Athens proceeded in the most remarkable deinstitutionalization of political power in history. The apparently Solonian idea of an appointment of the chief magistrates of the state by lot was finally implemented (487/8 B.C.). There were 500 elected as candidates from the 10 new tribes, and the archons were chosen by lot. That meant that henceforth political power in Athens had no institutional basis. Even the negative election that we mentioned above, first depended on the activation of a complicated constitutional process, which could happen only upon a favourable concurrence of circumstances. And, second, it did not confer authority to the leader of the party who won in that negative contest to exercise power and pursue his agenda for even the slightest period of time. It all was a question of informal influence and of hard battles that had to be fought in the Boule and the Assembly. Be reminded that membership in the Boule was a matter of choice by lot, and did not correspond in the least with the public approval or otherwise of the political parties and their leaders on a stable basis, not even for a year. For the approval had to be earned decree by decree and measure by measure, not by a general platform as against the other party’s general platform, and day by day, not for some definite period of time.

With the permanent implementation of the principle of determining even the chief state magistracies by lot, the generals, as an elected board, started to gain in importance. Here, however, the criteria of success were much more transparent, and mostly determined the relative weight of the generals. Do not forget that we are looking at an era where wisdom was considered indivisible and success the natural outcome of it. One who could see deeply into the inner workings of reality could also accurately foresee future developments and design the most efficient strategies in safely and successfully navigating through them. Military operations, grand strategy, political agendas, policy-making in general, these and others are so many fields for the exercise of the same penetrating insight and detailed but coherent knowledge of reality in its essential configurations that constituted ancient Greek σοφία.

The important thing here is to notice that there is nothing in the Athenian Democracy to answer to the demand for increased institutional fiat stability in the European democracies. Nothing for instance in particular of the institutional hedging for the chief administrative office there. (The American democracy is closer to the Athenian principle of freedom). And yet the Athenian democracy was naturally stable and efficient, although deregulated and free from heavy conventional arrangements.

The final stroke at radical deregulation of the political field came with Ephialtes’ reforms (462/1 B.C.). By the historic accident of its resolute involvement in the struggle against the second Persian invasion and its positive role during the time of the sea battle of Salamis, Areopagus had acquired such an informal prestige and enhanced public acceptance as an institutional authority that it was led to use that informal authority in order to unconstitutionally arrogate to itself institutional functions of overseeing the state and superintending society which were an untimely resurrection of bygone ages and clearly inconsistent with the spirit of fundamental liberalization of all systems in Athens. Areopagus even acted as a kind of constitutional court with wide and substantive jurisdiction . Ephialtes, in cooperation with Themistocles, addressed the problem. Legislation was passed that specifically removed all such supervisory functions from the Aeropagus and distributed them to the normal constitutional organs: some to the Boule, others to the Assembly, most to the proper judicial system.

And here we may end our survey of this process of political deregulation, deinstitutionalization, opening, liberalization, which resulted in the amazing spectacle of a society free to an unparalleled degree in human history and yet able to channel its human resources in an equally unparalleled degree to superlative achievements of classical stature. The Athenian March of Freedom went furthest in removing constraints of human action that we take for granted as restrictions necessary for the stability and orderly working of societal systems. It is a living, practical proof that a higher degree of freedom under appropriate conditions ensures better self-adjustment in a system, this causes optimal distribution of roles and means, this entails rational organization of the system, and this ensures maximal efficiency. We shall test this theoretical inference in following episodes against other aspects of this liberalization, beyond the strictly political field. We shall get the same message everywhere be it philosophy or economy, art or religion.

The challenges generated by the Great Revolution of Reason caused the tumults of social revolutions. Freedom was to be the answer to the grave problems. In freedom reason thrives and with reason freedom works. What is particularly striking in the developments that we traced above is the purposeful design of vast but coherent and finely articulated strategic plans that can meet the tremendous challenges of a highly fertile age in the right way and in the appropriate order of importance and of time. It is mind at work in freedom.

The measured March of Freedom in Athens was a Progress of Success for the city-state. As Aristotle put it:

τότε μὲν οὖν μέχρι τούτου προῆλθεν ἡ πόλις, ἅμα τῇ δημοκρατίᾳ κατὰ μικρὸν αὐξανομένη.

Athens is unique in the ancient Greek world in having established the stable political integration of a relatively speaking major area (Attica) pretty early.

There are only two other cases in the entire network of Greek city-states that show comparable extent of territorial basis: Sparta and Thebes.

[Comparative table of territorial extent: typical Greek City-States].

What were those bonds at the starting point of the development that ushered historic Athens to the proscenium of history, just at about the beginning of the Great Revolution?

War in history is another prime mover of progress and dispenser of pragmatic justice.

Solon proceeded in this restructuring in a thorough and systematic way. His strategy was three-pronged and he effected it in three successive stages.

[Table of property levels for inclusion in the corresponding Census-Classes compared to Athenian arable land. Πεντακοσιομέδιμνοι - Ἱππεῖς - Ζευγῖται - Θῆται].

δήμῳ μὲν γὰρ ἔδωκα τόσον γέρας, ὅσσον ἀπαρκεῖ,

τιμῆς οὐτ᾿ ἀμφελὼν οὔτ᾿ ἐπορεξαμένος·

οἳ δ᾿ εἶχον δύναμιν καὶ χρήμασιν ἦσαν ἀγητοί,

καὶ τοῖς ἐφρασάμην μηδὲν ἀεικὲς ἔχειν.

ἔστην δ᾿ ἀμφιβαλὼν κρατερὸν σάκος ἀμφοτέροισι,

νικᾶν δ᾿ οὐκ εἴασ᾿ οὐδετέρους ἀδίκως.

[Translation]

The measured March of Freedom in Athens was a Progress of Success for the city-state. As Aristotle put it:

τότε μὲν οὖν μέχρι τούτου προῆλθεν ἡ πόλις, ἅμα τῇ δημοκρατίᾳ κατὰ μικρὸν αὐξανομένη.