First Democrats

From a group of small city states, isolated among the mountains, arose a surge of creative brilliance that laid many of the foundation of European civilization. A broad range of human activities, from sport to drama, from medicine to philosophy, still follow a pattern derived from the Ancient Greeks whose Golden Age, dawning around 800 BCE, reached its pinnacle in 5th century BCE Athens.

In its early days, Athens was ruled by kings and tyrants but in 510 BCE, Cleisthenes drove out the last of them and established the world's first democratic government. The word comes from the Greek demos 'the common people', and kratos, 'power'. This was not, however, a democracy in the modern sense. Only a minority of the people were allowed to vote - the freeborn Athenian males. Women were not regarded as citizens and therefore had no vote. Neither did foreigners or their descendants or slaves and their descendants, even if they had been freed. The city was divided into ten blocks and each elected 50 men over the age of 30 to a 500 strong Council which carried out the daily function of government. The councillors served in turn on a committee which produced ideas for discussion by the Assembly of all the citizens. During their service, the councillors took their meals at the state's expense in the administrative headquarters, the Tholos, a round building on the west side of the agora or market.

It was the Assembly, or ekklesia, that made laws and decided on great issues such as whether to go to war or not. All the thousands of citizens could attend, paying a small admission fee, and could speak and vote. Promptness was encouraged, slaves holding a rope dipped in red paint rounded up latecomers, and anyone found with red paint on his clothes was fined.

The Assembly met about 40 times a year on the Pnyx, a hill near the Acropolis. Men sat on the ground or on folding stools they brought with them. After prayers and the sacrifice of a black pig, the debates would begin with members voting by a show of hands.

Archons who were selected by lot, prepared legal cases for trial in the Assembly and also organized religious ceremonies. The highest ranking officials were the ten strategoi, or generals, elected from the ten tribes of the people. Holding office for a year, they wielded immense power over both the army and the economy with their decisions affecting all aspects of the state.

Here each individual is interested in not only his affairs, but in the affairs of the state as well....we do not say that a man who has no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business, we say he has no business here at all.

- Pericles c. 450 BCE