While Churchill’s view is true, so is Abraham Lincoln’s, he described it as “Of the people, by the people, for the people”, a lovely dream. However, both men’s quotes led me to asking how and why did democracy ever get started?
Why did it happen?
On investigation I learnt that it was all because of an inhuman dictator, called Hippias, who ruled the Greek city state of Athens. Hippias was a bitter and cruel tyrant, in fact, he was so bad that he went down in history as the Tyrant of Athens. This man was so cruel, vicious, and callous, that he executed citizens for no reason, while at the same time he levied spiteful and painful taxes. As you can guess he was not popular.
His end came, it appears, when Cleisthenes, bribed the Delphic Oracle, who was at the time the most powerful person of the Greek world. He bribed her to tell the Spartans to liberate Athens. This led Sparta to invade Athens in 510 BC and force Hippias to leave Athens, and they handed power over to the Athenian magistrates. Then in 507 B.C., Cleisthenes, an Athens aristocrat, proposed a political system that he called “demokratia”, which translates from Greek to “rule by the people”. Basically, the scheme he came up with was the first democracy.
Then as it developed over the next 50 years it spread across to the other city/states of the Greek Peninsular.
The problems they came across
What I found interesting was how it progressed along with the problems they came across as it slowly evolved to become a form of government.
For example, they started with the idea that every full born Athenian must be involved, they were all to meet and agree everything. However, they soon realised that it was not practical, they needed to appoint a small group to run the City State. Then they had to come up with a way to fairly choose this small group who would then represent everyone else.
They came up with an interesting idea, as they felt that an election would lead to fraud. Therefore, they decided to have a lottery of every true Athenian, the representatives would then simply be the first 500 names drawn out, they would be called the councilmen. Ingenuous, they thought, as these people were to be the representatives and would meet in a council. Actually, it wasn’t everyone, it was only true Athenian men over 30 years old, born in Athens, while women, and slaves were not included.
Problem solved, oh no it wasn’t.
Now very quickly they came across another problem.
Many of the chosen council men didn’t turn up!
The problem was simple, they couldn’t afford to turn up because while they were at a council meeting, they couldn’t work so were losing money. They sorted it and they agreed to pay them, so, it was 2,500 years ago they started to pay representatives!
Then another problem came up, one that we still have today, corruption.
It didn’t take the more dubious citizens of Athens long to realise the benefits of bribery and for councillors to see it as a useful additional income. Now, as there were 500 representatives to bribe that was too many to bribe, but they could bribe the chairman who ran the meetings, that was simpler and cheaper. This meant that the Chairman, who was elected for a year, was a popular position, and more importantly a profitable one.
They had to find a way to stop this, which they did by deciding that the chairman at each council meeting was chosen at that meeting. It didn’t totally work but it did at least spread the bribery wider, as councillors were bribed to vote for a specific councilman at a specific meeting.
“Ostracism” arrived!
This led to another problem, what do you do with someone who is not being a good councilman or receiving a bribe?
This led to “Ostracism”. An urn was placed by the council chamber, people would scratch a councillor’s name on a piece of pottery and put it in the urn. Once there were six thousand bits of pottery in the Urn, Ostracism would occur, and those councillors were then expelled from Athens for ten years.
The interesting bit is that the founding fathers of the USA used the Ancient Greek model of Democracy as the base for their constitution.
The Musical.
Therefore, I felt it was important for today’s children to learn where our democracy comes from, which is why I wrote Athens – the birth of Democracy. You can download it today at https://www.history-portal.com/product/athens-the-birth-of-democracy/. It is a fictional musical for Key Stage 2/3 pupils and is based on the facts as we now know them. I have used real names from the time, while truncating the whole story into a matter of months, when it took nearly 50 years.
After having performed the musical I would be interested to know their views on whether our version of democracy better?
We would like to hear your children’s views.
Isn’t history fun?
Ten question to ask:
- Who was Hippias, and what were his actions that led to the birth of democracy in Athens?
- How did Cleisthenes contribute to the downfall of Hippias and the establishment of democracy in Athens?
- What was the significance of Cleisthenes’ proposal of “demokratia” in 507 B.C.?
- How did democracy evolve in Athens over the next 50 years after Cleisthenes’ proposal?
- What initial problems did the Athenians encounter in their democratic system, and how did they attempt to address them?
- What was the method used to select representatives in the Athenian democracy, and why was it chosen over elections?
- What challenges arose regarding the attendance of councilmen in Athens, and how were they addressed?
- How did corruption manifest in the Athenian democracy, and what measures were taken to combat it?
- What was the practice of “ostracism,” and how was it utilized in ancient Athens?
- How did the Ancient Greek model of democracy influence the founding fathers of the USA in forming their constitution?
For more information:
https://brewminate.com/the-rise-of-democracy-in-ancient-athens/
https://www.byarcadia.org/post/ostracism-and-democracy-in-ancient-greece
https://www.worldhistory.org/Athenian_Democracy/
© Tony Dalton