 Bas-relief of Solon (the ancient Athenian lawgiver) from the chamber of the US House of Representatives. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia. Among Ancient Greece’s many important contributions to human knowledge, perhaps none is more apparent than their long and varied experience in the development of political thought. Though these experiences have come down to us as a single tradition, there are in fact at least two sides to this coin. We speak, of course, of Athens and Sparta; the former an older, more cultured and dynamic community, and the latter, of more recent stock, but with an even more traditional form. Though the development of each community is worthy of separate consideration as well, here we will focus on the continuities of Greek political thought and the challenges created by each community’s unique political context.
As we’ve seen before, the Greek concept of the polis was one that emphasized the personal relationships between members of the community in a way that is often foreign to the modern student. “The polis . . . was not simply a set of buildings. It was a community of citizens who shared a range of experiences, in the army, in kinship groups, in age-classes, and marriage alliances” (Freeman 167). The goal of the community was simple: to achieve eunomia or “good order,” which was made possible through the thoughtful legislation and faithful execution of “good laws” (Freeman 170). Though this purpose was inherent to both the Spartan and Athenian forms of government, the cities pursued this order in strikingly different ways. Athens’ roots are deeper than most other prominent Greek communities. The various Ionian villages of Attica began a process of synoecism (Greek for ‘union of households’) some time in the ninth or eighth centuries before Christ, due to advances in agricultural technology and the resulting increase in population (Martin 71, 82). As Ionians, the Athenians benefitted greatly from their ancestors’ centuries of cultural exchange between the Greeks of modern-day Turkey and the many peoples of the ancient Near East. Because of the shared hardship of the recent Dark Ages and this common cultural identity, Athens developed an early sense of egalitarianism that served as a major force for unity and equality in the community. Though the evidence from this period is admittedly “scarce and obscure,” it “can be interpreted to mean that by the late seventh century B.C., Athens’ male citizens—rich, hoplite-level, and poor alike—had established the first limited form of democratic government” (Martin 83). The first threat against the good order of the community at Athens came in the form of an attempted coup against their democracy. The perpetrator was Cylon, an Athenian nobleman, former Olympian, and the son-in-law of the reigning tyrant of Megara. The word ‘tyrant’ is thought to be of Lydian origin and may have originally “meant no more than a ruler, but as Greek democracy developed and all forms of one-man rule became abhorrent the Greeks themselves gave the word the connotations that still surround it today” (Freeman 165). The Athenians therefore “rallied ‘from the fields in a body’ (Thucydides 1.126.7) to foil” Cylon’s schemes (Martin 83). After all, in their mind, “It is no polis that is ruled by one man only” (Kitto 71). Later, the threat row tyranny revived when another prominent Athenian named Peisistratus reigned briefly over the city, and was succeeded by his son and grandson before the latter was assassinated (Martin 87). There were also economic threats to Athens’ eunomia, particularly the consolidation of wealth and property in the hands of increasingly fewer and fewer citizens. As the rich became richer (and fewer) and the poor became poorer (and more numerous), many cried out for greater justice (Greek dike, pronounced dee-kay) in the operations of the community. Justice then, to the Athenian, always maintained an economic connotation. It was this sense of justice that Solon sought to restore with his reforms in the early sixth century B.C. He abolished debt ownership, sought out Athenians who had been sold abroad into slavery and ceased collecting produce taxes. He then opened up government offices fully to those whose land produced “500 or more measures of grain, oil, or wine” and granted partial participation to those who produced at least 200 measures (Freeman 175-176). Though these property qualifications still excluded many Athenians from holding public office, all citizens were granted membership in the Assembly (Greek ekklesia), while aristocratic influence was codified in the Council (Greek boule), which met atop the Areopagus (Greek ‘Hill of Ares;’ Martin 83, 85-86; see Acts 17:16-34). And later, after the fall of the Peisistratid regime, Cleisthenes used these same reforms as the template for his own program, devising “a system of government based on direct participation by as many adult male citizens as possible” (Martin 88). Sparta’s origins are similar in sequence to those of Athens but the cities also differed in significant ways. Sparta, too, underwent a process of synoecism but with a strange twist; two communities as opposed to one, gained the ascendency, producing a unique dual monarchy for which Sparta became famous (Martin 71, 73). The Spartans also did not owe their cultural heritage to the Ionians, but the more recently-arrived Dorian Greeks, as is evidenced by both their dialect and their chronic xenophobia (Greek for ‘fear of strangers’; Martin 73). Because of their later arrival to the Greek world, the Spartans knew they were different. And for this reason, they saw their cultural distinctiveness as both the ends and means of good order. The result was an increasingly militaristic approach in its relations to its immediate Peloponnesian neighbors as well as the Greek world at-large (Freeman 168-169). Later reforms sought to inculcate these martial values into their youth through the state-sponsored education of young boys and girls, pedophilia among the young men, military-style messes for the men, and even officially sanctioned violence against the enslaved Messenians (Freeman 170-172). Like Athens, however, the Spartans also directed their efforts against the main political threat to eunomia: tyranny. One-man rule seems to have never occurred to the Spartan community. Since its beginnings, two kings had ruled the community and with time the Spartans further limited even these meager powers with the introduction of the Council of Elders (Greek gerousia) and the Assembly of the People (Greek demos), as well as the office of the Overseers (Greek ephoroi; Martin 74). And it was this fear of tyranny that motivated much of Sparta’s policy toward others: assisting Cleisthenes’ overthrow of the Peisistratids in Athens, leading their neighbors in the Greco-Persian wars, and seeking to end Athens’ hegemony by means of the so-called Peloponnesian War (Martin 87, 105, 147-152). Athens and Sparta therefore shared eunomia as their common goal for their communities and recognized the threat posed by tyranny to this ‘good order.’ Other threats, however, were identified based on the unique experiences of each community in their political thought and practice. Most Athenian reforms sought greater economic justice due to its deeply rooted egalitarianism, while Sparta’s development sought greater military strength in order to preserve their identity in a new cultural context. If we moderns are to learn from the successes (and failures) of these Greek political traditions, we will have to learn what the Greeks themselves struggled with: uniting the twin goals of economic justice and cultural vitality. Works Cited
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