História da Grécia Antiga #10 com Donald Kagan, de Yale

We were examining Sparta the most important I think of the early poll a certainly of the once we get into the seventh and sixth centuries and I was describing the formal Constitution of the Spartans having mentioned the Kings two of them and the gerousia the Council of Elders consisting of 28 elected men over 60 and the two kings to create a body of 30 then there is the spartan assembly which consists of all the adult Male Spartan citizens and that as in most states it really originated from the idea of having the fighting men participate

in decisions and that the kinds of decisions that undoubtedly were the first decisions the Assembly's made and in the case of Sparta I would guess almost the only decisions they made were questions of whether to go to war whether to make peace whether to make alliances and so forth now it's worth mentioning that that assembly just you Want to distinguish that assembly from what I'll describe shortly about the Athenian assembly in this assembly it is true that all adult male Spartans were participants but and I let me also say that they came to the meeting

dressed in their military uniform apparently including their shields because when a question was put to the Spartans the way they responded was by shouting and banging on their shields whereupon the presiding official would try to Determine which side had the loudest noise it's like a voice vote in one of our own meetings only a little bit more colorful and and only of course if the presiding official decided that he couldn't tell which site had made the most noise would they resort to a separation like like the British Parliament those in favor over on that side

those opposed on the other side and he would count and out would come the result it looks as though Debates in the assembly were probably infrequent because as best we can figure it out we would guess that most issues that came before the assembly we back up and say probably not very many issues came before the assembly but those that did if there was an agreement on the part of the gerousia and the Kings in other words the upper groups in society if they agreed there would be no no need to go I mean there

might be some legal need to go to the Assembly but there would be no debate and the matter would simply go forward however some scholars go far too far in suggesting that there never was a debate in the assembly there are debates reported to us in facilities which make it perfectly clear that they did but it is worth pointing out that so far as our information goes the only people who spoke at those assemblies were the Kings the gerousia the or a group of people I haven't mentioned to you yet the F 4 is The

5 F fours I'll describe their situation for you but for the moment there are annually elected officials of the state in short the average athenaeus ever spartan did not ever speak in the assembly it appears so it's not a democratic assembly even though every single citizen is there if he wants to be and so that's part of the mixed and rather confusing aspect of the assembly let me turn out to the F fours these according to Spartan tradition were Invented somewhat late in the development of the Spartan Constitution the word f4 comes from the word

which means to oversee over - yes oversee what's going on they were in a certain sense the overseers and one of their duties was to keep watch on the Kings and to see that the Kings didn't do anything improper illegal irreligious or anything of that kind and some scholars have focused on that and suggested that at least originally that was what their Main function was to protect the spartans from excessive power excessive behavior by the kings and that that they're sort of watching the kings thing was always their chief functions that i think is not

right i think by the time the spartans appear to us in history let us say late in the 6th century 5th century if the efforts don't do that that's i mean they they still have the technical constitutional requirements to do that But that's not what they're up to when we see them they are usually engaged in dealing with foreign policy so if a neighboring state wants you to communicate something to the spartans either it might be a offer of an alliance or it might be a an order to do something or else war would follow

or a negotiation for peace any of those things first they would come to the efforts of which there were five and the efforts would then decide what should be Done i would say in most cases they would unless it was very very serious they would be able to give some sort of answer to it but when it involves something fundamental like war and peace or alliances then they would have to go to the assembly to get their approval but my guess is that it would have been wildly reckless and therefore never done for the efforts

not to go to the gerousia first because the Guerra Cena was by far the most significant council In the state most able to have the necessary prestige and yet to be small enough truly to discuss what needed to be done and since the gerousia included the Kings it involved the most important people in the state so if the Evers wanted to do something it would be damn foolish not to clear it with the gerousia first although if they wished to be reckless they could do otherwise now it's another thing about the efforts is that they're

Very different the people are elected to the gerousia are old men who have proven themselves they are truly elected by a process in which their individual qualities are relevant and so they have tremendous prestige in the Spartan State this is not true necessarily and typically of the f-4s Aristotle tells us that they in fact were just any Joe Spartan that they were ordinary people not distinguished in any way and although we don't have a Clear picture of the way in which they were chosen it is clear that they were it was a common it looked

like it was some kind of a combination of election and sortition there's a strong element of chance involved in selecting who was going to be the effort so you must think of them not as distinguished people who have some clout in their own person but ordinary people will only achieve what clout they're going to have by virtue of being chosen as efforts and they're only There for a year now the Kings are there for life and the gerousia is there for life and I suppose the Council of the Assembly is there for life but the

Getty efforts are only going to be efforts for a year and only once in their life these are not politically powerful people I think the idea was to sort of have a representation of the ordinary Spartan to carry on the functions that I have talked about on the other hand they were given the responsibility of saying that The Kings were in line and they had various techniques or various policies and processes which had them make judgments as to whether the Kings were doing anything wrong and if they did they could make that point they could

go to Delphi and ask the God if they were right in thinking something was wrong and if they came back the Kings would be put on trial the trial the f-4s would be the accusers that trial would be held in The gerousia and don't imagine that that didn't matter Kings were brought to trial in this way frequently in the history of Sparta and very often they were convicted and often exiled and in other ways punished so there's nothing just the theoretical about this capacity to control them and something rather important about this accidental element and

who becomes an F for all right those are the elements of The Spartan Constitution and I think it's self-evident that it deserves the title of a mixed Constitution at the same time you don't want to lose sight of something even more basic than that remember all the Sparty eighths that there are whether they are ordinary citizens all the way up through King are a small minority of all the people who are under the control of the Spartans people try to guess from the evidence that we have what percentage of the Entire population of the Peloponnesus

or of their own part of the Peloponnesus this partners work well it looks as though the number of helots may have been something like seven hell outs to every Spartan and then you have to add to that the number of perioikoi who are also not Sparty eights so whatever the mixed character of the Constitution was when you look at the whole of Laconia and its possessions it is very much an oligarchy And the spartans normally will like to see other states oligarchical ii governed they will not like to see either extreme they won't like democracies

and they won't like any form of autocracy which in greece typically took the form of tyranny and so the spartans gain a reputation of being because they often fight against tyrants they gain the reputation of being hostile to tyranny which brings our attention to the subject of foreign Policy very important for Sparta and for the Greek world because as I think I mentioned before the spartans became the first state to be in command or in control or to be the leaders of a coalition of states not for a specific purpose only but a permanent coalition

of states which the ancient Greeks referred to as the Spartans and their allies which modern scholars have come to call the Peloponnesian League and I guess I will use that term and you will See it all over the place it's an in imprecise term because some of the members of this of the type I'm gonna let me say a better term for it would be the Spartan alliance which is what pretty much the Greeks called it because not everybody in the Peloponnese was a member of the Peloponnesian League and now not every member of the

league was in the Peloponnesus but still we all will know what we're talking about when we speak of the Peloponnesian League Though I shall try to remember to speak of the Spartan alliance most of the time well how did it come to exist again as in most things in greek history the beginnings are shrouded in legend and are not absolutely clear but perhaps the place to start is to say maybe around 570 bc the spartans who had been successful and apparently in turning around to some considerable degree their defeat back in the seventh century by

fight on of Argos And were expanding their influence and power in the Peloponnesus to suffer the defeat in the region of Arcadia to the north of Laconia that by the way is is a mountainous country and it and poor typically relatively speaking and it provided some of the toughest warriors in the Greek world so it's no miracle that the Spartans had a hard time up there and it looks as though it's at that point that somebody or somebodies in Sparta came up with a bright idea Which changed in that the nature of the Spartan situation

and also introduced something new into the Greek world at the same time they they defeated the town of Ted gia which is located just to the north of Laconia it's a very important state for the Spartans not just because it's the neighbor right to the north of them but because remember what I told you if you want to get them a senior from Sparta you can't go across those mountains you got to go up north And then go left go west into Messenia Teji is right there where the road turns west so its strategic importance

is very great the Spartans got into this war with headship and they gained control of Ted ship where they claimed to have discovered the bones of the great Homeric hero arrestees and taken it away from Ted yeah the bones I mean and buried them at Sparta also there was a legend that maybe they propagated that showed up in some poetry we have that Agamemnon had moved from his home base in Mycenae to Sparta with an attempt in other words to connect these Dorian's Spartans with the legends of the great men of the Achaean world described

by homer and finally we are told late in the sixth century King Cleomenes it was one of the aggressive Spartan rulers who expanded the power of Sparta said on one occasion I am no Dorian I am Anna Keon what's this all about well it looks like as the Spartans Begin to extend this league that I will be telling you about in a minute they want to make to reduce the amount of resistance that they're going to get into Dorian's versus Akins still seems to have some meaning to the Greeks remember the business about what happened

in City on when the tyrants of City on made this sharp distinction in favor of achaeans against Dorian's it suggests that that division among the Greek people's hadn't died down yet and That's I think that's what's going on here Spartans are trying to claim union with the achæans not dominance over them anyway nonetheless the Spartans start taking on other Greek States trying to establish their domination and are very successful they defeated the powerful and important state of Argos they defeated I'm sorry and in the process they took away a piece of land that is between

their area of Argos and Sparta the name of it is Canaria and took it Away and next to their own state that's interesting because the archives never forgave that and never gave up on the idea of getting it back and you find the archives and the Spartans fighting each other at least once a century and what they're fighting about is gaining control of Canora it's common people refer to Canaria as the alsace-lorraine of the Peloponnesus everybody who doesn't have it wants it back between these two states and Finally the Spartans also take the island just

off the southeastern of the Peloponnesus called Cythera which gives them a good strategic base there as well so they are expanding now what happens I'll go back to Ted Gaea for a moment because that's the first case we hear and it's the model when they defeat the tensions instead of simply and mixing their territory subordinating the people or subjecting the people to Spartan rule they do something different They offer the tensions and Alliance the character of the Alliance certainly in the full-fledged history of the Spartan alliance we can't be sure whether the words I'm going

to speak to you now we're all there in the original oath that the Spartans made their allies swear but it was there by the end of the fifth century anyway I think something like it either was in the oath or was understood and that is the state that was defeated said agreed to accept the Leadership of Sparta and the word that's involved here is hegemon hedge ammonia and the the leader is called a hegemon and that is something different from being your master you're at this poet ace it's a little bit less or at least

you want it to seem that way and to have the same friends and enemies as the Spartans had and to follow them wherever the Spartans should lead a short way of saying it was that they turned their foreign policy over to the Spartans and Accepted their leadership in war what do they get in exchange one the Spartans didn't take away a land their land destroy their houses make them slaves or anything like that besides that they also provided them promised them and provided them protection against attack from somebody else when the Peloponnesian League is in

place one of its codes quences for most of the time is the end of warfare between the states inside the Peloponnesus at least that was the theoretical situation as we shall see it will be broken from time to time but still it's generally true so now what does this mean the Spartans have done something that is similar to what the Romans would do centuries later and it really an enormous achievement if you can do it when you conquer people one of the problems you have is every state you conquer is potentially a problem you have

to rule it that's going to take More soldiers and you will have to do something with them you acquire responsibilities that are greater than they used to be but the point is normally you don't gain any fighting-men Spartan way of doing it means you gain more troops for your army when the Spartans go to their allies they and and want to go to war they tell them send that your allotment of troops to the place we tell you on the day we tell you that allotment could well be two thirds Of their arms of their

army and there they will go to where the Spartans want to go and the general of the army overall will be a Spartan and they will be fighting for Spartan purposes unless the Spartans have chosen to fight for their allies purposes but the Spartans now have increased their military strength enormous Lee by the invention of this new thing the Spartan alliance now the debate continues to exist as to just what that Alliance was really like why are the Spartans free to do anything that they liked in foreign affairs or did they need to have the

approval of their allies before going to war I'm talking now about a constitutional question rather than a reality question and scholars batted around both ways my prejudices are that the league's Constitution whatever it may have been was less important than reality that is to say not all states in the Spartan Alliance were equal some were large and numerous and strong militarily some were some part of that and also wealthy others and some were at some distance from Sparta others were a small weak poor and close to Sparta I would say and I think the hid

the evidence will support this as a fact whatever the theory may have been that the closer you were to Sparta the smaller you were that weaker you were the more you did what the Spartans told you how's that for a Shot and vice versa the stronger the more distant the wealthier you were the more independent you were of the Spartans I would say much of the time most of the time people did what the Spartans wanted them to do but we have many occasions in which states refused to do so and even get in the

way of the Spartans now I think the Spartan is very often when they had to do something called a meeting of the Spartan alliance consulted their allies But it's not necessarily true that they took a vote as to what the Allies thought sometimes they did I think sometimes they didn't it all depended on the situation if you want your allies to come and fight with you it's better to have them do so willingly than under orders and so that will explain in my opinion some of the reasons for calling a Peloponnesian League meaning not necessarily

that they were required to do so but I've given you a mixed and a Rather vague picture and I think that's the real picture I think you can't be very sure either because because this evidence doesn't allow us to be sure how the league was supposed to work and how it really did work but I also think nobody could tell in advance how it was going to work whatever they understood Constitution was after all one of the most important things that is involved in membership in the league is that when the Spartans say I want

you to come and Fight with me for these purposes you come and you bring your army to do it but we have a period in facilities account of the Peloponnesian War in which important states like Corinth and Thebes among others as simply say no and when the Spartans say why aren't you doing what you're supposed to do they come up with a very nice cock-and-bull story supported by theoretically religious motives why they can't do what they're supposed to do and the Spartans Have to put up with it there's nothing they can do about it so

I think now that I've mentioned the the constitutional technicalities I think the real thing to ask in each case is what are the realities of the situation and by which I mean mainly questions of power that determine what's going to happen all right but by the end of the sixth century there is this Spartan alliance and Sparta alone among the Greek states is a Hegemonal power and able to use by Greek standards a much vaster military force than the Greeks have ever known so that when the Persian Wars come upon them there will be no

hesitation and no doubt the Greek league that will fight the Persians will be led by the Spartans and so great was there respect that in which they were held that not only did they command the armies even though they had no Navy and no naval tradition they were even put in Charge of the fleet although they often had the brains to use other people who had more experience to do the actual leaning but Sparta is in this position and I think that's important well let's step back a moment and take a look at the Spartan

State as we've been describing it and ask what is it that motivates the Spartans as a state first of all in its foreign policy because as we shall see does this remarkable thing that even Though they are by far the strongest military force among the Greeks they are more than usual reluctant to fight and they don't like to fight wars if they can avoid them especially they don't like to go any great distance to fight a war away from home and they don't like to fight for any long period of time if they have to

be away from home and the reasons for that are really what I want to make you see at the core of it all according to the Siddha tease it was the Fear of the helots it's not just that the hell outs were so numerous compared to the Spartans but I want to remind you again of the their tremendous dissatisfaction with their situation their backs may have been broken but their spirits were not they always were hoping to have a rebellion in which they could undo this extraordinarily heavy burden that they carried and somehow in spite

of the hundreds of years in which this has been going on they did not lose Sight of their nationality of the fact that they were messy nians and that they were a people and that they had to throw off Spartan control of them if they possibly could and their feelings towards the Spartans were as you might expect there is a story of a rebellion I think I mentioned this to you earlier in the early in the fourth century in Sparta somebody's trying to stir up the the people against the Spartan government and he mentions to

People he's trying to enlist in his side the helots he says who would gladly eat the spartans raw I think that's what you have to have in your mind if you want to understand what the Spartans think if we take our whole army leave town go three days march away how do we know we'll find anybody alive when we get back that's always on their minds and helot rebellions although they don't take place every day take place very sparsely but they keep happening so that the fear Is never irrational to that is added the permanent

enmity of Argos which never gives up the idea of returning to the great days of fight on with Argos as the dominant state in the Peloponnesus and that means that the Spartans have to be defeated for that to happen and so the our drives combat the Spartans time after time good stretches in between because the Spartans always beat them and do great harm so that it takes a long time for them to come back but That's there there they don't go away it's a problem so the Spartans of course have a need of a collection

of states that stand between them and their potential enemies of whom the archives are the most important so you can look at the capella venetian league in general as an the way in which this part is dealt with the danger they felt internally and externally another element that the Spartans always worried about remember why are the Spartans so Successful in numerically they aren't many in a enough to actually just defeat anybody by numbers it's because they are the best and why are they the best it's because of this train system these values this way of

life that is the purely Spartan way so there are always I would argue likely to be a majority at least of Spartans who are suspicious of and hostile to any kind of change in internally certainly and and externally because external things have Internal implications they're always worried about corruption seeping into the Spartan system corruption normally has the concept of what money wealth behind it if money comes into the picture and people start being bought by it they will cease to be thinking the way good spartans should think only of the state but they will think

of themselves and their wealth and so on and another thing that corrupts is the search for power beyond what is Appropriate in the Spartan system remember that incredible contradiction where everybody is a similar almost an equal but each one is vying for honor which is not available universally to all and so that means if you are a conservative Spartan and the two words are practically the same you're going to be worrying about that and that leads to conservatism in foreign policy war is going if you win you're going to have a booty loot of some

kind we'll come back Into Sparta moreover some people will gain reputations because of their fighting in the battle will bring them excessive honor will fill their heads with a sense of their own greatness and again threaten the stability of the Spartan state so all of that is going to explain why are the paradox of the greatest military power in the Greek world reluctant to fight and their power is not used to acquire economic benefits What they focus on is discipline and the state versus freedom individuality and even family there you have this strange society a

closed society that does not normally permit people to come and visit Sparta and even those that it permits to come to Sparta during one period of the year they actually forced all foreigners out of town and do whatever strange things they do and now when we're talking about the fully developed Spartan state there are no Exercises of the arts such as existed before the system was created there are no luxuries legally in Sparta there are few creature comforts again I suspect that some fairly early time there were violations of these things as individuals who had

the power to do so might well try to enjoy these things in spite of their being bored but the main thing is you couldn't if you had them you couldn't really show him you couldn't flaunt it because that would be Disastrous and why because in a way a necessity becomes a virtue we human beings that's one of our typical ways of dealing with things that is we need to do something we have to and so one way we cope is to then we do it and we say it's the greatest thing in the world to

do and doing anything else is no good and that's what the Spartans did their way of life was imposed upon them by the decision to maintain their command of the helots After that it all makes perfect sense look what they had to give up to do it they said of course we give that up because that's what makes us the great people we are and that's the system that was the Spartan way of life I remind you again that even though this is very extreme and other Greek states are not going to live that way

they admire it tremendously because it suits the ideology of all police that subordinates individual family concerns to those of The community at large and as I mentioned earlier the utopian ASSA furs of the fourth century plato being the most striking aristotle to a lesser degree they admire this although they have their own wrinkles about how it's going to be nothing could be greater as a contrast to this way of thinking than the way that the Athenians will develop when they go through their growth as a polis and so let's take a look now at Athens

to see how they came Along there we go Athens I hope you remember from your maps is located in the south eastern portion of the Greek Peninsula sticks out there into the Aegean Sea its geography it's about a thousand square miles is Attica indeterminate I think we talked about it already the city is Athens the the region in which they live is Attica the people are Athenians and that's an important point I think I made too which Is everybody who is a citizen who lives in Attica is an Athenian no matter if he lives 65

or 70 miles away from the city he's still an Athenian one of the things they achieved early was the unification of that whole region and make it made one polis although that certainly doesn't mean that there are no independent villages and towns in the polis of Athens because they certainly are now Attica was not one of the most desirable that certainly agriculturally Rich areas in Greece it was relatively speaking rather barren now there are of course the great exceptions that the Central Valley so to speak of Attica has the richest soil and in the ancient

world it was able to grow the very best grain including wheat but very much of the Athenian soil is mountainous and pretty close to barren so that you don't have a lot of rich soil this is not one of the most admirable places to come on the other Hand it has certain advantages that the Athenians used well to achieve wealth and power and greatness first of all it has one splendid harbour up in the northwestern part of Attica is pireas it is the port of attic of Athens once Athens becomes a naval state and it

is both spacious that has a three nice little harbors and it is very easily defended because these harbours can be closed off and the tax can be prevented so that's one strength another is that Very rare among Greek states Attica contained silver mines in the south of the peninsula and that gave the state because these mines were ultimately owned by the state it gave the state a source of income that was very very unusual among Greek city-states and will the availability of that silver would turn out to be crucial at various moments in Athenian history

one reason why the soil wasn't so great for agriculture was that a lot of it is red Clay but that turns out to be wonderful for making pottery and of course Athenian pottery and I'm thinking especially about painted pottery fine wear stuff that is meant for the upper class is stuff that you artists will work on that will be exported all of that that is made of that great red clay the basis for the the pottery that the Athenians did another natural resource of great value and great blessing to those of us who Can still

see the remains of the Athenian experience is the marble that comes from Mount penteli as the Greeks call it now Penn Deli pentelic on as the ancient Greeks called it in the northeast parts portion of the attic Peninsula and it produces you can still go see it wonderful beautiful fine green white marble and that's the stuff that the Parthenon and all the other buildings temples on the Acropolis in around Attica was made of and that Enabled the the Athenians to build those temples as few cities could because there it was sitting in their territory not

a source of the kind of tremendous expense it would be for other states that would have to buy it and bring it in now on the other hand Athens was able as I told you let's start in the early days to grow wheat and other grains but more to the point it was very good for olive trees and for grapevines so as we will see when the spicy nians begin to Exploit all of their land not just the bottom land that works for grain but also the less desirable land and produced wine and olive oil

that was a source of agricultural wealth that would play an important part in their history now their own story about their past was something like this they unlike the other inhabitants of southern Greece according to their story never experienced a Dorian and now the Dorian's did come down and sort Of bang at the door of Athens Attica but they were driven off by the Athenians and never made their way into it so the Athenians claimed that they were in a certain sense the purest of the pure Greeks and they went to great lengths one of

their stories claims they were as the Greek word goes or talked sent us that is to say they were they sprang from their own soil in fact they said they were in Attica before the creation of the moon guess you don't have to Believe that but on the other hand it's their picture we were always here the original indigenous people their tradition I'm sure this one is surely right is that at an early time in their history they attica became a refuge for people escaping what they would have regarded as the Dorian invasion and there's

no doubt that people from the Peloponnesus in there after the fall of the Bronze Age civilizations did a lot of running away and some of them ran to Attica and were greeted and settled down there permanently and some of the most important and most aristocratic Athenians traced their ancestry not to the Athenians who were there before the moon was created but the people who had come in this flight sometime after the end of the Bronze Age it is a tradition none of producing conflict but of producing harmony these exiles we are told were brought into

the Athenian people and lived among them as Athenians No split no division similarly there is nothing like the hell up class in spar and Athens there are no surface there is no suppressed population waiting to get at their rulers so that there's a kind of a historical good fortune which says Athens is going to be without internal strife I don't mean totally but to a great degree compared to their allies to their to the other Greek States now one important example of what happens in Athens that doesn't happen other states is this there's a tradition

in Athens of an event called sin boy kids Maus it's on the on the site so you can look it up which means unification it really if you take the word apart it means they're bringing of households together there is no set of local rebellions against the major city no need to go to war now there were obviously at Wars back there in the early days of the polis when the the city of Athens became the dominant City but it's we know so little about them it's as though the memory has been entirely forgotten and

the picture that is painted is one of everybody sort of happily living together no no conflict compare that to Sparta where it's obvious Sparta gain control the Peloponnesus through war and that many of the people there were very unhappy with them not to mention the health but in neighboring be OSHA the chief city of Thebes traditionally was At war trying to subdue the other major cities of be OSHA in order to make themselves the boss and they never were fully successful in this so be OSHA is torn to some degree by this internal conflict which

makes it harder for the-- to achieve the kind of power in its own home territory but that the Athenians are able to achieve let's take a look at the earliest society of Athens as first we come to know it warning about this is that the story often comes to us through People like Aristotle who like to make things neither and put them nicely together rather than to leave little bumps or anything like that the society we're talking about this earlier society is aristocratic and remember it's important to notice the difference between aristocratic and oligarchic our

Socratic implies rule and means means ruled by the best and best and that time means simply best by birth just looking at excuse me a second No chairs today here let me yeah my back is hurting me let me you gotta care oh thanks Chris we appreciate that thanks a lot okay I'll try to speak loud they can hear me in the back all right good that's much better it means best by birth and that means if you're going to be in the ruling group and the dominant group and aristocrat the only way to get

there is if your father was an aristocrat doesn't matter how rich you are doesn't matter what a Magnificent warrior you are all that matters is birth and that is different from oligarchy which gives rule to a few but that usually means I would say just about every case that wealth plays a role that you can be one of the few in the ruling group if you're rich enough I don't mean that they didn't have aristocrats within an oligarchy I'm sure that they did it's that that was not the critical element now also in the Athenian

aristocracy you can imagine That most aristocrats are rich but some of them are not and that's the distinction that matters and we will come back to that point as we see Athens move out of the aristocracy one that is more based on wealth than it is merely on birth well we are told that in the earliest times Athens was divided up the people of Athens was divided up into four tribes just as were all the other Ionian cities and the Athenians of course were Ionians this is a point Worth making because most Ionians lived on

the coast of Asia Minor or on the islands of the Aegean and the Athenians were pretty much I'm exaggerating but mostly the only Ione on the mainland they sort of were an interesting middling group between the Dorian's of the Peloponnesus and the Greeks of other types elsewhere and the Athenians sort of stood between the mainland where they existed where they were and the the islands and across the Seas each one of these four traditional tribes contained according to this tradition three subdivisions that were called frat trees easy way to translate frat tree is Brotherhood notice

it's all again it's about family and birth you are in a frat tree you're in that frat tree because so is your father and it inherits it but these frat trees were very important I should have mentioned that the tribes had important religious functions that also the army consisted Of four regiments one for each tribe so these tribes had great reality for the Spartans you went not only to the religious festivals of the entire state but you went to those only for your fellow tribesmen which gave you a sense of belonging in that tribe and

I think that's important and the frat trees were smaller versions of the same thing frat trees had religious rites of their own and in fact the frat tree appears to have been the unit that really mattered In terms of the place where you sort of established your belonging I mean if somebody came along to an Athenian in the seventh century and said you say you're in Athenian how do I know you're an Athenian well after you got through saying well you can ask my friends my neighbors yeah but what do they know you say how

would you do it well I guess come down to a meeting of my frat tree they will have a record of my being a member of that frat tree and That makes me an athenian so that's the importance of an in a way a one part of the importance of the frat tree now the frat tree because it was established by birth and tradition was an aristocratic stronghold everywhere you could imagine tribe frat tree and so on some aristocratic family or families would have had a leading role by tradition the Greek religion didn't have priests

but it didn't have a separate priestly class and during the era Socratic period and I Would say probably throughout its history Athenian religion had the the priesthood the chief religious places in the state were held by aristocrats which in a primitive Society in itself gives them tremendous prestige and a lot of clout probably although I'm not sure we have hard evidence on this probably the frat trees fought side-by-side in the tribal regiments as well and of course they would always be commanded by aristocratic leaders another way the Athenian people were divided involved names of classes

of people and we'll come back to that in other context but one class the highest class in the iris de cranek state were the U Patrick's it means the well-born the well sired and it turns out that in the early polis no surprise they dominated the best farmland they had the chief jobs in religion they were the government because as early as we can tell that there was a regime after the legendary Kings are gone the number one mental organization you might call it is the Council of the Areopagus gets its name from the place

where it meets if you look to the west side of the Acropolis immediately there's a pretty good sized Hill which is the Areopagus the hill of Ares the war got there the Council of the Areopagus met and did what it had to do and it's clear that the members of the Areopagus in this earlier stage were noblemen we don't Know enough to know whether it was all noble men or just the leaders of the clans or whatever but that's where decisions were made it's important though to realize that in these early days of the polis

they probably had very little to decide and very little to do most of the real life of this of the state in the earliest days would have been out in the countryside where the overwhelming majority of the people lived you must imagine that it's a Something like nothing like precisely but something like the feudal manners that we find in Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire these noblemen would typically have heart led held a lot of land and have been well-to-do have had all the powers I've described and we'll looked up to and

we'll listen to they would have led the military units into battle when that was necessary and we know that one of the things that they did was to serve as the Source of justice in the state if there was a quarrel between a couple of guys they would bring it to a court that you think of easy in his complaints where his noblemen his barons were crooked but that doesn't mean they all were in any case that's where you went they settled any disputes that you didn't settle by feud or by some other primitive technique

and it was pretty clear that they were it was right to have the noblemen do it not just because They're aristocrats but because they would know what the law was since there was no writing before the eighth century and it was very rare after that there was nothing like a written law code until the seventh century before that do you wanted to get justice you went to a nobleman and if you wanted to go beyond that you went to the Areopagus which was made of noblemen that's the picture in the earliest polis as best we

can Reconstructed now Aristotle tells us that beginning in the early 7th century the date he gives us we of course we shouldn't put too much credence in it it's too precise but it's 683 BC is the date he gives us and he tells us in that on that occasion we are introduced to a new thing magistrates who are chosen from the aristocracy to do various jobs in the city in Greek in in Athens the magistrates were called archons they are CH ons it means in the most technical Sense rulers but it means really important magistrates

in the state one of these was called the war Archon Paulo mark presumably he led the army next came the Archon who was actually the most important Archon the one who gave his name to the year yes they think I mentioned the Greeks did not have a system of dating which has a starting point and so you can say 1 2 3 4 5 instead like many ancient peoples they named the year after the leading Archon The leading magistrate of the state the Mesopotamian cities did the same thing so that Archon was called the Archon

eponymous the one who gives his name to the state and so if you wanted to know when did a thing happen somebody would say it was in the archon ship of so-and-so and so-and-so well you wouldn't have that in your head you'd have to go someplace and look it up where there was a list of archons anyway he was the most important A third Archon was known as the King arkhan the Ark own boss allows his responsibilities were mainly religious and but I should point out that all the archons or whatever else they did everyone

then also did justice that is they had courts to which people could come to get their quarrels settled sometime after that after these three major figures that I have mentioned to you there was established a body of men Called Fez Moffett I you'll see this on the list of words which were six men whose functions were apparently strictly judicial they held certain they sort of held presided over courts that you could go to for specified purposes every one of these nine archons they are sometimes referred to as the college of nine archons they had a

secretary which would have brought them up to ten but only nine were true archons they were elected by I'm sorry from the aristocracy by the Assembly of all Athenian adult males that means mainly not aristocrats they chose from among the aristocrats for these archons who served for one year and not again that's a very important concept nobody in Athens holes and office at this time where as far as I can tell for any at any time well I back up at this time for more than a year the only thing in town that has continuity

that can develop power and influence over a Period of time is the Council of the Areopagus and that's what aristocratic and oligarchic regimes do they are very nervous about individuals who acquire too much power popularity influence which will threaten the character of the aristocracy aristocracies it's this may seem funny but aristocracy's love equality equality among aristocrats and then tremendous inequality between them and everybody else sort of the way Yale E's feel about Things really Yale E's are very nervous about anybody sticking his head up above the crowd because you know it's like the question always

is why not me you have high expectations of yourself and so sometimes unless you're invaded by later religious ideas that the Greeks didn't have you're you're not humble you you're vying for honors I always see Greeks in front of me when I see jelly's an aristocratic Republic is what we have not a monarchy but a republic dominated Insofar as it's dominated by anybody but individual aristocrats by the Areopagus and at some point in the history of that institution it becomes consists now of men who have been Archon the year after their Archon ship they automatically

go into the areopagus and remain areopagus for life well that gives the Council of the Areopagus even more power because an influence because they consist now exclusively after a while of people who have been chosen for their individual Qualities to be the leading magistrates in the state and now they will oversee what's going on and you can bet they will be looking very carefully over the shoulders of the aristocratic archons whenever they are in power to see that they're not screwing up but also to see that they are not getting too mighty and too powerful

the weight of the power of the Areopagus must have been enormous in this system so the rich and the Well-born because they are pretty much the same in the early days of the polis run the state in this official constitutional way but I would also remind you that on their estates out there in the country they run the thing just as well with the farmers and everybody else out there kowtow to them and seeking their favor that's the kind of world that we have at the start and then it comes to Athens as it did

to every other Greek state a little bit Later it looks like in Athens all of the change and turmoil that we've seen in in Argos and Corinth and other places if we are right in talking about something like a hoplite revolution it occurs in Athens - and Athens grows slowly and again late but it begins to engage in commerce to a greater degree than before and in ancient handy crafted manufacturing and it just as it does elsewhere it leads to new wealth and new class distinctions which are now based Not on birth but on wealth

and we hear new terms not all of them knew a couple of them knew that come into the picture we hear about Athenians divided into different classes excuse me one of these you remember was the you Patra die the well born that's the old story and they're really early to those who were and those who weren't but now we hear about people called Hiep pace and it means horsemen cavalrymen well you can't own a horse And ride a horse unless you have a lot of money horses are expensive so there are rich people now who

are these carry them well if they've had cavalry in the past they've always been aristocrats but what we'll see in the future is that there will be been men who are hippies who are not necessarily aristocrats at the bottom of the barrel we hear about people called feats th ET es they've always been around they are the poor they don't own land they are they live At the mercy of chance they work for other people they do anything they can to stay alive but now comes the new thing people called zuga Tai ze you Gita

hi what does it mean it means yoke fellows now there are two senses of the word yoke that seem to be involved in this you could say that and and this is one way that makes sense these were men who were sufficiently well-off that they could own a team of oxen two oxen who will yoke together to pull the plow that Would make them respectively well-off farmers we are talking about people of the hoplite class another theory is that they were indeed named that because they were hoplites because they lined up in the Phalanx and

they were yoked together so to speak by their shields touching one another it hardly matters which of the stories you prefer or whether you choose both we're talking about the same people and that tells us the important fact that this new class of Independence Family farmer has arrived in Athens and as in other states is not satisfied with his position in the state as his own importance to the state becomes greater and greater we will come back to this store when we talk about so long but think about these changes is happening as the next

change that I want to tell you about occurs a change that threatened or a change that didn't happen but if it had would have changed the entire course Of events according to tradition in the year 632 an Athenian nobleman who was had become famous because of his victory in an athletic contest and who had married the daughter of a very wealthy and powerful tyrant in Megara right next door to Attica so this guy was a young bigshot of extraordinary character named Kai lon attempted a coup d'etat trying to establish a tyranny in Athens just as

his father-in-law had established one in Megara his father-in-law's name was Theodore knees well as the story goes he tried his best to gain control the city what you do in Athens in the early days if you want to take control of the city is you take an armed force up onto the crop the Acropolis seize the Acropolis make it your fortress and proclaim yourself boss and see if you can make it stick well he couldn't he was resisted by enough of his opponents that he was defeated the leader of the resistance was the family known

as the alcmaeonidae We will hear a lot about them in this course but they went up there locked up kai-lan and his supporters in on the Acropolis in a temple you couldn't go into the temple for the purpose of killing somebody that would be sacrilegious and so they were at a standstill still if you're inside that temple and trying to avoid being killed you still need food and drink and most important drink so how could they manage it well they took a cord tied it to the Temple held on to the core and went down

to the well and got their water claiming that they were just as sacrosanct as they had been before and for a while it works but the Aqua he merely said baloney cut the cord killed the Colonials that put an end to the colognian conspiracy but it brought something to the alcmaeonidae as well a curse the alchemy Nets were declared a cursed and driven from the city well That's for the time being later on we will see here they're back again and they're very important but the curse continues to be attached to the family and as

we get to the last end of the last third of the fifth century and the Peloponnesian War is about to break out the enemies of Pericles will pull out the curse of the alcmaeonidae to use against him because his mother was of the alchemy innate family for the moment what we're talking about here I think Though is here's the first sign that we see of trouble in paradise nice calm happy sin I caused Athens has got trouble right here in River City I mean no in athletes and why I think we must imagine that there

are the kinds of discontents that we have been talking about which find a leader in the form of a man who is an outstanding figure for some reason who was willing to try to establish a tyranny and use armed force to try to achieve their goals that it Fails I think is an indication that it that the the same forces haven't reached the power in Athens that they had reached in Megara and Corinth sitting on in places like that but it it's a warning about troubles ahead and I'll turn to those troubles in the next

hour