It was hard work running a deme, but the experience was useful, for Cleisthenes demanded a great deal from the ordinary Athenian when it came to participation in national affairs.
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The political life of Athens centered on the agora. It was here during the first years of the democracy that the general assembly, the ecclesia, used to meet. The market stalls were packed away and people gathered in the dusty square to take part in debate, pass laws, and levy taxes.
After ten years or so the assembly was transferred to the slopes of a rocky outcrop called the Pnyx, which overlooked the agora, and finally towards the end of the fifth century it moved to a specially designed shell-shaped platform on the summit of the Pnyx. This could accommodate between eight and thirteen thousand people (the platform was enlarged in the fourth century). The citizen body was numbered in the tens of thousands, so it would appear that only a minority, albeit a substantial one, was willing or available to attend regularly. Of course, at any given time many citizens would be at work in the fields or in the manufacturing industries; others would be abroad on business or serving with the army during the frequent wars that Athens waged.
The ecclesia was the sovereign body of the polis and there was no appeal against its decisions, except (if you were very lucky) to a later meeting. As Aristotle remarked, “the poor have more power than the wealthy, as there are more of them and the decision of the majority is supreme.”
The assembly met on average once every nine days, although additional emergency sessions could be convened if necessary. A quorum of six thousand citizens had to be present for a meeting to be official. Attendance was not exactly compulsory, but strenuous efforts were made to ensure a full house. People brought their own food and a cushion to sit on—unsurprisingly, for meetings could last from dawn till dusk.
From the 480s, three hundred publicly owned slaves, called the Scythian Archers, formed the city’s police force and on assembly days they swept through the marketplace holding a rope covered in red powder and cleared it. Any citizen found absenting himself or with red marks on his clothes could expect to be punished. Speakers addressed the citizens from a special platform or bema. Any citizen was entitled to intervene in debates. Voting was by a show of hands rather than secret ballot.
Not far from the Monument of the Eponymous Heroes stood a substantial building some twenty-five meters square, the Bouleuterion. It was here that the boulē or council met. Cleisthenes abolished Solon’s council based on the old four tribes and replaced it with a new and influential body. It was five hundred strong. Each of the ten new tribes contributed fifty members, probably chosen annually by lot from a long list prepared from deme nominations. The outgoing council vetted those on whom the lot fell. Nobody could be appointed to the council more than twice in their lives and more than once in a decade.
Cleisthenes agreed with Solon that sortition had its uses—ensuring equality of opportunity, deterring corruption, and allowing space for the gods to have their say. Perhaps most significantly, sortition encouraged citizens to keep up-to-date with the political issues of the day, for there was a reasonable chance that at some point they might have to play an active part in public life.
The boulē was the supreme administrative authority in the state and, together with various officials, it managed all public business. Its most important task was to prepare the agenda for the ecclesia, which was only permitted to discuss topics that it had approved.
However, a committee of five hundred was too large to be efficient. The year (360 days with intercalated months, as and when necessary) was divided into ten parts. The fifty councillors from each tribe acted in turn as an executive subcommittee for one tenth of the year or thirty-six days and undertook the boulē’s routine work. They lived in a building in the agora called the Tholos or Roundhouse, slept there and received meals at the public expense. They worked three shifts across twenty-four hours and at least seventeen duty members were always on hand to deal with urgent business. One of their number was appointed president or chairman for the day by lot.
So far as military affairs were concerned, each tribe was required to supply a regiment of hoplites and a squadron of cavalry, which were led by a general, or strategos. These ten officers also acted as admirals of the fleet, as occasion called. For much of the fifth century they played a dominant role in domestic politics.The Athenians had common sense and knew that winning victories on the battlefield or at sea called for experience and talent. They avoided random selection for these posts and allowed successful generals to hold continuous command from year to year as appropriate.
It will be recalled that Solon applied sortition to the appointment of the nine Archons, who used to govern the polis. They included the commander-in-chief, or polemarch (literally, “war leader”). His executive authority declined and over the years the strategoi took his place as the most powerful executive authority not only in the army and navy but also in the square.
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Another innovation of Cleisthenes was ostracism. The ecclesia voted once a year, if there was demand, on the exile for ten years of a leading politician. Citizens could propose anyone they wished. There was no question of punishment for criminality, rather a desire, in Plutarch’s phrase, to “humble and cut back oppressive prestige and power.” After all, Pisistratus had exploited his position as popular leader and military commander to make himself tyrant. This must be prevented from happening again.
All citizens were eligible to vote in a secret ballot at a special meeting of the ecclesia in the marketplace. They scratched any man’s name whom they wished to see banished on a piece of broken pottery (an ostracon, whence “ostracism”) and deposited it in an urn. A quorum of six thousand citizens was necessary for a vote to be valid. The man with the greatest number of votes against him had ten days to leave the city. If he tried to come back, the penalty was death. Otherwise, he retained all his civic and property rights and, once he had served his term, was permitted to return to Athens and, if he wished, resume his public career.
The odd thing is that ostracism was not in fact implemented for two decades. An ostracism was only held if every January or February the people in assembly decided there should be one. Year after year they voted the proposition down. It is hard to explain this delay; most probably, politicians were nervous that the procedure might backfire on them or in a later year be used against the first citizen to propose it.
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Sparta was well known for preferring oligarchies as a system of government. It yielded to the temptation of intervening again in the affairs of Athens and calling a halt to the dangerous democratic experiment. Cleomenes had been humiliated once before, and the time had come for vengeance. In 506 he led a substantial army of Spartans and their allies from the Peloponnese against Athens. At the same time the Boeotians attacked from the north and a force from Chalcidice on the island of Euboea crossed the narrow channel to Attica. The prospects for the new democracy were bleak.