Athens Invents Demokratia

On the bare, rocky Pnyx hill above Athens, five or six thousand ordinary men stood on the open hillside — farmers, shoemakers, fishmongers, potters — and roared the law into existence with a show of hands. In the kingdoms you have studied, subjects gathered so a king could issue decrees. Not here. No tyrant could silence this voice, and no gold could buy it. The Athenians gave the strange invention a blunt name: demokratia — "rule by the people."

Key Terms

Demokratia: The blunt name Athenians gave their new government, where citizens roared laws into existence with a show of hands on a rocky hillside — not a king or a handful of rich families.
Eupatridae: The "well-fathered" noble families who for generations owned Athens’ best farmland and filled every public office.
Hektēmoros: A farmer so deep in debt that he had to hand over one-sixth of his crop to his creditor every single year, with no end to it in sight.
Horos: A stone marker driven into a mortgaged field, carved with the name of the creditor who now owned its harvest.
Draco: In 621 BC he carved Athens’ first written laws onto wooden tablets and stood them in the public square — though nearly every crime under them carried the death penalty.
Hippeis: Under Solon’s four classes, the rank producing 300 to 499 medimnoi of grain a year — rich enough to keep a warhorse.
Seisachtheia: Solon’s 594 BC decree, whose name means "the shaking off of burdens," that canceled every farm debt in Athens at once.
Timokratia: Solon’s new system that ranked Athenian citizens and their political rights by how much grain their land produced each year, instead of by family bloodline.
Pentacosiomedimnoi: Under Solon’s four property classes, the top rank of Athenians, producing at least 500 medimnoi of grain a year and alone eligible for the highest offices.
Thetes: The lowest of Solon’s four property classes, producing under 200 medimnoi of grain a year — able to vote in the assembly but never hold office.
Peisistratus: Around 561 BC he seized control of Athens by force and ruled as a tyrant, breaking the grip of the noble clans and handing land to poor farmers.
Panathenaic Games: One of two festivals funded with state money by a tyrant, drawing fishermen, farmers, and craftsmen into the same roaring crowd for the first time.
City Dionysia: The state-funded Athenian festival that became the birthplace of Greek theater.
Isagoras: An Athenian nobleman who called in a Spartan army to back his grab for power, driving his rival into exile.
Cleisthenes: Driven into exile by a rival backed by Spartan troops, he was brought home by the Athenian people and tore up the city’s ancient family map to redraw it around geography instead.
Demes: The 139 local villages Cleisthenes carved Attica into — the smallest building block of his new political map.
Boule: The Council of 500 that set the agenda for Athens’ government, filled by 50 men chosen by lot from each of the ten tribes.
Ekklesia: Athens’ Assembly, where 5,000 to 6,000 citizens gathered on the open rock of the Pnyx hill roughly 40 times a year to vote by show of hands.
Sortition: Choosing government officials not by election but by random lot, like drawing names from a jar, so ordinary men took a turn at governing too.
Ostracism: A yearly vote in which citizens scratched a name onto a broken piece of pottery — if 6,000 men named the same person, he was exiled for ten years but kept his property and citizenship.