government organization: Greece GREECE BY J EFFREY S CARNES The famous quotation from Aristotle “Man is a political animal” actually means “Man is an animal that lives in a polis”— that is, in a relatively small city that is self-governing and not subject to the control of a larger governmental entity (Polis is usually translated as “city-state.”) The entire history of Greek self-government from the earliest records (ca 1200 b.c.e.) to the time of Alexander (late fourth century b.c.e.) is the history of such poleis, over 1,000 in number and ranging in size from a few thousand inhabitants to perhaps 300,000 in Athens at the height of its power in the mid-fift h century There must have been a tremendous variety of systems of government, the details of which are mostly lost to us, but they can be broken down into three basic types Cities were ruled by a single individual (whether a king or a tyrannos, a word which did not yet have the negative connotations of “tyrant”); by a small group, either a hereditary aristocracy or an economic elite (typically called an oligarchy, literally “rule by the few”); or by the entire citizen body, the demos (democracy, a Greek invention) THE AGE OF KINGS Our information about Greek political systems before about 700 b.c.e comes primarily from the epic poetry of Homer and Hesiod These poems show us a world in which poleis are ruled by individuals known as basileis, or kings There is evidence for kingship dating back to Mycenaean times (ca 1600–1100 b.c.e.) in the form of inscriptions in the early Greek syllabic writing system known as Linear B, and since Homer’s Iliad (probably written down in its current form around 700 b.c.e.) was the result of a long oral tradition, we can be confident that much of the material there reflects earlier practices The Greek basileus (king) differed in many respects from the kings more familiar to us in European history To begin with, given the relatively small size of most poleis, the area and resources controlled by even a powerful basileus were not large Based on the (probably exaggerated) figures for troop strength in the Iliad, combined with what can be surmised about ancient population sizes, the most powerful leaders of the Homeric era ruled over kingdoms of perhaps 100,000 individuals, and most of them substantially fewer Moreover, the power of these kings seems to have been limited both in peace and in war The version of the Trojan War told by Homer has a Greek expeditionary force made up of several dozen basileis, each leading his own contingent of troops, with Agamemnon in command by virtue of having brought the largest army He is shown using whatever force or persuasion he can to get the leaders of the coalition to follow him, but nowhere does Homer suggest that Agamemnon has absolute legal or moral authority over them When Achilles quarrels with Agamemnon and withdraws from the war, the other Greek leaders are displeased with his action, but none questions his right to take his ships and go home 527 Kings seem to have ruled with a certain degree of consent from their subjects; in both the Iliad and Odyssey they call assemblies to seek advice from other nobles Hesiod, in his Theogony, explicitly values kings for their wisdom in judging and settling disputes: “In the assembly wrongs are righted [by kings] with gentle persuasion”; elsewhere he speaks of bad kings as “devourers of bribes.” As Greeks’ conceptions of justice evolved, their views of the gods came to be influenced by their views of kingship, with Zeus serving as a representation of the ideal king By the seventh century b.c.e., however, kingship was essentially unknown in Greece and was considered a form of government practiced by foreign peoples THE AGE OF TYRANTS The word tyrannos, apparently of non-Greek origin, first appears in the mid-sixth century b.c.e applied to Gyges, the ruler of Lydia, a non-Greek kingdom in Asia Minor Unlike its modern derivative tyrant, the word was not necessarily pejorative: A tyrant was simply an individual who held sole power in the state The tyrannos was in many ways similar to a king, the chief difference being that a tyrant generally possessed no hereditary claim to his position Of course, most tyrants wished to pass on power to their descendants: Gyges, for example, after acquiring power by murdering the king, founded a dynasty that ruled Lydia for over 100 years, and he is usually referred to as a king himself despite his illegitimate acquisition of the throne Tyrants were a varied lot, with different reasons for coming to power and widely varying styles of rule In the early days tyranny seems to have been a response to a change in social conditions that was driven largely by a change in warfare tactics, namely, the switch to hoplite warfare in the early seventh century Hoplites were heavily armed foot soldiers who fought in tight formation, making the cohesiveness of the army of paramount importance Hoplites came from neither the richest classes (who could afford to keep and train horses and therefore formed the cavalry) nor the poorest (who could not afford hoplite armor) This “middle class” naturally wanted a greater share of political power, and came into conflict with the established aristocracy In this situation tyrants arose—paradoxically enough—as champions of the middle class This theory, first put forward by Aristotle in his Politics, is confirmed for some poleis and quite plausible for others In Athens the reforms of Solon in the 590s b.c.e gave the lower property classes more power, and Solon specifically rejected taking on the role of tyrant—yet when these reforms proved insufficient to maintain harmony, a tyranny arose some 30 years later under Peisistratus In Sparta, by contrast, the hoplite class was officially composed of equals and had a large share in ruling the state; this may be the reason there was never a tyranny in Sparta At any rate, the Age of Tyrants can be seen as a necessary precondition for the creation of democracy, since it was an era in which political rights were being given to ever-increasing segments of the population