Throughout its history, Athens had many different constitutions under its different leaders. Some of the history of Athens's reforms as well as a collection of constitutions from other Ancient Greek city-states was compiled and synthesized into a large all-encompassing constitution created by either Aristotle or one of his students called the
Constitution of the Athenians. The
Constitution of the Athenians provides a run-down of the structure of Athens's government and its processes. Athens had three political bodies where citizens gathered in numbers running into the hundreds or thousands. These are the assembly (in some cases with a quorum of 6,000), the council of 500 (
boule), and the courts (a minimum of 200 people, on some occasions up to 6,000). Of these three bodies, the assembly and the courts were the true sites of power – although courts, unlike the assembly, were never simply called the
demos ('the people'), as they were manned by just those citizens over thirty. Crucially, citizens voting in both were not subject to review and prosecution, as were council members and all other officeholders. In the 5th century BC, there is often a record of the assembly sitting as a court of judgment itself for trials of political importance and it is not a coincidence that 6,000 is the number both for the full quorum for the assembly and for the annual pool from which jurors were picked for particular trials. By the mid-4th century, however, the assembly's judicial functions were largely curtailed, though it always kept a role in the initiation of various kinds of political trial.
Ecclesia The central events of the Athenian democracy were the meetings of the
assembly (,
ekklesía). Unlike a
parliament, the assembly's members were not elected, but attended by right when they chose. Greek democracy created at Athens was
direct, rather than
representative: any adult male citizen over the age of 20 could take part, and it was a duty to do so. The officials of the democracy were in part elected by the Assembly and in large part chosen by lottery in a process called
sortition. The assembly had four main functions: it made executive pronouncements (decrees, such as deciding to go to war or granting citizenship to a foreigner), elected some officials, legislated, and tried political crimes. As the system evolved, the last function was shifted to the law courts. The standard format was that of speakers making speeches for and against a position, followed by a general vote (usually by show of hands) of yes or no. Though there might be blocs of opinion, sometimes enduring, on important matters, there were no political parties, and likewise
government or
oppositionas in the
Westminster system did not exist. Voting was by simple
majority. In the 5th century at least, there were scarcely any limits on the power exercised by the assembly. If the assembly broke the law, the only thing that might happen is that it would punish those who had proposed that it had agreed to. If a mistake had been made, from the assembly's viewpoint it could only be because it had been misled. with the speaker's platform, the meeting place of the people of Athens. In the 5th century BC, there were 10 fixed assembly meetings per year, one in each of the ten
state months, with other meetings called as needed. In the following century, the meetings were set to forty a year, with four in each state month. One of these was now called the main meeting,
kyria ekklesia. Additional meetings might still be called, especially as up until 355 BC there were still political trials that were conducted in the assembly, rather than in court. The assembly meetings did not occur at fixed intervals, as they had to avoid clashing with the annual festivals that followed the lunar calendar. There was also a tendency for the four meetings to be aggregated toward the end of each state month. Attendance at the assembly was not always voluntary. In the 5th century, public slaves forming a cordon with a red-stained rope herded citizens from the
agora into the assembly meeting place (
Pnyx), with a fine being imposed on those who got the red on their clothes. After the restoration of democracy in 403 BC, pay for assembly attendance was introduced. This promoted a new enthusiasm for assembly meetings. Only the first 6,000 to arrive were admitted and paid, with the red rope now used to keep latecomers at bay.
The Boule In 594 BC, Solon is said to have created a boule of 400 to guide the work of the assembly. After the reforms of Cleisthenes, the Athenian Boule was expanded to 500 and was selected by lot every year. Each of Cleisthenes's 10 tribes provided 50 councilors who were at least 30 years old. The Boule's roles in public affairs included finance, maintaining the military's cavalry and fleet of ships, advising the
generals, approving of newly elected magistrates, and receiving ambassadors. Most importantly, the Boule would draft
probouleumata, or deliberations for the Ecclesia to discuss and approve on. During emergencies, the Ecclesia would also grant special temporary powers to the Boule. Cleisthenes restricted the Boule's membership to those of
zeugitai status (and above), presumably because these classes' financial interests gave them an incentive towards effective governance. A member had to be approved by his deme, each of which would have an incentive to select those with experience in local politics and the greatest likelihood at effective participation in government. The members from each of the ten tribes in the Boule took it in turns to act as a standing committee (the
prytaneis) of the Boule for a period of thirty-six days. All fifty members of the prytaneis on duty were housed and fed in the tholos of the
Prytaneion, a building adjacent to the
bouleuterion, where the boule met. A chairman for each tribe was chosen by lot each day, who was required to stay in the tholos for the next 24 hours, presiding over meetings of the Boule and Assembly. Altogether, the boule was responsible for a great portion of the administration of the state, but was granted relatively little latitude for initiative; the boule's control over policy was executed in its probouleutic, rather than its executive function; in the former, it prepared measures for deliberation by the assembly, in the latter, it merely executed the wishes of the assembly.
Courts (Dikasteria) Athens had an elaborate legal system centered on full citizen rights (see
atimia). The age limit of 30 or older, the same as that for office holders but ten years older than that required for participation in the assembly, gave the courts a certain standing in relation to the assembly. Jurors were required to be under oath, which was not required for attendance at the assembly. The authority exercised by the courts had the same basis as that of the assembly: both were regarded as expressing the direct will of the people. Unlike office holders (magistrates), who could be impeached and prosecuted for misconduct, the jurors could not be censured, for they, in effect, were the people and no authority could be higher than that. A corollary of this was that, at least acclaimed by defendants, if a court had made an unjust decision, it must have been because it had been misled by a litigant. Essentially there were two grades of a suit, a smaller kind known as
dike (δίκη) or private suit, and a larger kind known as
graphe or public suit. For private suits, the minimum jury size was 200 (increased to 401 if a sum of over 1,000 drachmas was at issue), for public suits 501. Under Cleisthenes's reforms, juries were selected by lot from a panel of 600 jurors, there being 600 jurors from each of the ten tribes of Athens, making a jury pool of 6,000 in total. For particularly important public suits the jury could be increased by adding in extra allotments of 500. 1,000 and 1,500 are regularly encountered as jury sizes and on at least one occasion, the first time a new kind of case was brought to court (see
graphē paranómōn), all 6,000 members of the jury pool may have attended to one case. The cases were put by the litigants themselves in the form of an exchange of single speeches timed by a
water clock or
clepsydra, first prosecutor then defendant. In a public suit the litigants each had three hours to speak, much less in private suits (though here it was in proportion to the amount of money at stake). Decisions were made by voting without any time set aside for deliberation. Jurors did talk informally amongst themselves during the voting procedure and juries could be rowdy, shouting out their disapproval or disbelief of things said by the litigants. This may have had some role in building a consensus. The jury could only cast a "yes" or "no" vote as to the guilt and sentence of the defendant. For private suits only the victims or their families could prosecute, while for public suits anyone (
ho boulomenos, "whoever wants to" i.e. any citizen with full citizen rights) could bring a case since the issues in these major suits were regarded as affecting the community as a whole. Justice was rapid: a case could last no longer than one day and had to be completed by the time the sun set. Some convictions triggered an automatic penalty, but where this was not the case the two litigants each proposed a penalty for the convicted defendant and the jury chose between them in a further vote. No appeal was possible. There was however a mechanism for prosecuting the witnesses of a successful prosecutor, which it appears could lead to the undoing of the earlier verdict. Payment for jurors was introduced around 462 BC and is ascribed to
Pericles, a feature described by Aristotle as fundamental to radical democracy (
Politics 1294a37). Pay was raised from two to three
obols by
Cleon early in the Peloponnesian war and there it stayed; the original amount is not known. Notably, this was introduced more than fifty years before payment for attendance at assembly meetings. Running the courts was one of the major expenses of the Athenian state and there were moments of financial crisis in the 4th century when the courts, at least for private suits, had to be suspended. The system showed a marked anti-professionalism. No judges presided over the courts, nor did anyone give legal direction to the jurors. With the random selection of jurors, it meant that these jurors were simply ordinary citizens with little to no legal training. Magistrates had only an administrative function and were laymen. Most of the annual magistracies in Athens could only be held once in a lifetime. There were no lawyers as such; litigants acted solely in their capacity as citizens. Whatever professionalism there was tended to disguise itself; it was possible to pay for the services of a speechwriter or
logographer (
logographos), but this may not have been advertised in court. Jurors would likely be more impressed if it seemed as though litigants were speaking for themselves.
Shifting balance between assembly and courts As the system evolved, the courts (that is, citizens under another guise) intruded upon the power of the assembly. Starting in 355 BC, political trials were no longer held in the assembly, but only in a court. In 416 BC, the
graphē paranómōn ('indictment against measures contrary to the laws') was introduced. Under this, anything passed or proposed by the assembly could be put on hold for review before a jury – which might annul it and perhaps punish the proposer as well. Remarkably, it seems that blocking and then successfully reviewing a measure was enough to validate it without needing the assembly to vote on it. For example, two men have clashed in the assembly about a proposal put by one of them; it passes, and now the two of them go to court with the loser in the assembly prosecuting both the law and its proposer. The quantity of these suits was enormous. The courts became in effect a kind of upper house. In the 5th century, there were no procedural differences between an executive decree and a law. They were both simply passed by the assembly. However, beginning in 403 BC, they were set sharply apart. Henceforth, laws were made not in the assembly, but by special panels of citizens drawn from the annual jury pool of 6,000. These were known as the
nomothetai (νομοθέται, 'the lawmakers'). Pericles, according to Thucydides, characterized the Athenians as being very well-informed on politics: We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all. The word
idiot originally simply meant "private citizen"; in combination with its more recent meaning of "foolish person", this is sometimes used by modern commentators to demonstrate that the ancient Athenians considered those who did not participate in politics as foolish. But the sense history of the word does not support this interpretation. Although, voters under Athenian democracy were allowed the same opportunity to voice their opinion and to sway the discussion, they were not always successful, and, often, the minority was forced to vote in favor of a motion that they did not agree with.
Archons and the Areopagus Just before the reforms of Solon in the 7th century BC, Athens was governed by a few
archons (three, then later nine) and the council of the
Areopagus, which was composed of members of powerful noble families. While there seems to have also been a type of citizen assembly (presumably of the
hoplite class), the archons and the body of the Areopagus ran the state and the mass of people had no say in government at all before these reforms. Originally, the archons, always chosen from among the
aristoi, were three magistrates: • The
eponymous archon (ἄρχων ἐπώνυμος / epốnumos Arkhon or ὁ ἄρχων / ho Arkhon, literally "the archon", without further precision), who gave his name to the year. It was the highest political office in the city-state. The office can also be traced back to the Archaic period, with the Athens transitioning from monarchy to democracy. The eponymous archon probably assumed leadership of the state after the end of the monarchy, while priestly tasks and warfare fell to other archons. The succession of eponymous archon was of great historical importance, as the year was named after him, while he was placed first at the beginning of laws, treaties, and public inscriptions. He was responsible for civil administration and public jurisdiction. He was guardian of widows and orphans and supervised family disputes. He also took care of the theater by appointing patrons and winners of tetralogies. In historical narratives, years were usually identified by the name of the archon who had held the eponymous office on that date. • The
archon basileus (ἄρχων βασιλεὺς / árkhôn basileùs), who took over the religious functions of the ancient kings. He was the "
high priest" of the city and, therefore, a sacred official with tasks in the secular area. He was responsible for religious ceremonies and presided over the Areopagus. He imposed religious prohibitions that had to be followed. Additionally, he oversaw the districts and sacred sites, offered community sacrifices, and led
mystery celebrations and the
Lenaia. His area of responsibility also corresponded to his legal authority in cases of murder and of impiety, like theft of temples and the illegality of the priestly office. It was believed that the wife of the archon basileus, the
basilina, should marry and have sexual relations with the god
Dionysus during a festival at the Boukoleion in Athens, to ensure the city's safety; It is not known exactly how this law was enacted. • The
archon polemarch (ἄρχων πολέμαρχος / polemarkhos Arkhon), whose original function was to direct the army, a military attribution inherited from the kings, but who lost that power to the benefit of the
strategos after 487 BC. C., when the archonate was chosen by lot. According to some historians, the polemarch was the
commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the city-state. At the
Battle of Marathon Herodotus described the vote of the
polemarchos,
Callimachus, as the deciding factor during debate over engagement in battle; it is disputed whether this vote implies that the position of
polemarchos was an equal to a
strategos or that of a
commander-in-chief. The
polemarchos' military responsibilities continued until 487 BC, when a new procedure was adopted and
magistrates were then appointed by lot. He also resumed some religious functions: • He presided over ceremonies in honor of soldiers killed in combat. • He offered ritual sacrifices in memory of the tyrannicides,
Harmodius and Aristogeiton. • He exercised judicial functions relating to non-Athenian citizens (he mainly supervised litigation involving metics). From an unknown date, the three archons became nine archons, the three main ones being supported by six others, called
thesmothétai, a type of judicial administrators. Finally, Cleisthenes added a secretary, who was in charge of writing the notifications of the other nine archons. Therefore, eventually their number reached ten, as with other Athenian magistracies. Solon's reforms allowed the archons to come from some of the higher propertied classes and not only from the aristocratic families. Since the Areopagus was made up of ex-archons, this would eventually mean the weakening of the hold of the nobles there as well. Solon also made changes to the political system, therefore allowing broad participation. However, even with Solon's creation of the citizen's assembly, the archons and Areopagus still wielded a great deal of power. The reforms of Cleisthenes meant that the archons were elected by the Assembly, but were still selected from the upper classes. The Areopagus kept its power as "Guardian of the Laws", which meant that it could veto actions it deemed unconstitutional, however, this worked in practice. Ephialtes, and later
Pericles, stripped the Areopagus of its role in supervising and controlling the other institutions, dramatically reducing its power. In the play
The Eumenides, performed in 458,
Aeschylus, himself a noble, portrays the Areopagus as a court established by Athena herself, an apparent attempt to preserve the dignity of the Areopagus in the face of its disempowerment. In addition, there were some limitations on who could hold office. Age restrictions were in place with thirty years as a minimum, rendering about a third of the adult citizen body ineligible at any one time. An unknown proportion of citizens were also subject to disenfranchisement (
atimia), excluding some of them permanently and others temporarily (depending on the type). Furthermore, all citizens selected were reviewed before taking up office (
dokimasia) at which time they might be disqualified. While citizens voting in the assembly were free of review or punishment, those same citizens when holding an office
served the people and could be punished very severely. In addition to being subject to review prior to holding office, officeholders were also subject to an examination after leaving office (
euthunai, "straightenings" or 'submission of accounts') to review their performance. Both of these processes were in most cases brief and formulaic, but they opened up the possibility of a contest before a jury court if some citizen wanted to take a matter up. In the case of scrutiny going to trial, there was the risk for the former officeholder of suffering severe penalties. Even during his period of office, any officeholder could be impeached and removed from office by the assembly. In each of the ten "main meetings" (
kuriai ekklesiai) a year, the question was explicitly raised in the assembly agenda: were the office holders carrying out their duties correctly? Citizens active as officeholders served in a quite different capacity from when they voted in the assembly or served as jurors. By and large, the power exercised by these officials was routine administration and quite limited. These officeholders were the agents of the people, not their representatives, so their role was that of administration, rather than governing. The powers of officials were precisely defined and their capacity for initiative limited. When it came to penal sanctions, no officeholder could impose a fine over fifty drachmas. Anything higher had to go before a court. Competence does not seem to have been the main issue, but rather, at least in the 4th century BC, whether they were loyal democrats or had oligarchic tendencies. Part of the ethos of democracy, rather, was the building of general competence by ongoing involvement. In the 5th century setup, the ten annually elected generals were often very prominent, but for those who had power, it lay primarily in their frequent speeches and in the respect accorded them in the assembly, rather than their vested powers.
Selection by lot The allotment of an individual was based on citizenship, rather than merit or any form of personal popularity which could be bought. Allotment, therefore, was seen as a means to prevent the corrupt purchase of votes and it gave citizens political equality, as all had an equal chance of obtaining government office. This also acted as a check against
demagoguery, though this check was imperfect and did not prevent elections from involving pandering to voters. The random assignment of responsibility to individuals who may or may not be competent has obvious risks, but the system included features meant to mitigate possible problems. Athenians selected for office served as teams (boards, panels). In a group, one person is more likely to know the right way to do things and those that do not may learn from those that do. During the period of holding a particular office, everyone on the team would be observing everybody else as a sort of check. However, there were officials, such as the nine archons, who while seemingly a board carried out very different functions from each other. No office appointed by lot could be held twice by the same individual. The only exception was the boule or council of 500. In this case, simply by demographic necessity, an individual could serve twice in a lifetime. This principle extended down to the secretaries and undersecretaries who served as assistants to magistrates such as the archons. To the Athenians, it seems what had to be guarded against was not incompetence but any tendency to use the office as a way of accumulating ongoing power.
Election , marble Roman copy after a Greek original from c. 430 BC During an Athenian election, approximately one hundred officials out of a thousand were elected rather than chosen by lot. There were two main categories in this group: those required to handle large sums of money, and the 10 generals, the
strategoi. One reason that financial officials were elected was that any money
embezzled could be recovered from their estates; election in general strongly favoured the rich, but in this case, wealth was virtually a prerequisite. Generals were elected not only because their role required expert knowledge, but also because they needed to be people with experience and contacts in the wider Greek world where wars were fought. In the 5th century BC, principally as seen through the figure of
Pericles, the generals could be among the most powerful people in the polis. Yet in the case of Pericles, it is wrong to see his power as coming from his long series of annual generalships (each year along with nine others). His officeholding was rather an expression and a result of the influence he wielded. That influence was based on his relation with the assembly, a relation that in the first instance lay simply in the right of any citizen to stand and speak before the people. Under the 4th century version of democracy, the roles of general and of key political speaker in the assembly tended to be filled by different persons. In part, this was a consequence of the increasingly specialized forms of warfare practiced in the later period. Elected officials, too, were subject to review before holding office and scrutiny after office. And they could also be removed from office at any time that the assembly met. There was even a death penalty for "inadequate performance" while in office. ==Criticism==