One City, Many Governments: A Historian's Athens Notebook

Field Notebook: Why Did Athens Keep Changing?

1Day 1, the Agora. I am spending a week in Athens to answer one question: why did this city change its government so many times? This open ground was the Agora, the city's market and meeting place. About 561 BCE, a noble named Peisistratus seized power here with armed supporters. Greeks called a man who took power this way a tyrant, a word that did not always mean a cruel ruler. Ancient writers say he kept the old laws and offices but made sure his own family and friends held the offices. His son Hippias ruled after him until Athenians, helped by a Spartan army, drove him out in 510 BCE.

2Day 2, the Pnyx. I climbed this rocky hill southwest of the Agora. About 508 BCE, a leader named Cleisthenes changed the government, and citizen men began to meet in the Assembly to speak and vote on laws, taxes and war themselves. A Council of 500, chosen by lot each year, prepared the business. The stone speaker's platform I sketched today comes from a later rebuilding, so the first speakers did not stand on these exact stones.

3Day 3, the site of the Council house. In 413 BCE, during a long war with Sparta, Athens lost a huge fleet and army in Sicily. In 411 BCE, a group of wealthy Athenians took power. They sent the Council of 500 home, put a council of 400 men in charge and said that only 5,000 of the wealthier citizens would have a say. The Four Hundred made decisions without calling the full Assembly. They were pushed out after about four months.

4Day 4, the same spot. Athens lost the war in 404 BCE. With Sparta's support, thirty Athenians, later called the Thirty Tyrants, took control. They let only 3,000 of their supporters keep full citizen rights, seized the property of rich foreign residents and had many opponents killed; ancient writers say about 1,500. In 403 BCE, Athenians who had fled the city fought their way back and restored the democracy.

5Day 5, my notes from Rome. Roman tradition says that in 509 BCE, Romans drove out their last king. Instead of a democracy like Athens', they built a republic. Each year citizen men voted in assemblies to elect two consuls to lead the government and the army, and either consul could block the other. A Senate of men mostly from wealthy families, who served for life, advised the consuls.

Adapted from Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 8

It is no surprise that the plan worked, because so many able men carried it out. Yet it was hard. It was no easy thing to take freedom away from the people of Athens about 100 years after the tyrants were driven out. In all that time the people had not been ruled by anyone, and for more than half of it they had been used to ruling over others.