The economy of Athens was supervised by numerous boards of officials in charge of the mint, the marketplace, weights and measures, and the grain and water supplies. Most of these officials held office ...
Searching for models for the new government they were creating, America's Founding Fathers studied both the democracy of Athens and the republic of Rome, but they favored the latter. In The Federalist ...
A group of ostraka found together in a pit on the North Slope of the Acropolis is of special interest. There were 190 ostraka, mostly the round feet of drinking cups, all inscribed with the name of Themistokles ...
Classical Athens saw the rise of an achievement unparalleled in history. Perikles, Aischylos, Sophokles, Plato, Demosthenes, and Praxiteles represent just a few of the statesmen and philosophers, playwrights ...
In 338 B.C. Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander defeated the Athenians and other Greek states in a battle at Chaironeia in central Greece. In the following year (337/6 B.C.) the Athenians passed ...
In 514 B.C. the tyrant Hipparchos was stabbed to death. The murder, actually the result of a love feud, was quickly deemed a political act of assassination and the perpetrators, Harmodios and Aristogeiton, ...
Each tribe was divided into three parts, and each third (trittys) was from one of the three regions of Attica, plain, coast, or hills. Every trittys was itself made up of several smaller units called ...
Soon after their victory over the Persians at the battle of Marathon in 490 B.C., the Athenians began the practice of ostracism, a form of election designed to curb the power of any rising tyrant. They ...
Also excluded from political participation were two other large segments of the population: slaves and metics (resident aliens).
Slavery was common in antiquity, and the Athenians used thousands of slaves ...
The philosopher Sokrates was one of many Athenians critical of the people and their control over affairs of state. His probing public debates with fellow citizens led to his trial for impiety and corrupting ...
By the early 6th century B.C. social tensions in Athens had become acute, pitting the poorer citizens against rich and powerful landowners. Many citizens were reduced to the status of share croppers, ...
Our understanding of the workings and history of Athenian democracy comes from a variety of sources. Most useful, perhaps, are the ancient literary texts that survive, many of which have been cited repeatedly ...
There was no attempt in Classical Athens to separate church and state. Altars and shrines were intermingled with the public areas and buildings of the city. A single magistrate, the archon Basileus or ...
Before democracy, from the 8th to the 6th century B.C., Athens was prosperous economically but no more significant than many other city-states in Greece. Silver deposits south of Athens, quarries of fine ...
Kleisthenes instituted a crucial reform, the reorganization of the citizenry into new administrative units called phylai (tribes). In his attempt to break up the aristocratic power structure, Kleisthenes ...
All Athenian citizens had the right to attend and vote in the Ekklesia, a full popular assembly which met about every 10 days. All decrees (psephismata) were ratified by the Ekklesia before becoming law ...
The Athenian legislature also included a deliberative body known as the Boule. It was made up of 500 members -- 50 from each of the 10 tribes -- who were chosen by lot and served for the period of one ...
The senators administered their meetings themselves. Each tribal contingent in the Boule served in rotation for a period of 35 or 36 days as the Prytaneis, or Executive Committee. During their time in ...
The popular courts, with juries of no fewer than 201 jurors and as many as 2,500, heard a variety of cases. The courts also had an important constitutional role in wielding ultimate authority by their ...
The jurors for each trial were chosen from a large body of citizens available for jury duty for the period of one year. At the beginning of the year, each juror was given a bronze pinakion, a plaque that ...
