4 - Athenian Origins

Summary

To help us see how democracy came to be, we have only shards of ancient Athens, only pieces of the past. Many pieces are missing of that vanished ancient world. The ancient Athenians must be examined on their own terms based on what little we can know about them. Through our modern eyes, we see their failings, including their exclusion of women, immigrants, and those they enslaved from their first democracy. Yet for those who were included in it, their democracy was considerably more democratic than the democracies of today, especially in its direct form of participatory governance through the use of the random selection of sortition. Following the fall of the Mycenaean civilization in the twelfth century bc, Greece entered several centuries of an Archaic Age before beginning slowly to emerge from darkness. Athens had survived the fall, but the consolidation of the city-state and its emergence into regional influence took hundreds of years. Dominated by an agricultural aristocracy, the Athenians were riven by social and economic strife. In succession, Draco and then Solon were enlisted by the Athenians to help resolve the divisions among them, with mixed success. Cultural unity of the Athenian people developed under the tyrannical rule of Peisistratus. Following the death of Piesistratus, and the exile of his oppressive son, the Athenians were ready to seek self-rule. They found a leader in the visionary Athenian aristocrat Cleisthenes.