The Reforms of Solon But history takes strange turns
sometimes. Recognizing the danger of the situation, in 594 BC, the Areopagus and
the people of Athens agreed to hand over all political power to a single
individual, Solon. In effect a tyrant, Solon's mission was to reform the
government to stem the tide of privation and exploitation and set up a system to
guarantee that Athens didn't slip into such a situation
again. Solon immediately dismissed all outstanding
debts, and he freed as many Athenians as he could from the slavery they had sold
themselves into. He banned any loans that are secured by a promise to enter into
slavery if the loan is defaulted, and he tried to bring people who had been sold
into slavery abroad back to Athens. In addition, he encouraged the development
of olive and wine production, so that by the end of the century, most of
Athenian land was dedicated to these lucrative
crops. As far as government is concerned, he divided
Athenian society into four classes based on wealth. The two wealthiest classes
were allowed to serve on the Areopagus. The third class were allowed to serve on
an elected council of four hundred people. This council was organized according
to the four tribes making up the Athenian people; each tribe was allowed to
elect one hundred representatives from this third class. This council of four
hundred served as a kind of balance or check to the power of the Areopagus. The
fourth class, the poorest class, was allowed to participate in an assembly; this
assembly voted on affairs brought to it by the council of four hundred, and even
elected local magistrates. This class also participated in a new judicial court
that gradually drew civil and military cases out of the hands of the wealthiest
people, the Areopagus.
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ALEXANDER THE GREAT, Project by JJP - 0 views
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This site is not particullarly reliable, it is more of a third party website made by someone who wants to provide information on Alexander the Great. What it useful about it is it's bibliography, it provides a lot of information on the sources on Alexander. I would recomend using this to find out who the sources are, and then try to research further into them.
The Illicit Antiquities Research Centre - 0 views
Ancient Greece: Athens - 0 views
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Cleisthenes The Spartans followed their usual practice and entered into a truce with Athens and installed their own hand-picked Athenians to lead the government. The Spartans, however, were too clever for their own good. They chose an individual, Isagoras, whom they felt was the most loyal to Sparta; Isagoras, however, was a bitter rival of the Alcmaeonids, who had been the original allies of Sparta. Isagoras, for his part, set about restoring the Solonic government, but he also set about "purifying" Athenian citizenship. Under Solon and later Peisistratus, a number of people had been enfranchised as citizens even though they weren't Athenian or who were doubtfully Athenian. For in the Greek world, you could only be the citizen of a city-state if you could trace your ancestorship back to the original inhabitants of the state. Isagoras, however, began to throw people off the citizenship rolls in great numbers. Cleisthenes, an Alcmaeonid noble, rallied popular support and threatened the power of Isagoras, who promptly called for the Spartans again. The Spartans invaded a second time, and Cleisthenes was expelled, but soon a popular uprising swept Isagoras from power and installed Cleisthenes. From 508 to 502 BC, Cleisthenes began a series of major reforms that would produce Athenian democracy. He enfranchised as citizens all free men living in Athens and Attica (the area surrounding Athens). He established a council which would be the chief arm of government with all executive and administrative control. Every citizen over the age of thirty was eligible to sit on this council; each year the members of the council would be chosen by lot. The Assembly, which included all male citizens, was allowed to veto any of the council's proposals and was the only branch of government that could declare war. In 487, long after Cleisthenes, the Athenians added the final aspect of Athenian democracy proper: ostracism. The Assembly could vote (voting was done on potsherds called ostra ) on expelling citizens from the state for a period of ten years. This ostracism would guarantee that individuals who were contemplating seizing power would be removed from the country before they got too powerful. So by 502 BC, Athens had pretty much established its culture and political structure, just as Sparta had pretty much established its culture and political structure by 550 BC. Athens was more or less a democracy; it had become primarily a trading and commercial center; a large part of the Athenian economy focussed on cash crops for export and crafts; it had become a center of art and literature; the city had become architecturally rich because of the building projects of Peisistratus—an architectural richness that far outshone other Greek city-states; and Athenian religious fesitivals were largely in place. The next one hundred years would be politically and culturally dominated by Athens; the event that would catapult Athens to the center of the Greek world was the invasion of the Persians in 490 BC.
Athenian Democracy: a brief overview - 0 views
Dēmos: Classical Athenian Democracy - 0 views
The Development of Athenian Democracy - 0 views
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