During the Archaic period, the Athenians struggled with the same problems that beset other city-states of Greece--factional quarrels among the aristocratic families, tension between the aristocrats and the people, and tyranny. By 500 BC, these problems had been largely resolved. The last tyrant had been expelled, Athens had a democratic government, and aristocratic stasis was largely confined to competition for office and persuading the democratic assembly. Because of their relative harmony, wealth, and great numbers, the Athenians had become the second most powerful Greek polis and were poised to play a major role in the great war that was about to begin. For while the Greek city-states were evolving, the Persian empire was growing into an ambitious power that would threaten to engulf the Hellenic world. A strong Athens would be vital to the defense of Greece against the invasions mounted by the Persian kings Darius and Xerxes.

Written sources for early Athenian history are almost as meager as they are for Sparta and the other Greek states. The first man to commit the history of Athens to writing seems to have been Hellanicus of Lesbos, who was born around 500 B.C. and was the earliest in a series of chroniclers known as Atthidographers, that is, people who wrote about Athens. (The other Atthidographers were Athenians, and they wrote during the fourth and third centuries BC.) To the surviving fragments of the Atthidographers we can add the valuable treatise, The Athenian Constitution, written by Aristotle ( 384-322 BC) or by one of his students, as well as Plutarch's lives of early figures such as Theseus and Solon, which made use of sources that are now lost. Aristotle, Plutarch, and other later authors also preserve substantial fragments of the poetry of Solon, the great Athenian statesman and lawgiver. Solon's poems, written around the beginning of the sixth century, constitute our earliest direct evidence for Athenian society at a crucial time in its development. The histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, though dealing mainly with fifth-century events, also contain some valuable information about early Athens.

Literary evidence and physical remains combine to show that during the Late Bronze Age Athens was the largest and most important settlement on the Attic peninsula and one of the major palace-centers of the Mycenaean world. It is probable that Athens was the premier power in Attica, exercising a loose control over the other fortified palace-centers in the region, which remained, however, largely independent of the wanax and his palace on the steep hill called the Acropolis. The tradition that the invasions at the end of the thirteenth century Bc bypassed Athens is confirmed by archaeology. Perhaps the mountains that cut Attica off from central Greece--Mount Cithaeron, Mount Parnes, and others--discouraged the invaders who spread throughout the rest of southern Greece. As we saw in Chapter 1, the legends told that Attica served as the safe haven and point of departure to Ionia for refugees from southern Greece. If the story about the Achaean refugees is true (modern opinion is divided), they would have found in Attica the same collapse of the centralized ruling structure, drastic depopulation, and dispersal into small village communities as in the regions from which they had fled.

Recovery from the postinvasion slump is heralded by the appearance of Protogeometric pottery, apparently an Athenian invention, around 1050 BC. Athenian pottery would continue to set the style in Greece throughout the rest of the Dark Age. Dark Age Athens, though reduced to a cluster of villages around the Acropolis, continued without interruption as the central place of Attica. It is likely that by 900 BC, if not earlier, the basileus of Athens was the paramount basileus of the regional demos of Attica. The appearance of rich graves in the ninth century reveals a significant growth in wealth and overseas trade during the later Dark Age. The population around Athens rose sharply during the eighth century, and new settlements appeared throughout the sparsely populated countryside of Attica, perhaps through "internal colonization" from the plain of Athens.

Significantly, Athens did not take part in the overseas colonizing movement of the late eighth century. The synoecism of the towns and villages of Attica into a political unity under the leadership of Athens may have been a gradual process given the extent of Attica (roughly 1000 square miles)--beginning perhaps in the late ninth century, and completed around the middle of the eighth. The Athenians ascribed the unification of Attica to their greatest hero, Theseus, whom myth linked with his companion, the Dorian hero Heracles (later known to the Romans as Hercules). Theseus' adventures with Heracles, and his solo exploits, such as defeating the Minotaur in Crete and the Amazons (mythical women warriors from Asia) in Athens, were enshrined in Athenian art and literature. In the Athenian account of synoecism, Theseus, the basileus of Athens and paramount chief of Attica, created a political unity by proclamation, abolishing the governments of the other towns and villages and making a single government in Athens. Later on, the unification of Attica was celebrated in a festival called the Synoikia, believed to have been instituted by Theseus. Democratic propaganda also credited him with establishing an early form of democracy in the newly unified polis of the Athenians. In making Theseus the founder of the polis, the Athenians followed the common Greek practice of attributing important events of the preliterate period to some great figure from the legendary past. (The Spartans, as we saw, credited their laws and military and political institutions to the semimythical early lawgiver Lycurgus.) Yet the tradition that the formal unification was voluntary and cooperative was probably correct. For the inhabitants of Attica cherished a belief that they were autochthonous (i.e., sprung from the land), and thus had always lived in Attica, and shared a common kinship.

It is certain, at any rate, that by the end of the eighth century every town, village, and hamlet in Attica considered itself "Athenian," and there was never any attempt by any one of them to declare itself a separate polis, as happened in the Argolis and other regions. Nor was there ever in Attica, as in the Doric states, a subjugated population of helots, or communities with second-class citizenship, such as the perioikoi. The exercise of citizenship in a region as large as Attica presented difficulties of time and travel that citizens of smaller regional city-states did not encounter. For although any citizen of any Attic town could participate in the government of Athens on the same footing as residents of Athens itself, in reality people whose communities were closest to Athens would find it easier to vote than those who lived farther away. A farmer who lived, say, 10 miles out of town could expect to lose about three hours of his day walking into Athens and another three walking back, while a man whose home was 15 or 20 miles away would probably have to arrange to stay overnight. Although some people preferred the stimulation of living directly in Athens, most continued to live on the land that had been in their family for generations. When the Peloponnesian War began in 431 BC and Pericles urged the population of Attica to withdraw in its entirety within the wars of Athens, most people, Thucydides reports (2.16), were still accustomed to their lives in the country and found the move intensely painful.

The early government of the Athenian city-state was strictly aristocratic. Its beginnings, however, are very obscure. It was probably during the later eighth century that the chiefs of Attica replaced the position of paramount basileus with three civic officials who divided the leadership roles among themselves and were called collectively the archons, that is, "the leaders." In common with other citystates, the old title of basileus was retained; his official duties were to administer the cults of the polis and to judge lawsuits pertaining to cult property and other religious matters. The polemarch ( polemarchos ) commanded the Athenian army, which was composed of units from all over Attica. The leading office, which carried the most prestige and power, was that of the archun, who had overall supervision of public affairs, including the duties of presiding over the council and the assembly and judging nonreligious cases. He was known as the eponymous archon, because he gave his name to the year: Athenians identified a given year as "the archonship of so-and-so." Subsequently (perhaps early in the seventh century), six judicial officials called thesmothetai ("layers down of the rules") were added, making up the governing body of the "nine archons." The nine archons were elected for a term of one year from candidates who came from the small circle of wealthy and well-known families known as the Eupatrids ("people with good fathers").

The archons did not rule alone. Rather they worked in concert with the council that met on the hill ( pagos ) sacred to the war god Ares and was called for that reason the Council of the Areopagus. Because former archons made up the membership of the council, sitting archons whose short terms in office would be followed by a lifetime of council membership would think twice before flouting its wishes. In addition, citizen males participated in the public assembly, but the precise role of the assembly in the government and the part that the ordinary men of the polis played in it are unknown; Aristotle in his Politics claimed that the assembly elected the archons (2.1274a1-2 and 15-17). What is clear is that policy was made primarily in the council by members of the aristocratic Eupatrid families.

Alongside these official state institutions were other forms of social organization that directed the lives of the citizens. In Attica, as in the rest of Greece, the basic social units--the individual households ( oikoi )--were grouped into larger kinlike associations: tribes, phratries, and clans. Unfortunately, very little is known about them, especially in their early form. Our best evidence comes from Athens. Every citizen family in Attica belonged to one of four phylai ("tribes") and to another smaller group within their tribe, called a phratry ("brotherhood"). Since all the Ionian peoples had the same four tribes, it is assumed that these originated very early in the Dark Age. It is probable that in the early city-state they served as political and military divisions--each tribe, for example, being responsible for furnishing a contingent to the army. The phratry may originally have designated a "brotherhood of warriors," another name for the warrior bands led by Dark Age chieftains that we see in Homer. By the seventh century, however, the phratries had become quasi-official social groups concerned with matters of family and of descent. Membership in a phratry, for example, was the necessary proof that a man was a citizen of Athens; in cases of unintentional homicide, the members of the victim's phratry were obligated to support the family of the victim, or, if the victim had no family, to take the place of the family in pursuing the case. The "clans" were associations of several noble households dominated by a top oikos and claiming descent from a common ancestor. It is possible that some nonnoble families also belonged to a genos, as subordinate members. These aristocratic clans were politically very powerful in Archaic Athens. Many scholars believe that in the early city-state each of the phratries was in fact controlled by one or more gene. It was within this framework of oligarchic control of the polis that the events of the seventh and sixth century unfolded...

Free term papers are not written to satisfy your specific instructions. You can use our professional writing services to buy a custom written research paper, term paper, or essay on History at affordable price. CustomTermPapers is the best solution for those who seek help in writing term papers, essays, and research papers related to History and other relevant topics.