2
4. Basic elements of democracy
Book VI of Aristotle’s Politics contains a discussion of the different kinds of oligarchic and popular government. Aristotle’s idea of democracy might be seen as antithetical to that of aristocracy. According to the philosopher’s definition (Arist. Pol. 3.5.2), in an aristocracy (aristoi = ‘the best’; kratos = ‘power’) power belongs to a group of individuals of superior worth, as defined by birth (genos) or personal merit (arete), and not by any ‘arbitrary standard’ (me pros hypothesin tina). On the other hand, democracy is a form of government whose fundamental principle (hypothesis) is liberty. In a democracy political power is not an exclusive and permanent possession of a small group of citizens, or just one of them. Therefore, by this principle, all citizens are called to govern and to be governed in turn, according to an equalitarian conception of justice based on numbers, not worth. In order to give every citizen the opportunity to hold some measure of political power at some stage, the exercise of power ought to be limited in time and clearly regulated. Aristotle then gives a detailed account of the main features of a democratic politeia: the system is apparently designed to limit to the utmost the authority of individual magistrates and give the maximum of power to collegial institutions such as the assembly and the council. In principle, democracy is a constitution where all citizens rule and are ruled in turn, but in practice this principle translates into the rule of the poor (and ignorant) majority. Although Aristotle does not expressly criticize democracy, these pages clearly reveal his disapproval of this form of government.
Arist. Pol. 6.1.6-9: Principles and institutions of democracy
Liberty is the founding principle of a democracy: as is generally asserted, democracy is the only kind of constitution where all citizens partake of liberty, because, as they say, liberty is the end of democracy. Now, one of the elements of liberty is to rule and be ruled in turn, for the democratic notion of justice is based on numerical equality, not on merit. Since this is the prevailing notion of justice, it necessarily follows that in a democracy the people are sovereign, and the decisions of the majority are final and constitute justice, because, as they say, every citizen must have an equal share in the government. Consequently, in a democracy the poor are more powerful than the wealthy, because there are more of them, and any decision approved by the majority is sovereign. This is one of the elements of liberty, which democrats set down as an essential principle of this kind of constitution. Another one is that everyone should live as they please. This, as they say, is the objective of democracy, because the man who cannot live as he pleases is a slave. This is the second principle of democracy. Based on this principle there comes the claim that men should be ruled by no one, if possible and, if that is not possible, they should rule and ruled in turn. This is how this second principle contributes to equalitarian liberty.
These are the nature and fundamental principles of democracy. The following institutions of government are democratic in character: magistrates are appointed from all the citizens; all citizens rule over each citizen and each citizen over all in turn; all magistracies, or all which do not require particular experience or skill, are assigned by lot; there is no property qualification to hold public offices, or a very low one; no office can be held twice or more than a few times by the same person, or a limited number of offices with the exclusion of the military ones; offices have a limited tenure, all of them or as many as possible; all citizens exercise judicial power on all matters, or at least the most serious and important, such as the audit of official accounts or constitutional issues or private contract, and judges are selected by lot from all citizens; the assembly is sovereign over all matters, no individual magistrate is sovereign over any matter, or a very limited number; or else there is a council which is sovereign over the most important matters, for in those poleis where funding is insufficient to pay for all magistrates, the council is the most democratic institution, but where there is money to pay for all magistrates, the council is also deprived of its authority, because where there is plenty of pay, the people take all the trials to themselves […]; also, pay is provided for all public offices, including the assembly, law-courts, and magistracies; if it is not, then for the magistracies, the law-courts, the council and the sovereign assembly, or for those magistracies whose holders are meant to sit at the common table. Furthermore, while oligarchy is defined by birth, wealth and education, democracy seems to be defined by the opposite of all these: low birth, indigence, ignorance. Under a democratic government, no magistracy is to be held for life; if any life magistracy has been left behind from a revolution which took place in ancient times, this is deprived of its power, and election by vote is replaced by lot.
5. Athens before the polis
The earliest source to call Athens a polis is the ‘catalogue of the ships’, a long section of the Book II of the Iliad (ll. 2.494–759) listing all the Greek contingents which had joined Agamemnon in the expedition against Troy. The Athenians are called ‘the demos of Erechtheus’ [a], the legendary sixth king of the city, and a double for Poseidon. Athena and Erechtheus-Poseidon were the central deities of the religion of archaic Athens, and were worshipped at the kekropion, a joint temple built on what was believed to be the site of the grave of Cecrops, the mythical founder king of the polis. This temple was destroyed in the course of the Persian invasion of Attica of 480, and later replaced by the Erechtheum. In the Odyssey, ‘house of Erechtheus’ is used to indicate the citadel/acropolis of Athens [b]. Cecrops was believed to have introduced civilized life in Attica and established the original twelve tribes of the archaic city. Strabo and the Pseudo Apollodorus give two interesting accounts of the stories surrounding Cepcrops, his settlement in Attica and the foundation of the original 12 tribes of Athens [c–d].
The Athenian contingent at Troy consisted of fifty ships. If we are to use this as a measure of how big Athens was compared to the other poleis, we should assume that it was a middle-sized polis, still quite smaller than the major centres of Peloponnese. Compared to other parts of Greece, such as Peloponnese, Attica was a scarcely fertile region. This was a problem, but one which, if we are to follow Thucydides, was essential to define the character and identity of the Athenian people. The historian says that in origin the peoples of Greece did not live in settled communities, but migrations were very frequent as each tribe moved where they would expect to find the most fertile land. Given the poverty of its soil, Attica was not subject to migrations from other areas of Greece. For this reason, Attica was the only country of Greece which never went through a change of population [e]. Therefore, he Athenians of the classical age were the direct descendants of the original inhabitants of Attica. In the fifth century the myth of the autochthony of the people of Attica would become an important of Athenian ideology and propaganda. The scarcity of tillable land, paired with the population growth fuelled by immigration from other, less peaceful areas of Greece, compelled many inhabitants of Attica to sail out and settle colonies on the shores of Asia Minor.
Originally the people of Attica lived in scattered, independent villages, whose reciprocal relations were often unfriendly. Athens was the most important of these villages, and enjoyed a sort of informal ascendancy over the others.
As we have seen, Theseus, the mythic tenth king of Athens, was the author of the synoecism of Attica [see ‘Introduction’], the process whereby all the villages of Attica merged into one political community [f]. Thucydides says that Theseus’ was the first synoecism of Attica. The second took place at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, when Pericles persuaded the Athenians who lived in the rural districts of Attica to move into the walls of the city. In fact, the historian seems to portray Theseus as a kind of Pericles ante-litteram: a leader who used his superior political and intellectual strength to enforce revolutionary measures which, albeit necessary, were bound to have very traumatic consequences on the lives of the people of Attica.
The synoecism transformed the landscape of Athens, which had to adapt itself to the new role of administrative and political capital of the new-born polis; this resulted in the citadel losing its political prerogatives, to become an exclusively religious space. The creation of the polis also engendered a new idea of citizenship. Thucydides observes that the synoecism was brought about without any notable movement of population from the chora to the asty. The people of Attica remained to live in their village, but were now citizens of Athens. Central power was now solid enough to exercise its authority without being immediately visible.
[a] Hom. Il. 2.546–56: Athenians at the war of Troy
There were the men who held the well-built citadel of Athens, the people of the great-hearted Erechtheus, who was brought up by Athena, the daughter of Zeus, after he was born of the heart, the giver of life. And the goddess settled him in Athens, her fertile shrine, where every year the Athenian youth offers him bulls and rams. Their commander was Menestheus, son of Petheus, the peerless marshal of chariots and shield-bearing warriors. Only Nestor could rival him, because he was the elder. Fifty black ships were with him.
[b] Hom. Od. 7.77–81: The Erechtheum as the citadel of Athens
So spoke gleaming-eyed Athena, and then she departed over the unresting sea, and left lovely Scheria. Then she came to Marathon and broad-walled Athens, and entered the solid house of Erechtheus.
[c] Ps. Ap. 3.14.1–2: Cecrops, first king of Attica, and the original twelve tribes of Athens
Cecrops, born from the earth, whose body was a combination of that of a man and a snake, was the first king of Attica. The original name of the country was Acte, but he renamed it Cecropia after himself. It is said that in those times the gods resolved to take possession of the cities in which each of them would be worshipped. Poseidon was the first to arrive in Attica, and with a strike of his trident in the centre of the acropolis he made appear a sea, which they now call Erechtheis. After Poseidon came Athena. She called on Cecrops to witness how she would claim possession of the city. So she planted an olive tree which can still be seen in the Pandrosium. When the two began to quarrel over the possession of the country, Zeus parted them and appointed judges to solve the matter. These judges were not Cecrops and Cranaus, as some people have said, but the twelve gods, and their verdict was that the land should belong to Athena, because Cecrops himself had witnessed that she was the first to have planted the olive tree. So Athena called the city Athens after herself, and Poseidon, angry in his heart, flooded the Triasian plain and put Attica under water.
Cecrops married Agraulos, the daughter of Actaius, and had a son called Erysichthon, who passed away childless. Cecrops also had three daughters, Agraulos, Herse, and Pandrosus.
[d] Strabo 9.1.18–20: Cecrops settles in Attica
Philochorus says that while Attica was being devastated at the same time by the Carians by sea and by land by the Boeotians, who were still called Aoninas, Cecrops for the first time settled the people of the country in twelve municipalities, whose names were Cecropia, Tetrapolis, Epacria, Deceleia, Eleusis, Aphidna (also known as Aphidnae, in the plural), Thoricus, Brauron, Cytherus, Sphettus, Cephisia. Later on, as they say, Theseus united these twelve hamlets into one city, which is present-day Athens.
[e] Thuc. 1.2.5–6: Autochthony of the Athenians
Owing to the poverty of its land, Attica has been free form internal strife since the earliest times, and has always been inhabited by the same people, and here is a clear demonstration of what I say: these migrations prevented the other regions of Greece from growing as steadily as Athens. When the most powerful people of the other parts of Greece were driven out of their lands by war or civic strife, they all settled in Athens because they thought that it was a safe place to live. Once they became citizens, from the earliest times they increased the number of inhabitants and thus made Athens bigger. The territory of Attica then became too small to accommodate them all, and so the Athenians began to send out colonies to Ionia.
[f] Thuc. 2.15: Theseus and the synoecism of Attica
At the time of Cecrops and the earliest kings down to the reign of Theseus, Attica was divided in a number of independent townships. Each of these had its own council and magistracies, and as long as they were not exposed to any danger, they would not gather to hold joint councils with the king of Athens, but administered their communities and took their deliberations independently. Sometimes they even waged war against the king, as the Eleusinians did with Eumolpus against Erechtheus. Theseus, however, was a man who had wisdom and power on his side, and when he became king of Athens, he reorganized the territory of Attica in every respect and created the polis which exists now by abolishing all the councils and magistracies of the other municipalities. Theseus brought all the people of Attica in union and assigned to them one council and one town hall. While each continued to occupy his own land as before, Theseus compelled them to use Athens as their sole capital city. Athens then became great, because all the people of Attica were now paying their taxes to it. It was this great city that Theseus handed to his successors. From his time down to the present day, the Athenians have celebrated the public festival of synoikia in honour of the goddess.
Before the synoecism, the city of Athens consisted of what is now the Acropolis and the area at its foot towards the south. This is the proof: the sanctuaries of Athena and of the other gods are located on the acropolis, and the other sanctuaries which are outside the acropolis are located in that area of the city. These are the temples of Olympian Zeus, Pythian Apollo, Gea and Dionysius in Lymnae, in whose honour the older festival of the Dionysla were celebrated on the twelfth day of the month Anthesterion as the Ionians of Athenian ancestry still celebrate it nowadays. In that area of the city there are other ancient temples. Also, in those days people used to take the water for the most solemn ceremonies from the fountain now known as Enneacrunus, ‘Nine Conduits’, owing to the fashion given to it by the tyrants, and that in antiquity, when the springs were unearthed, was called Calliroe, because it is located nearby. Even now it is common practice to use the waters of that fountain for the rites preparatory to marriage and other religious rituals. As for the acropolis, the Athenians still refer to it as the polis, the ‘the city’, because in ancient times people used to live there.
6. Theseus the democratic icon
The citizens of classical Athens honoured Theseus as the founder of their nation. He was a national hero, and as such he came to embody the democratic virtues of the polis. The figure of Theseus was often used to promote and represent Athens in international contexts, such as the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi [a]. The most important portrait of Theseus in Athens is that of the stoa basileios, the royal portico built in the fifth century on the north-west corner of the agora. King Theseus is represented standing alongside the personifications of demos and demokratia [b].
As the legend goes, Theseus spent his final days on the island of Sciros, where he had sought refuge after falling from grace with the Athenians. Theseus was assassinated by the local king Lycomedes, who threw him off a cliff. The body of Theseus was recovered by Cimon in 475, as Athens was beginning to build its naval empire in the aftermath of the victory against the Persians.
The procession that led the corpse of Theseus back to the heart of Athens became the occasion for celebrating the history of the polis and its present successes [c].
The deeds of his wandering and adventurous life, from his travels into the Underworld to the killing of the Minotaur, were reproduced on pottery and paintings, and inspired the work of the three great tragic playwrights of the city, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Besides his more institutional image as the founder of the polis and, consequently, a forefather of democracy, Theseus was more informally celebrated as a friend of the people and the needy [d]. One of the defining characteristics of democracy was the use of public funds to support the poor, and in Aristophanes’ Frogs, Heracles credits Theseus for introducing the obolon, which in this case is not the token to attend the dramatic festivals, but the coin which the dead carried in their mouth to pay Charon for the crossing of the Ades river [e].
The orators of classical Athens loved to borrow images and characters from the history of the city to give more authority to their arguments, and in their speeches the eulogy of Theseus is a particularly recurrent theme [f]. The most interesting of these eulogies is perhaps the one contained in Isocrates’ Helen, where the deeds performed by Theseus are measured up against those of Heracles. Isocrates presents Theseus as a quintessentially Athenian hero, and a civilizer of the whole Greek world, who forestalled the later accomplishments of his hometown [g and h]. By turning the scattered villages of Attica into one political community, Theseus created a new civic mentality based on the principle of equality. The Athens of Theseus, however, is a kind of ideal polis, where the equalitarian spirit of democracy is tempered by the presence of an enlightened monarch. Under Theseus’ leadership, as Isocrates says, the Athenian people became ‘master of the constitution’. According to Diodorus, Theseus made the Athenians proud and ambitious, and eager to establish their hegemony over the Greek world [i]. On the other hand, the archetypal authoritarian depicted by Theophrastus criticizes Theseus because, as the man who first began to lay the path to democracy, he was ultimately responsible for the many ills of the city [j].
[a] Paus. 10.11.5–6: Theseus and the treasury of the Athenians at Delphi
The Thebans used the spoils of war to build a treasury at Delphi, and so did the Athenians. I cannot say whether the people of Cnidus built theirs to celebrate a victory or to display their prosperity, but the Theban treasury was built out of the spoils of the battle of Leuctra, and the Athenian treasury out of those taken from the army which landed with Datis at Marathon.
The people of Cleonae were afflicted by the plague, like the Athenians, and in compliance with an oracle from Delphi they sacrificed a male goat to the rising sun. This put an end to their woes, and so they sent a bronze male goat to the sanctuary of Apollo. The Syracusans have a treasury built with the spoils taken in the great Athenian disaster; the people of Potidaea built one in Thrace to show their devotion to the god. The Athenians built a portico out of the booty acquired in the war against the Peloponnesians and the other Greeks who were their allies. They also dedicated the figure-heads of the ships and some bronze shields. The epigram on these objects lists the cities from which the Athenians sent the first-fruits: those of the Elians and of the Spartans, then Sycion and Megara and Pellene in Achaia, Ambracia and Leucas and Corinth itself. The inscription also says that from the spoils taken in those naval battles they presented a sacrifice to Theseus and Poseidon.
[b] Paus. 1.3.3: Theseus, democracy and the people in the agora of Athens. Truth or myth?
Behind the statue of Zeus the Liberator there has been built a portico, decorated with paintings of the gods known as ‘the Twelve’. On the opposite wall there are pictures of Theseus, Democracy and the People. The scene represents Theseus as the man who gave political equality to the Athenians. In fact, a number of stories had spread among the populace that Theseus was the man who put the people in charge of all matters, and the Athenians continued under democracy from his time until Pisistratus rose up and made himself tyrant. But there are many other false stories which the people hold for true, because they do not know anything about history and consider trustworthy whatever tales they have heard in the tragedies and choruses since childhood. Take Theseus: he was in fact a monarch, and after the death of Melanthus,1 the descendants of Theseus continued to rule the city up to their fourth generation.
[c] Plut. Thes. 35.3–36.2: The death of Theseus. Centuries later, Cimon recovers the bones of Theseus
Theseus was overpowered by the demagogues and political factions. Despairing of the situation, he finally resolved to send his children to Euboea, to Elephenor, the son of Chalcodon. Theseus himself was at Gargettus, where there still is the so-called Araterion, ‘the place of cursing’, and after having invoked curses on the Athenians, he set sail to the island of Scyros, where, he thought, the people would be friendly to him, and where he had his ancestral home. At that time the king of Scyros was Lycomedes. Theseus therefore went to the king and asked him to be restored to his estates, for he intended to settle in there (some however say that he asked for his aid against the Athenians). But Lycomedes, either because he was afraid of the fame of that man, or to make a favour to Menestheus, took him to the high place of the land, as though he wanted to show him his lands from there, threw him from the cliffs, and killed him. Some however say that Theseus slipped and fell down as he was having a walk after dinner, as he used to do. At the time nobody reported of the death of Theseus. Menestheus, the king of Athens, was accompanying Elephenor in his expedition to Troy. The sons of Theseus had also joined in the campaign as private citizens. After Menestheus died there, they returned to Athens by themselves and recovered their reign.
In later times the Athenians turned to revere Theseus like a demi-god, especially because many of those who had fought at Marathon against the Persians thought they had seen an apparition of Theseus in arms rushing against the barbarians in front of them. After the end of the Persian Wars, under the archonship of Phaidon, the Athenians interrogated the Pyhtia, and were told to recover the bones of Theseus and to give them honourable burial in their city and to guard them there. But it was very difficult to localize his grave and collect the bones, owing to the harsh and hostile nature of the Dolopians, who then lived on the island of Scyros. Cimon, however, seized the island, as I have written in his Life, and, driven by the ambition of discovering the site of the grave of Theseus, saw an eagle on a hilly spot. The eagle was pecking, as they say, and tearing open the ground with its talons. Theseus, as though inspired by some divine revelation, began to dig. There he found a coffin containing a body of extraordinary size, a bronze spear lying by his side, and a sword. When Cimon brought the corpse to Athens on his trireme, the Athenians rejoiced and welcomed the spoils with a magnificent procession and offerings, as though Theseus himself was returning to the city. The corpse of Theseus now lies in the heart of the city, next to the gymnasium, and his grave is now a sanctuary for slaves on the run and every sort of disgraced men who are afraid of the powerful, because in the course of his life Theseus had always helped and assisted such people, and listened benevolently to the pleas of the needy.
[d] Plut. Thes. 24.1–3: Theseus the people’s friend
After the death of Aegeus, Theseus envisioned a great and marvelous plan to unite all the inhabitants of Attica into one city, and make one people of those who had always lived scattered about the region and were difficult to call together for any common purpose. In fact, sometimes they quarrelled and moved war against one another. So Theseus visited every district, every village, and tried to win the people of Attica over his project. The ordinary people and the poor immediately answered his appeal. To the powerful, Theseus promised a constitution without a king and a democratic government where he would have served only as commander-in-chief in case of war and as custodian of the laws, while in all other matters equality would be granted to everyone. Some were easily persuaded, while others were afraid of his power, which was already great, and of his bold nature, and so they preferred to be persuaded than forced to give up to him. Theseus therefore abolished the local councils, assemblies and magistracies, then he established one common city-hall and senate-house for all the citizens in the place where the acropolis now stands, and called the city Athens and instituted the common Panathenaic festival.
[e] Ar. Frogs 138–43: Theseus introduced the obol
DIONYSUS: How will I get across?
HERACLES: In a little boat, just this big! A mariner, an old man, will take you over. Oh, and he’ll take two obols for your fare.
D.: Gosh, these two obols are really powerful everywhere! How did they get there?
H.: Theseus introduced them. Then you’ll see thousands of snakes and terrible beasts.
[f] [Dem.], Ag. Nea. 75: Theseus the founder of democracy
When Theseus made the synoecism and established democracy, the city became populous. Nevertheless, the people continued to elect a king, choosing him from a list of men renowned for their virtue.
[g] Isoc. Hel. 23–5: Comparison of Theseus and Heracles
This is the most splendid thing which I have to say about Theseus: he was a contemporary of Heracles and established himself a reputation to rival his. Indeed, not only did they wear similar armours: they both followed the same pursuits and performed deeds worthy of their common ancestry. Just as they were born the sons of two brothers, one of Zeus, the other of Poseidon, they also pursued kindred ambitions: they alone of all the men who have lived until these days have made themselves champions of human life. Heracles undertook more laborious deeds, which gained him greater applause, but what Theseus accomplished was more useful and more akin to the nature of the Greek people. For instance, Heracles for instance was ordered by Eurystheus to bring the cattle from Erytheia and to get the apples of the Hesperides, and to lead up Cerberus from Hades, and to perform other such deeds which brought no advantage to mankind, but great risk to himself. Theseus, on the other hand, was his own master, and favoured those enterprises, which would make him a benefactor of all the Greeks in general and his native land in particular. For instance, nobody dared to confront the bull let loose by Poseidon that was ravaging Attica, but Theseus singlehandedly subdued him, and so he freed the people of the city from great fear and despondency.
[h] Isoc. Hel. 34–5: Theseus brought order to Attica
What is more ominous than living in constant fear lest any passer-by might kill you, and dreading those who should protect you no less than those who want to harm you? Theseus despised all these men: he thought that these men were not rulers but a curse to their city, and showed how easy it is to have absolute power without being less happy than those who live in a regime of equality. To start with, he turned the scattered villages of Attica into one city, which he made so big that from his time up to the present day it has been the largest of Greece. Thereupon, he created a common fatherland and liberated the minds of his fellow-citizens, making them compete for distinction on a principle of equality. Theseus was confident that he would come out first in any case, whether they exercised their rights or neglected them, because he knew that the honours granted by high-minded people are sweeter than those granted by slaves. Theseus was so far from doing anything against the will of the citizens that he made the people masters of the constitution, and the Athenians not only thought that he should rule alone, but also considered Theseus ruling as a monarch to be more trustworthy and more just than democracy. Unlike all the other autocrats, Theseus did not impose all work upon the others while he alone enjoyed all pleasures, but he made the dangers his own, and the benefits common to all.
[i] Diod., 4.61.8-9: Theseus, democracy and the ambition of the Athenians
When Aegeus died, Theseus succeeded him as king. He ruled the people according to law and took many measures to make the city prosper. The most remarkable of his achievements was the unification of the demes, which were numerous and small, into the city of Athens. Indeed, from that time the Athenians became proud of the importance of their constitution and aimed at the leadership of the Greek world.
[j] Theoph. 26.4–6 (The Authoritarian): An anti-democrat who despises Theseus
At mid-day, the authoritarian leaves the house, his cloak gently thrown over the shoulder, the hair neatly cut, his fingernails impeccably trimmed, and, pompous like an actor of the tragedies, he start talking like this: ‘all these sycophants have made life in this city impossible!’ Or: ‘Ah, the things we have to endure from the bribe-takers in the law courts!’ And: ‘I can’t understand why people insist on meddling with politics’, and ‘how ungrateful the mob is: always after a hand-out or a bribe’. He gets all outraged when some poor grubby fellow sits next to him at the assembly, and there he goes: ‘when, pray, are we going to be released from the lethal burden of the liturgies and trierarchies?’ And again: ‘Demagogues are a loathsome race!’ He also adds that Theseus was the instigator of all the ills of the city, because he brought twelve cities together into one and abolished the monarchy. But in the end, he says, he got what deserved, because he was the first to be killed.
7. A brief history of the Athenian constitution
The Constitution of the Athenians attributed to Aristotle is divided into two parts. The first one outlines a history of the constitution from Ion’s settlement in Attica down to the restoration of democracy after the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants (403). In the second part, the author describes the organization of the Athenian government at the time of his writing. The historical section of the treaty concludes with a brief summary of the eleven metabolai (‘changes’, ‘transformations’ or even ‘revolutions’), which punctuated the history of the Athenian politeia. The synoecism of Attica operated by Theseus is the second of these metabolai, marking the passage from tribal, pre-political forms of community, based on the informal ascendancy of local clans, to one based on an embryo of institutional order (politeias taxin). This is the moment when the political history of Athens and Attica really began.
[Arist.], Ath. Const. 41: A summary of Athenian constitutional history to the fall of the Thirty Tyrants
This was the eleventh reform undergone by the Athenian government. The first was the original division of Attica into four tribes, and the appointment of the first tribal kings, which occurred after Ion and his companions settled in the region. The second reform took place under Theseus: this was the first to imply some form of constitutional organization and modified slightly the monarchic ordainment of the city. Then came the reform of Draco, which gave Athens the first code of written laws. The third reform took place after the civic disturbance which occurred at the time of Solon, and marked the beginning of democracy. The fourth reform was the tyranny of Pisistratus. The fifth one was the constitution of Cleisthenes, which was enforced after the overthrow of the tyrants, and was more democratic than the constitution of Solon. The sixth reform came in the aftermath of the Persian Wars, under the leadership of the council of the Areopagus. After this, the seventh reform was set out by Aristides and brought to completion by Ephialtes with the dissolution of the council of the Areopagus. Under this regime, it so happened that the state committed many mistakes owing to the influence of the demagogues and of the dominion of the sea. The eighth reform was the regime of the Four Hundred, and the restoration of democracy after the fall of the regime was the ninth one. The tenth was the tyranny of the Thirty, then that of the Ten. The eleventh was the constitution established after the return of the men from Phyle and Piraeus. This is the constitution which is still in place. From that moment the power of the masses has constantly increased: the people have become the master of everything, all the decisions are taken by the assembly and the tribunals, where the people are sovereign; even the cases debated before the council have been transferred to the popular assembly. The Athenians seem to have acted wisely in this, because the few are more likely to be corrupted by riches and power than the many. The proposal to introduce a payment for those who attend the assembly was at first rejected, but since attendance at the meetings was low and the pritaneis were always devising tricks to gather the people and make them vote by raising of hands, Agyrrius first introduced a token of one obol, and after him Heracleides of Clazomenae, known as ‘the King’, raised it to two obols, then Agyrrius raised it again to three.