Greece, Rome, and the Bill of Rights (24 page)

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Authors: Susan Ford Wiltshire

Tags: #Political Science, #General, #History, #Law, #Reference, #Civil Rights, #test

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fought in close cohesion and were increasingly organized by geographical rather than social units.

86

This military revolution led in the Greek cities, conspicuously at Athens, to profound political innovations. The law code of Draco, of which we know little except its severity, was established about 620
B.C.
Then in 594593, Solon was appointed "archon and reconciler" to put an end to civil strife. Solon, a man of only moderate wealth although of noble descent, had shrewd political instincts and a radical readiness to make major changes. At that time the nobles not only controlled most of the state but also owned most of the land. In addition, many of the poor had been enslaved for inability to pay their debts. Solon cancelled all existing debts, ended the system of share-cropping that had bolstered the aristocrats and led to personal servitude for defaulting debtors, doubled the number of those eligible for political and military office, provided other guarantees against legal oppression, and encouraged commerce by bringing Athenian coinage and weights and measures into compatibility with those of some other Greek cities.
He also reformed the constitution. Before Solon, a small group of ex-magistrates formed the Council of the Areopagus, the only deliberative body in the state. Although there was a citizens' assembly or Ecclesia, it met only in moments of crisis or to show support for one aristocratic faction or another. Solon instituted a Council or Boule of 400, which prepared the agenda for the Ecclesia, thus freeing it from the domination of the Areopagus. Solon seems also to have established new authority for the assembly, whether by setting regular meeting times, organizing methods of voting, or regularizing the agenda.
87
Some of Solon's reforms, such as the abolition of debt-servitude, were immediate and lasting. Others took longer to become established. After years of intermittent tyranny, Cleisthenes enacted another set of reforms in 508507, which greatly increased the share of the common people in the government. Cleisthenes gave Attica a new social and political structure with broad popular support, one that lasted with variations for some two hundred

 

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years until the Athenian democracy was finally abolished by Antipatros in 322321
B.C.
Martin Ostwald suggests that Cleisthenes may have been responsible for the adoption of the term
nomos
, or statute, to replace the older term
thesmos
, or decree, in order to signal that laws imposed by a ruling class were to give way to laws ratified by the will of the people.

88
Similarly, he may have given rise to the notion of
isonomia
as a term denoting political equality between the magistrates, who formulate the proposals, and the people, who approve them.

Further reforms in 462, associated with the names of Ephialtes and Pericles, increased the power of the Ecclesia and began to provide pay for the large number of jurorssome juries consisted of hundredswhich meant that common people could afford to participate actively in public affairs by taking time off from their work. In 404 pay was instituted for attending the Ecclesia. Each of the 139 demes, or divisions of the city, supplied a certain number of council members to the Boule, which had been enlarged by Cleisthenes to five hundred. There is no evidence that its members were chosen by lot from the demesmen until 450, nor that its members received pay before 411, moves that all forwarded the gradual evolution toward greater democracy.
The primary function of the Boule was to consider in advance all the matters to be presented to the Ecclesia. There were some restraints on its power, however, mostly accomplished by limitations on its membership. Terms lasted only one year, and, to keep membership from becoming fixed, no one could serve more than twice.
From the perspective of antiquity, participation in the Ecclesia was broadly inclusive. All adult male citizens could attend meetings of the assembly. Land ownership was not a qualification for participation. Only citizens whose political rights had been removed by law or sentence (
atimoi
) were excluded. The age of majority for males was eighteen or, in the fourth century, when two years of military service prevented their attending the assembly, twenty. Actual participation might also be hin-

 

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dered by the distance one would have to walk

89
or by space in the meeting place on the Pnyx hill (southwest of the Agora), which could seat about 6,000 on benches or cushions on the outcropping rock and, in the latest period, perhaps as many as 13,800.
90

Only foreigners, resident foreigners (called metics), slaves, and female citizens were excluded from political rights.
91
In 431
B.C.
about 45 percent of all adult males were classified as metics and slaves, and by 323 this number had risen to 53 percent. This restriction on participation in public life was tightened in 451
B.C.
, when a decree was passed limiting citizenship to the offspring of marriages between two Athenian citizens.
92
This exclusion of far more than half the population, when women are included, from public affairs represents no inner contradiction with Athenian democratic theory, since there was no philosophical or religious belief in the full equality of all human beings.
93
Hansen estimates the number of adult male citizens in the fifth century to be about 40,000, reduced perhaps to 30,000 or fewer after the plague and the defeats in the Peloponnesian War.
94
During the fourth century, the meetings of the Ecclesia were regularly attended by no fewer than 6,000 citizens.
During the last half of the fifth and first half of the fourth centuries, the Ecclesia met in regular mandatory sessions ten times a year, together with a number, perhaps a sizeable number, of other meetings. During the Spartan invasion of Attica in the Peloponnesian War, Pericles arranged that no Ecclesia would be held. Around 355
B.C.
the number of meetings was set at forty a year, four in each prytany, of which there were ten of thirty-five or thirty-six days in a normal year. Votes were taken by show of hands. Citizens sat where they pleased rather than according to political groups.
95
At no point, even in this period of direct democracy, could the people officially issue a call for a meeting. The Ecclesia was usually summoned on four days' notice by the
prytaneis,
the presiding officers. The fifty
prytaneis
were selected by lot from each of the ten tribes that consti-

 

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tuted the Boule in turn, and each tribe provided the
prytaneis
for one-tenth of each year. They convened the Ecclesia and arranged the agenda.
Obligatory items for the principal meetings of the Ecclesia included the selection of magistrates, indictments, the defence of the country, and attention to the food supply. Public announcements were also made about important issues such as the confiscation of property, grants of citizenship, religious matters, the bestowal of public honors, and foreign policy. Actions proposed and debated at one meeting could not be voted on until a subsequent meeting.

96

Since no item could be placed on the agenda for the popular assembly without prior treatment by the Boule, the question arises as to whether the people retained direct sovereignty or whether they merely provided a rubber stamp for measures beyond their control. Hansen finds that the Boule sometimes presented a matter for debate without a specific proposal for action. In those cases, the people themselves determined the consequence. Furthermore, alternative proposals could be moved from the floor during debate. P. J. Rhodes, studying the formulation of decrees passed during the period 403322, finds that about half of the decrees were ratifications of actions proposed by the council, while half were moved in the Ecclesia.
97
Hansen refines these findings by excluding routine business such as honorific decrees and concludes that although the Boule influenced the people's decisions, the true decision-making rested, both de jure and de facto, with the people.
98
In summary, in spite of the restricted definition of the citizen body, democratic Athens placed a remarkable value on freedom of assembly. The practice of selection by lot to the Boule from among the citizenry, the direct participation by the people in the proceedings of the Ecclesia, and the ability of the Ecclesia to offer alternate or even new proposals combine to paint a portrait of vigorous public life in democratic Athens.
The case at Rome was quite different. Because they rose later to world prominence, the Romans had the great

 

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advantage of being able to feel superior to the Greeks. Rarely is this more evident than in Cicero's comparison of the Greek and Roman assemblies.
In 59
B.C.
Cicero defended Lucius Valerius Flaccus on charges of malfeasance in office as governor of Asia. To discredit the testimony of Asian Greeks against his client, Cicero launched a vigorous salvo against the general perfidy of the Greeks and in particular against their untrustworthiness in assembly. After a prefatory disclaimer that no Roman has ever been more sympathetic to the Greeks than he, Cicero grants that the Greek race has literature, art, charm in speaking, keenness of intellect, and rhetorical richness, but that it has never fostered a respect for truth in giving testimony.

99
A Greek witness, he continues, takes the stand only for the purpose of doing harm,
ut laedet
.
100
Cicero admonishes his hearers to remember that when they are listening to a Greek, they are thus listening to a frenzied assembly of the most trivial of nations (
contionem concitatam levissimae nationis
.
101
After expatiating at length on Greek untrustworthiness, he confesses that he will not expand on the subject because if he did his speech would never come to an end.

Then Cicero moves from the hors d'oeuvres to the main course of his argument. The brilliance of our Roman ancestors, he says, was that they gave no power to public assemblies:
Nullam ... vim contionis esse voluerunt
.
102
The decline of the Greeks, on the other hand, was brought on by their public assemblies. Worse still, the Greeks
sat down
while they deliberated, thus making deliberation more lengthy and considered, instead of standing as Romans did:
But all the states of the Greeks are managed by irresponsible seated assemblies (
sedentis contionis temeritate administrantur
).... [T]hat older Greece, which once was so notable for its resources, its power, its glory, fell because of this defect alonethe undue freedom and irresponsibility of its assemblies (
libertate immoderata ac licentia contionum
). Untried men, without experience in any affairs and ignorant, took their places in the assembly and then they undertook useless wars, then

 

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