How democracy was created

It is usually taken that the first democratic society in history originated in Athens, at the time of Pericles (449-429 BCE), because, at that time of civilization, he brought that order to its highest form. But Pericles is not the creator of a democratic society.

The first democracy was reached centuries before him.

In the 12th century BC, Athens lost its last king, Kodra, in the war with the Dorans, and since then it was an aristocratic republic ruled by nine archons (similar to today's ministers), members of the Areopagus - council of elders or senates, which sat on the city's hill, the Acropolis. The common people consisted of free citizens in the city itself or peasants in the villages around Athens, and with them also meteci - foreigners, who did not even have the right to houses or private property in the city-state, but lived and worked for others. Large estates belonged to the aristocracy and were worked by slaves - prisoners of war or citizens who fell into debt slavery with the eupatrides.

The common people became increasingly impoverished. And, in the 7th century BC, he demanded that debt slavery be abolished and that a law be written about it.

However, one of the archons, Drakon, wrote in 621. p not laws that abolished debt slavery, but exceeded all previous laws in severity: even the smallest theft was punishable by death, and free citizens fell into slavery even more easily than before. Draco's laws caused even greater discontent and resistance from ordinary citizens, and the National Assembly, although under pressure from the government, accepted Draco's laws, once again became a body that fights against bad government and a place for the political gathering of the opposition.

In 594 BC, the sage and poet Solon, sympathetic to the rights of free citizens, was elected archon legislator. With a series of laws that he passed, he began a major reform in the state, and the first and most important law was "sisahteya" (removal of the burden) or the abolition of slavery due to debt. He divided the population of Athens into four classes according to their wealth ("census") and thus determined the political and military rights of each citizen. With Solon's reforms, the former council of elders ("areopagus") became a judicial body, and instead Solon formed a council of 400 people (one hundred people each from the oldest Athenian brotherhoods or "phyla") as a senate. The National Assembly is becoming a much more important authority than before. The government of Athens was still made up of nine archons, but now under much greater control of the national assembly.

It turned out that not everyone was satisfied with the reforms, especially the peasants because they expected the redistribution of land (agrarian reform) that was taken from them or stolen by the aristocrats, but Solon thought that he had done enough in his one-year mandate.

About thirty years later (560 BCE), a relative of Solon, Pisistratus, an officer known for his heroism in the war for Salamis, against the neighboring state of Megara, appeared in Athens. He led with him a squad of "beaters", armed with identical sticks, actually an army made up of landless people from the countryside, the urban poor and certain war veterans, dissatisfied with their status in the state, who, all together, sought the redistribution of land and all the wealth in Athens. They easily captured the Acropolis and Pisistratus declared personal rule - dictatorship ("tyranny"). He implemented a series of measures persecuting the richest agricultural aristocracy, taking away all the land from them, distributing it to the poor, and distributing money from the state budget for better olive cultivation, development of trade and exports, road construction, repair of the city's water supply and sewerage system, construction of public buildings and apartments for the poor, and who knows how many times rewriting The Iliads i Odysseus, so that he would also attribute that as his merit. Half of the demos stood by him and forgot about the destruction of all the institutions that existed before the tyranny, now performing their duties only by order and in fear of the will of Pisistratus, and the other half was intimidated by the daily terror of the bullies. In his frequent speeches, Pisistratus threatened his citizens with the neighboring countries, all of which, according to him, were ancient enemies of Athens (Megara, Thebes, Sparta, Corinth...), and Athens was and had to remain the leader of the entire Greek world.

His tyranny lasted almost half a century, until the fall from power of his sons Pisistratides (516 BCE), with the help of the Spartan royal army, which was called to the aid of the Athenian aristocracy.

The cult of Pisistratus was maintained for a few more years among a part of the population, until the learned aristocrat Cleistos returned from political emigration (509 BCE) and officially abolished it. He was appointed to the post of archon legislator with the task of carrying out the restoration of the work of all institutions and carrying out a political reform that would ensure the supremacy in the political life of the demos, the citizens, which is why he had to sacrifice the old privileges and expectations of the aristocracy, to which he himself belonged. Cleisthenus abolished the old territorial division of the state (city-polis) into the possessions of four tribes ("phyles"), and introduced ten territorial phyles (municipalities) independent of tribes, brotherhoods ("phratries") and genera (families). Each of these phyla was divided into "demes" (local communities). All the citizens of Athens, both in the city and in the villages, were listed according to their place of birth and were no longer marked by gender but by deme. This broke the bond between the members of certain clans, and introduced municipal self-government led by the "demarch" (president of the municipality) and the municipal council. All citizens got access to self-government, equal political rights, and finally those rights were also given to newcomers ("metecs"), from the third generation. Based on this division and population census, an electoral system was created, equal for all (except for slaves).

The National Assembly finally became the highest authority, the Council of 400 people (Senate) was replaced by the Council of 500 people (50 representatives from each phyla), and the Areopagus retained only its judicial function. This replaced the old family organization of the city with civic institutions according to the place of residence of each Athenian. The struggle between the aristocracy (aupatrides) and the demos (citizens) ended with the creation of the first democratic republic with equal political rights of citizens, Athens - the first civil state in the world. Every civil servant had to submit his biography, and afterwards it was checked what his character was, how he behaved, whether he respected his parents and elders, whether he reported for military duty every time, whether he regularly paid taxes, and so on. By the way, in ancient Athens, as well as in ancient Rome, politicians did not receive salaries, nor were they allowed to do so for any financial interest.

Only after all that came Pericles, the greatest Athenian statesman, who strengthened the democratic order and explained it with the sentence that the order in Athens is called "democratic because the power in it does not belong to the minority, but to the majority of citizens".

He was by origin the highest aristocrat and the son of the famous general Xanthippus, the victor at Mycala. He built his authority in the National Assembly, with excellent speeches ("mostly everyone stood behind him") and proposals that were adopted most of the times, as well as with his personal abilities in implementing other people's proposals and his own. He socialized with the philosophers Protagoras and Anaxagoras, the artist Phidias and the historian Herodotus. And his wife Aspasia was a very educated and respectable citizen of Athens. He introduced the "Collegium of 10 Strategists", a body that took care of military and civil matters and managed the state in case of war, which was elected every year by the National Assembly. In 20 years of active politics, Pericles was elected as a member of the Ten Strategists 15 times. He died of the plague in 429. BC, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, before the age of 50.

Once, a few decades later, when the tyranny of a certain Critias reappeared briefly in Athens, the philosopher Plato, walking with his students, saw the philosopher Diogenes washing cabbage and unloading sacks from a ship, together with port workers and other political convicts, in the port of Piraeus. He called him from a distance and threw at him: "Well, my Diogenes, if you had listened to Critias, you wouldn't have had to wash cabbage!", to which the panting Diogenes also addressed him loudly and replied: "And you, if you had been washing cabbages, you wouldn't have had to listen to Critias!".

Personal freedom, they say, has always been a matter of choice.