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    The Athenian Constitution
    The Athenian Constitution
    The Athenian Constitution
    Ebook124 pages1 hour

    The Athenian Constitution

    By Aristotle

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    Ancient accounts of Aristotle credit him with 170 Constitutions of various states; it is widely assumed that these were research for the Politics, and that many of them were written or drafted by his students. Athens, however, was a particularly important state, and where Aristotle was living at the time; it is plausible that, even if students did the others, Aristotle did that one himself, and possible that it was intended as a model for the rest.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilder Publications, Inc.
    Release dateJul 4, 2014
    ISBN9781633841765
    Author

    Aristotle

    Aristotle was a philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in ancient Greece. He was the founder of the Lyceum and the Peripatetic school of philosophy and Aristotelian tradition. Along with his teacher Plato, he has been called the “Father of Western Philosophy.”

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      Book preview

      The Athenian Constitution - Aristotle

      The Athenian Constitution

      By Aristotle

      SMK Books

      Copyright © 2014 SMK Books

      All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      ISBN 978-1-63384-176-5

      Table of Contents

      Part 1

      Part 2

      Part 3

      Part 4

      Part 5

      Part 6

      Part 7

      Part 8

      Part 9

      Part 10

      Part 11

      Part 12

      Part 13

      Part 14

      Part 15

      Part 16

      Part 17

      Part 18

      Part 19

      Part 20

      Part 21

      Part 22

      Part 23

      Part 24

      Part 25

      Part 26

      Part 27

      Part 28

      Part 29

      Part 30

      Part 31

      Part 32

      Part 33

      Part 34

      Part 35

      Part 36

      Part 37

      Part 38

      Part 39

      Part 40

      Part 41

      Part 42

      Part 43

      Part 44

      Part 45

      Part 46

      Part 47

      Part 48

      Part 49

      Part 50

      Part 51

      Part 52

      Part 53

      Part 54

      Part 55

      Part 56

      Part 57

      Part 58

      Part 59

      Part 60

      Part 61

      Part 62

      Part 63

      Part 64

      Part 65

      Part 66

      Part 67

      Part 68

      Part 69

      Part 1

      ...[They were tried] by a court empanelled from among the noble families, and sworn upon the sacrifices. The part of accuser was taken by Myron. They were found guilty of the sacrilege, and their bodies were cast out of their graves and their race banished for evermore. In view of this expiation, Epimenides the Cretan performed a purification of the city.

      Part 2

      After this event there was contention for a long time between the upper classes and the populace. Not only was the constitution at this time oligarchical in every respect, but the poorer classes, men, women, and children, were the serfs of the rich. They were known as Pelatae and also as Hectemori, because they cultivated the lands of the rich at the rent thus indicated. The whole country was in the hands of a few persons, and if the tenants failed to pay their rent they were liable to be haled into slavery, and their children with them. All loans secured upon the debtor’s person, a custom which prevailed until the time of Solon, who was the first to appear as the champion of the people. But the hardest and bitterest part of the constitution in the eyes of the masses was their state of serfdom. Not but what they were also discontented with every other feature of their lot; for, to speak generally, they had no part nor share in anything.

      Part 3

      Now the ancient constitution, as it existed before the time of Draco, was organized as follows. The magistrates were elected according to qualifications of birth and wealth. At first they governed for life, but subsequently for terms of ten years. The first magistrates, both in date and in importance, were the King, the Polemarch, and the Archon. The earliest of these offices was that of the King, which existed from ancestral antiquity. To this was added, secondly, the office of Polemarch, on account of some of the kings proving feeble in war; for it was on this account that Ion was invited to accept the post on an occasion of pressing need. The last of the three offices was that of the Archon, which most authorities state to have come into existence in the time of Medon. Others assign it to the time of Acastus, and adduce as proof the fact that the nine Archons swear to execute their oaths ‘as in the days of Acastus,’ which seems to suggest that it was in his time that the descendants of Codrus retired from the kingship in return for the prerogatives conferred upon the Archon. Whichever way it may be, the difference in date is small; but that it was the last of these magistracies to be created is shown by the fact that the Archon has no part in the ancestral sacrifices, as the King and the Polemarch have, but exclusively in those of later origin. So it is only at a comparatively late date that the office of Archon has become of great importance, through the dignity conferred by these later additions. The Thesmothetae were many years afterwards, when these offices had already become annual, with the object that they might publicly record all legal decisions, and act as guardians of them with a view to determining the issues between litigants. Accordingly their office, alone of those which have been mentioned, was never of more than annual duration.

      Such, then, is the relative chronological precedence of these offices. At that time the nine Archons did not all live together. The King occupied the building now known as the Boculium, near the Prytaneum, as may be seen from the fact that even to the present day the marriage of the King’s wife to Dionysus takes place there. The Archon lived in the Prytaneum, the Polemarch in the Epilyceum. The latter building was formerly called the Polemarcheum, but after Epilycus, during his term of office as Polemarch, had rebuilt it and fitted it up, it was called the Epilyceum. The Thesmothetae occupied the Thesmotheteum. In the time of Solon, however, they all came together into the Thesmotheteum. They had power to decide cases finally on their own authority, not, as now, merely to hold a preliminary hearing. Such then was the arrangement of the magistracies. The Council of Areopagus had as its constitutionally assigned duty the protection of the laws; but in point of fact it administered the greater and most important part of the government of the state, and inflicted personal punishments and fines summarily upon all who misbehaved themselves. This was the natural consequence of the facts that the Archons were elected under qualifications of birth and wealth, and that the Areopagus was composed of those who had served as Archons; for which latter reason the membership of the Areopagus is the only office which has continued to be a life-magistracy to the present day.

      Part 4

      Such was, in outline, the first constitution, but not very long after the events above recorded, in the archonship of Aristaichmus, Draco enacted his ordinances. Now his constitution had the following form. The franchise was given to all who could furnish themselves with a military equipment. The nine Archons and the Treasurers were elected by this body from persons possessing an unencumbered property of not less than ten minas, the less important officials from those who could furnish themselves with a military equipment, and the generals [Strategi] and commanders of the cavalry [Hipparchi] from those who could show an unencumbered property of not less than a hundred minas, and had children born in lawful wedlock over ten years of age. These officers were required to hold to bail the Prytanes, the Strategi, and the Hipparchi of the preceding year until their accounts had been audited, taking four securities of the same class as that to which the Strategi and the Hipparchi belonged. There was also to be a Council, consisting of four hundred and one members, elected by lot from among those who possessed the franchise. Both for this and for the other magistracies the lot was cast among those who were over thirty years of age; and no one might hold office twice until every one else had had his turn, after

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