Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

Historical Outline 27
Radical Athenian Democracy
In the late 460s and early 450s b.c.e. , Athens took the final steps
along the road to a radical or participatory democracy. It was a
political system without modern parallel. The Greek notion of
dêmokratia, or “power in the hands of the people,” was very different
from our system of democracy. In the Greek world, there was
no menacing equivalent of Big Government. Nor were policy decisions
made by faceless bureaucrats accountable only to their immediate
superiors. On the contrary, the Athenian citizenry or dêmos,
which consisted of all adult males over the age of about twenty, was
completely sovereign.
The dêmos wielded its formidable power through a voting assembly
known as the ekklêsia, which met approximately four times a
month, although extraordinary meetings could be called at times
of emergency. Each citizen exercised one vote and had the right to
speak on whatever issue was under debate. Magistrates and junior
officials were in the strictest sense its servants, because they were
subject to investigation both before taking up office and on laying
it down. It was also the dêmos, sitting in court as the hêliaia, who
constituted the supreme judicial authority.
THE AGE OF PERIKLES
In the late 450s b.c.e. , Athens sent out an expedition to assist the
Egyptians in their revolt against Persia. However, it suffered a major
defeat, and the expedition ended in disaster. As a result, Athens
transferred the league treasury on Delos to the Acropolis for safekeeping.
Five years later, it concluded a peace with Persia, which
meant that there was now no compelling reason for the Delian
Confederacy to continue to exist, though Athens made no move to
disband it. Not surprisingly, there were signs of unrest among Athens’s
allies, initially in the form of nonpayments. Shortly afterward,
several members tried to secede. Athens also suffered a defeat at
the hands of the Peloponnesian League at Koroneia, which lies to
the north of Athens. When Megara, Athens’s nearest neighbor, also
revolted, the Peloponnesians invaded Attica.
Largely due to diplomatic initiatives on the part of a rising political
star named Perikles, however, a full-scale war was averted, and
a peace was concluded that was intended to last for 30 years. The
peace acknowledged Athenian supremacy in the Aegean and Spartan
supremacy on the Greek mainland. The entire Greek world now
became increasingly polarized. Less and less was it possible for any