ATHENIAN REVOLUTION 508 BC

ESTABLISHMENT OF DEMOCRACY

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In 508 BC, Athens became one of the first societies in ancient times to establish democracy. The ancient Greeks were unique people. They believed that individuals should be free as long as they acted within the laws of Greece. This allowed them the opportunity to excel in any direction they chose. Individuality, as the Greeks viewed it, was the basis of their society. The ability to strive for excellence, no matter what the challenge, was what the Athenians so dearly believed in. This strive for excellence was the method from which they achieved such phenomenal accomplishments. These accomplishments astound us to this day. They also believed in the balance of mind and body. Although many of them strove to become soldiers and athletes, others ventured into philosophy, drama, pottery and the arts.

GREEK (ATHENIAN) REVOLUTION -508/507 BC

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ANCIENT GREECE

Ancient Greece was one of the largest contributors to present-day civilization. Democracy, philosophy, astrology, biology, mathematics, physics, and the theatre are only a few of its contributions to us. Words and thoughts from great men such as Plato, Socrates, Pythagoras, and Aristotle are still taught in universities to this day. Cities which have withstood the powers of nature for thousands of years still stand for us to view in awe. This was a great civilization far ahead of its time, whose beauty and knowledge will live on for many generations to come. The Ancient Athenians first devised the notion of a democratic government in their time. The Ancient Greek Philosopher Plato first defined Democracy as a system of “rule by the governed”. The origins of democracy first developed in the form of an Assembly which entitled all Athenian citizens to attend and participate.

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REVOLUTION IN ATHENS

THE RESULT OF THE REVOLUTION

In the year 507, Athens shook under an extraordinary event.

As the reformer Cleisthenes agonised in exile with the 700 families called 'The Accursed', his arch-enemy and current ruler of Athens, Isagoras, continued to dismantle the last vestiges of the city's traditional government with the help of his Spartan allies. Neither man had quite realised the power or feelings of the ordinary Athenians. So when a riot turned into a full-scale revolt both leaders were taken by surprise.

For two days and nights, people who they had always considered their inferiors trapped Isagoras and his Spartan allies on the Acropolis. Unprepared and overwhelmed by the united opposition against them, they were forced to agree to a humiliating truce. The Spartans left Athens, while Isagoras' allies were executed. The would-be tyrant somehow managed to escape. It was a new dawn for Athens. The ordinary Athenians had rescued their city and seized power for themselves. Now they turned to the man whose unique experience and disappointments had helped give them a new vision of themselves.

Cleisthenes was recalled from exile and asked to build the world's first government of the people - the demos - a system of government we now know as democracy.

When the citizens suddenly took power into their own hands, they changed the cultural and social landscape of Greece, thereby helping to inaugurate the Classical Era. Democracy led to fundamental adjustments in the basic structures of Athenian society, altered the forms and direction of political thinking, and sparked a series of dramatic reorientations in international relations. It quickly made Athens into the most powerful Greek city-state, but it also fatally undermined the traditional Greek rules of warfare. It stimulated the development of the Western tradition of political theorizing and encouraged a new conception of justice that has striking parallels to contemporary theories of rights. But Athenians never embraced the notions of inherency and inalienability that have placed the concept of rights at the center of modern political thought. Thus the play of power that constituted life in democratic Athens is revealed as at once strangely familiar and desperately foreign, and the values sustaining the Athenian political community as simultaneously admirable and terrifying.