Athens

Athens was a town in central Greece, which was settled very early because it has a good seaport nearby (at Piraeus) and a steep hill which makes it easy to defend.

During the Dark Ages, Athens declined like other Greek towns, and the old palace was abandoned, but the Athenians were proud to say that unlike Sparta or Corinth, Athens had never been destroyed by invaders.

In the early Archaic period, around 900 BC, Athens began to grow again. When we first see the Athenians after the Dark Age, they have an oligarchic government. A group of rich men (but not women) got together to make the laws and decide everything

The Acropolis of Athens

During the Archaic period, the system of government seems to have been pretty severe for ordinary people, and to have favored rich men and women. In 621 BC Draco was serving in the government of Athens as an archon. Draco was a rich man, part of the oligarchy. He ordered his slaves to write down the laws, so that everybody would know what the laws were and the rich men in the oligarchy wouldn't be able to just make up laws to suit themselves. These laws said that poor people could be killed for even small crimes like stealing a cabbage. The laws also had different punishments for poor people and for rich people. If a poor woman owed money to a rich man, she would be sold into slavery to pay the debt. But if a rich man owed money to a poor woman, his punishment was lighter.

But most people in Athens weren't happy when they saw the laws written down - they were angry! They thought these laws weren't fair. They complained especially about debt bondage - being sold into slavery because you owed somebody money. So in 594 BC the Athenian oligarchy chose another rich man, Solon, to fix the government. They told him, "Do something so everyone won't be so mad at us, but let us keep all the power." (We know about Draco and Solon mainly from the Greek historian Herodotus).

Solon changed the law so that poor people could not be sold into slavery just because they owed people money. He cancelled debts and redistributed land so people got a fresh start. He changed the law so that people couldn't be killed except for any crime except murder.

Under Solon's rules, the rich men in the oligarchy kept most of their land and most of their power. But he did start an Assembly, that any citizen could come to and vote on important questions. And he decided that judges would be chosen through a lottery, so that even poor men might be judges. He did not allow women to be in the Assembly or to be judges. He did make it illegal for parents to abuse their children. For a while, this worked. The ordinary people weren't so angry, and the rich men got to stay in power.

At first people were happy with Solon's changes. They had their farms back, and they didn't owe any money, and they weren't being killed for little things. They could (if they were free men) be judges and vote in the Assembly.

But the people of Athens didn't stay happy very long. They began to lose their land again and fall back into debt. When the Athenians lost a couple of battles against their enemies, that was the last straw. In 560 BC, one rich man, Pisistratus, told the ordinary people that if they supported him as tyrant, he would help them with all their problems and keep the other rich men off their backs.

People thought that sounded good, and so Pisistratus managed to get power over the other rich men of Athens and get control of the city.

Pisistratus did a good job as tyrant, even though the other rich men kept trying to get rid of him so they could have their oligarchy back again. Pisistratus taxed everybody equally (instead of taxing the rich less than everyone else), and he organized ways for the government to lend money at fair rates to farmers so they wouldn't have to borrow money from rich people. Pisistratus (pie-SISS-trat-uss) used the tax money to build roads and new public water fountains and new temples for the gods and many other useful things.

Harmodius and Aristogeiton

When Pisistratus died in 528 BC, his son Hippias (and possibly his brother Hipparchus) took over as tyrant (you can see that they are rich men because their names mean "Horse-guys", and only rich men could afford horses). Two young rich guys named Harmodius and Aristogeiton (arr-iss-toe-GUY-tahn), maybe trying to get the oligarchy back into power, tried to kill Hippias and Hipparchus at a religious festival celebrating Athena's birthday in 514 BC. They only managed to kill Hipparchus, but Hippias got more and more suspicious and nasty, and by 508 the Athenians decided to get rid of Hippias too. The Alcmaeonids bribed the priestess at Delphi to tell the Spartans to help them throw out Hippias. The Spartans did help, and Hippias fled to Persia. That was the end of tyranny in Athens.