The Greeks increasingly insisted on writing down laws and diffusing power in order to reduce the possibility of tyrants seizing power. With the constant threat of civil war, noble families who ruled Athens called on aristocrats such as the poet Solon, who lived roughly between 640 and 560 bce, to consolidate disparate laws. Although such a figure existed, little is known about what he actually wrote or accomplished, but he is credited with having changed marriage laws. Portrayed in legends as a wise leader, he was known for mediating between the rich and the poor. So, for example, when asked his opinion about well-run cities, he described one as "that city where those who have not been injured take up the cause of one who has, and prosecute the case as earnestly as if the wrong had been done to themselves."9 His alleged efforts to reduce the cost of dowries, inhibit forced marriages of heiresses to male relatives, permit citizens to have others aid them in legal matters, and appeal judgments to groups representing the larger community, would have granted wider representation to most Athenians. Solon supposedly wanted the poor as well as the rich to participate in government and allowed the lowest class, the thetes, to serve on the jury of the assembly. Whether or not the laws Solon decreed were intentionally ambiguous, many believe that the room they left for interpretation granted the lowest class great power. Another change that occurred during Solon's rule was the creation of the Council of 400, a group that generated the proposals that were discussed and voted on by the people of all ranks gathered in the Assembly.10
The Assembly, which first began meeting in the sixth century BCE, on the Pnyx hill near the Acropolis, was the wonder of Greek democracy. Despite other achievements, few democratic institutions anywhere else have ever equaled its level of participatory democracy. The Assembly consisted of six thousand male citizens, including masons, carpenters, and merchants, and met at least forty times a year for one-day sessions. Although it excluded women, slaves, and foreign immigrants, at the height of its power in the fifth century bce, the Assembly was open to 35,000-40,000 men over eighteen years of age. Even people from the countryside were eligible to participate, though farmers seldom appeared even when, as in the fourth century bce, all members of the Assembly are thought to have been paid for participating. The stipend was equal to only half a mason's daily wage, but paying anything for services assured that even poor men might theoretically be able to join the Assembly and consider the issues of the day. Once the per diem was introduced, the Assembly attracted the old, indigent, and lower-paid people, skewing its membership overwhelmingly toward people of the lower classes.11
Even so, the principal leaders of democracy, such as Pericles of Athens, came from the elite, who studied speaking techniques known as rhetoric. Under Pericles's leadership, the Assembly dominated the older aristocratic branch of government, the Council of 500 (previously the Council of 400), which controlled the military and generated legislation. As Pericles said, "Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law; when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses."12 The courts and city officials (chosen by lottery) brought adversaries together to resolve their differences. If mediation failed, a jury—which was also selected by lottery and, from the fifth century BcE on, paid for their services—adjudicated the cases. By that time, in mixing older institutions that had survived over generations with newer, autonomous local organizations that allowed participants to meet new challenges, Greece united popular and representative democratic forms.
But then, and as would occur again later, democracy faced disintegration due to war. Persistent wars that pitted Athenians against Persians and then against the united forces of the Greek Peloponnese led by Sparta promoted increased centralization of power. This led to the decreasing influence of popular democracy in the Assembly. The exigencies of war precluded the slow and deliberative discussions that took place among the tens of thousands of men in the Assembly. Moreover, the need for secrecy meant that public discussion of strategy often curtailed popular democracy in the Assembly, eventually leading to Athenian submission to Spartan rule, and then, in 338 BcE, to Philip II of Macedonia and his son, Alexander the Great. Imperialism and the decreasing ability of citizens to participate in making major political decisions undermined Athenian democracy despite the cultural advances that Athens made under Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in the fifth century BcE. While Plato and presumably Socrates, whose philosophical ideas Plato conveyed, believed that monarchy, not democracy, was the superior form of rule, Aristotle, who surveyed various systems, thought that democracy was the ultimate model of good government. But not if there was constant warfare as was the case in Greece from the fifth century onward. And the Greeks' failure was the world's loss.
Many speculate about the extent to which democratic governments or major democratic practices existed during the thousand years that followed Greece's decline. Others doubt whether the Roman Republic was ever democratic at all. Even though Rome liked to view itself as the heir to ancient Greece, and could boast about the rights of citizens to vote in elections, deliberate in noncapital court cases, and initiate new laws—practices the Romans developed between 139 and 130 bce— this might not have been enough for some to consider their system democratic. The early republic that lasted roughly from 509 to 287 bce gave birth to a series of institutions that might have resulted in periods of moderate self-government, among patricians, whose ancestors may have fulfilled religious duties or occupied political positions. Whatever their origins, wealthy patricians generally filled the ranks of the Senate. While a small minority of lower-class men (known as plebeians) who had achieved a certain level of wealth were able to occupy high posts in the military, most plebeians were poor farmers and city dwellers.
The first Roman legal code, known as the Twelve Tables, seems to have been generated between 451 and 450 bce and was hung on bronze plaques in the Roman Forum to alert patricians and plebeians about their rights. Its single most important difference from Hammurabi's Code and Solon's reforms was that the Twelve Tables permitted men to be sold into slavery for going deeply in debt. Even with the Twelve Tables, it was not until 287 bce, when the Tribal Assembly was established, that those outside of the elite seem to have gained any rights to write laws or carry on legal proceedings.
The one major democratic advance in Rome was in the creation of public advocates, called Tribunes, who received no salaries, but looked out for the interest of the plebeians. Although the Tribunes themselves were generally the children of the wealthy men who dominated the Roman Senate, the Tribunes had veto power over proposals the Senate offered.
Two of the few efforts at ruling democratically came during the period when Tiberius Gracchus served as Tribune in 133 bce, and, nine years after his death, when his younger brother, Gaius Gracchus, assumed that post. Rome had gradually extended its territory, first, to the North African city-state of Carthage, against which it had fought three successive wars, and later to Greece, Asia Minor, and the Middle East. Rome's wars against supposed enemies brought in new lands that
This bronze relief of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchi shows two of the most important republican reformers in second century все Rome. The Gracchi brothers tried to reduce the power of slave-holding senators, distribute newly conquered land to the landless, and extend Roman citizenship to people in surrounding territories. The assassinations of the two brothers marked the demise of the Roman Republic and the beginning of imperial rule. Photo courtesy Musee d'Orsay, Paris, RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY