Wikia
Go to content Go to wiki navigation Go to site navigation
Community Wiki
My account
Enter
No account?
Register
Create a wiki
advertisement
Navigation through the "Wiki History"
Popular
Visited
The Great French Revolution
History of the United States of America
Countries of the fascist bloc
The Hundred Years ' War
List of operations and battles of the Great Patriotic War
Bashkirs in the Second World War
The October Revolution of 1917 in Russia
The Ancient World
Ancient Rome
Ancient Greece
Teotihuacan
Antiquity
Antigonus II Gonat
Ancient peace treaties
Antigonus III Doson
World War II
World War II
Gazenwagen
Waffen SS
Countries of the fascist bloc
Latvian SS Volunteer Legion
Sobibor (concentration camp)
Anti Hitler Coalition
Russian Spring
Donetsk People's Republic
Kharkiv People's Republic
People's Militia of Donbass
Odessa People's Republic
The Crimean crisis
Luhansk People's Republic
Odessa Khatyn
World War I
Reasons
Eastern Front
East Prussia
Galicia
Warsaw Ivangorod
Brusilovsky breakthrough
Western Front
1st Marne
Arras
Somme
Verdun
Marna
100 day offensive
Personalities
Community
Participants
Administrators
Recent blog entries
Forum
Reference
On the wiki
Wiki activity
Random article
Video
Images
Chat
Forum
Contribution
Edit a page
Add a video
Add a photo
Add a page
Wiki activity
Watch list Random article Recent edits
Ancient Greece
1620states on this wiki
Add a new page
edit
Classic.
editor
history
Discussion 0
To share
The use of the AdBlock extension was detected.
Wikia is a free resource that exists and develops through advertising.
For users who block ads, we provide a modified version of the site.
Wikia will not be available for future modifications.
If you want to continue working with the page, then please disable the ad blocker extension.
Ancient Greece (Hellas;) is the designation of early class societies accepted in historiography in the south of the Balkan Peninsula, the islands of the Aegean Sea, the coast of Thrace and the western coastal strip of Asia Minor in the III I millennium BC.
In the initial period of the history of Ancient Greece (III thousand BC), the ethnic composition of these territories was quite diverse: Pelasgians, Lelegs, etc., then the proto — Greek tribes Achaeans and Ionians, who pushed and assimilated them.
The first early class states of the Achaeans (Knossos, Festus, Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, Athens, etc.) were formed at the beginning of the II millennium BC in the Bronze Age.
The invasion of the Dorians (around 1200 BC) led to the collapse of these states and the restoration of tribal relations.
By the IX century BC, the population of Ancient Greece was as follows: Aeolians — Northern Greece, Dorians Middle Greece and the Peloponnese, Ionians — Attica and the islands.
In the VIII—VI centuries BC, polis (city states) were formed in Greece.
Depending on the results of the fight of the demos (farmers and artisans) with the tribal nobility polity in the policy was either democratic (Athens, etc.), or aristocratic (Sparta, Crete, etc.).
In the economically developed city States (Corinth, Athens, etc.) have become widespread slavery in Sparta, Argos etc. long preserved remnants of the tribal system.
V IV centuries BC — the period of the highest heyday of the polis device.
As a result of the victory of the Greeks in the Greco Persian wars (500-449 BC), the rise of Athens takes place, the Delos Union is created (led by Athens).
Time, the highest power of Athens, the greatest democratization of political life and cultural flowering around the time of Pericles (443-429 B. C.).
The struggle between Athens and Sparta for hegemony in Greece and the conflicts between Athens and Corinth, associated with the struggle for trade routes led to the Peloponnesian war (431-404 BC), which ended with the defeat of Athens.
In the middle of the IV century BC, the rise of Macedonia took place in the north of Greece.
Its king Philip II, having won a victory at Chaeronea (338 BC) over a coalition of Greek states, actually subjugated Greece.
His son Alexander the Great led the campaign of the united Greek Macedonian army to Asia.
He took Persia and part of India.
After the collapse of its power in the III II centuries BC, a number of Hellenistic states with a mixed Greek Eastern population and culture emerged.
At that time, Greece itself was dominated by states and unions of a paramilitary type (Macedonia, the Achaean Union, the Aetolian Union), which disputed hegemony over Greece.
In 146 BC, the Romans defeated the Achaean Union and subdued Greece.
In 27 BC, the province of Achaia was formed on its territory.
In the IV century.
Greece became the main part of the Eastern Roman Empire — Byzantium.
The history of the Greek Eastern Hellenistic states ends with the conquest of the last Hellenistic state by Rome — Ptolemaic Egypt in the first century BC.
In the most general way, it is customary in historical science to distinguish the following stages of the history of Ancient Greece:
Crete Mycenaean (late III II thousand BC).
Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations.
The emergence of the first state formations.
The development of navigation.
Establishment of trade and diplomatic contacts with the civilizations of the Ancient East.
The emergence of the original writing.
For Crete and mainland Greece, different periods of development are distinguished at this stage, since on the island of Crete, where the non Greek population lived at that time, statehood was formed earlier than in Balkan Greece, which was subjected to the conquest of the Achaean Greeks at the end of the third millennium BC.
Minoan civilization (Crete): The Early Minoan period (XXX XXIII centuries BC).
The dominance of tribal relations, the beginning of the development of metals, the rudiments of craft, the development of navigation, a relatively high level of agrarian relations.
The Middle Minoan period (XXII XVIII centuries BC) is also known as the period of "old" or "early" palaces.
The appearance of early state formations in different parts of the island.
Construction of monumental palace complexes in a number of regions of Crete.
Early forms of writing.
The Late Minoan period (XVII XII centuries BC).
The heyday of the Minoan civilization, the unification of Crete, the creation of the maritime power of King Minos, the wide scope of commercial activity of Crete in the Aegean Sea basin, the heyday of monumental construction ("new" palaces in Knossos, Mallia, Festus).
Active contacts with the ancient Eastern states.
The natural catastrophe of the middle of the XV century BC causes the decline of the Minoan civilization, which created the prerequisites for the conquest of Crete by the Achaeans.
Mycenaean Civilization (Balkan Greece): The Early Helladic period (XXX XXI centuries BC).
The dominance of tribal relations among the pre Greek population in Balkan Greece.
The appearance of the first large settlements and proto palace complexes.
The Middle Helladic period (XX XVII centuries BC).
The settlement of the first waves of Greek speakers — Achaeans in the south of the Balkan Peninsula, accompanied by a certain decrease in the overall level of socio economic development of Greece.
The beginning of the decomposition of tribal relations among the Achaeans.
The Late Helladic period (XVI XII centuries BC).
The emergence of an early class society among the Achaeans, the formation of a productive economy in agriculture, the emergence of a number of state entities with centers in Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, Thebes, etc., the formation of the original writing, the flourishing of Mycenaean culture.
The Achaeans subdue Crete and destroy the Minoan civilization.
In the XII century BC, a new tribal group invaded Greece — the Dorians, the death of the Mycenaean statehood.
Polisny (XI IV centuries BC).
Ethnic consolidation of the Greek world.
The formation, flourishing and crisis of polis structures with democratic and oligarchic forms of statehood.
The highest cultural and scientific achievements of the ancient Greek civilization.
The Homeric (pre Polis) period, the "dark ages" (XI—IX centuries BC).
The final destruction of the remnants of the Mycenaean (Achaean) civilization, the revival and domination of tribal relations, their transformation into early class ones, the formation of unique pre polis social structures.
Archaic Greece (VIII VI centuries BC).
The formation of polis structures.
The Great Greek colonization.
Early Greek tyrannies.
Ethnic consolidation of Hellenic society.
The introduction of iron in all spheres of production, economic recovery.
Creation of the basics of commodity production, distribution of elements of private property.
Classical Greece (V IV centuries BC).
The heyday of the economy and culture of the Greek polis.
Reflection of the aggression of the Persian world power, the rise of national consciousness.
The growing conflict between trade and craft types of policies with democratic forms of government and backward agrarian policies with an aristocratic structure, the Peloponnesian War, which undermined the economic and political potential of Hellas.
The beginning of the crisis of the polis system and the loss of independence as a result of the Macedonian aggression.
Hellenistic (IV I centuries BC).
The short term establishment of the world power of Alexander the Great.
The origin, flourishing and disintegration of the Hellenistic Greek Eastern statehood.
The first Hellenistic period (334-281 BC).
The campaigns of the Greek Macedonian army of Alexander the Great, the brief period of the existence of his world power and its disintegration into a number of Hellenistic states the impact of events.
The Second Hellenistic period (281-150 BC).
The heyday of the Greek Eastern statehood, economy and culture.
The third Hellenistic period (150-30 BC).
The crisis and collapse of the Hellenistic statehood.
Content [expand]
Fragmented Greece Edit
For all the time of the independent existence of Greece, it has never been a single state and the various parts of the Hellenic race have never formed one people.
In historical times, the territory occupied by the Hellenes was divided into two thousand small states, usually consisting of a single city, with fields or village settlements adjacent to it.
Each such city state was completely politically independent, like the current vast monarchy or republic, or was steadily striving for such independence.
Only this small region was the homeland for the Hellenes; all the other Hellenes were strangers, foreigners, and the mutual relations between the states were international relations.
In the space of, for example, one Kazan province could accommodate about 30 such republics as the famous Athenian one.
Uniting several settlements, the system of institutions provided each citizen with a conscious, active participation in all the affairs of the community and a versatile personal development through frequent joint discussion and final solution of various issues of internal management and foreign policy.
By the same fragmentation of the Hellenic race into small autonomous communities, with all the rights of supremacy, those feelings of attachment to the motherland and its political institutions were brought up, which found themselves repeatedly expressed in feats of self sacrificing courage and thanks to which, of all the ancient peoples of Europe, one Hellenic has retained the main part of its territory, with the same name, and a political system capable of further development.
However, the inevitable companion of the fragmentation of the Hellenes was the political discord between the communities, which was based, in addition to the thirst for independence, on the difference in the degree of civil and intellectual development, in public institutions, morals, habits, and the whole way of life.
The domestic and intellectual discord among the Hellenes did not weaken over time, but rather intensified, as the prosperous republics moved further and further ahead from the state of settlements that remained faithful to archaic living conditions.
Could a strong unity have been achieved in the third century BC between Athens or Corinth, on the one hand, and some community of Aetolians, Locrians or Acarnanians, on the other, when the former were industrial and enlightened urban republics, and the latter were at the level of poor rural settlements?
Nevertheless, the numerous branches of the Hellenic race have been characterized since ancient times by a sense of blood kinship, which was externally expressed in a single name (first the Achaeans, or Danae, or Argives, then the Hellenes), in the unity of language, in the community of religious beliefs and some traditions, and finally, in the isolation of themselves from other peoples, not the Hellenes, designated by the term "barbarians".
The same feeling was expressed from ancient times by certain provisions of customary international law, the protection of which belonged to the gods themselves, festivals recognized by all Hellenes, tribal unions, and finally national enterprises, such as the Trojan War.
The Hellenes were not alien to the understanding of the benefits that could bring them the unification of disparate communities in the fight against the barbarians, who from time to time threatened the freedom of the whole of Greece, whether these barbarians were Medes, Macedonians or Romans.
In the work of Herodotus, the voice of a Hellenic is heard, who is sick with his soul for the whole of Hellas, which lacks unanimity even in moments of great dangers.
Tradition attributes to Pericles an attempt to reconcile all the Hellenic states with each other.
Isocrates and Demosthenes many times called for the unity of the Hellenes to repel the Persians and Macedonians.
According to Aristotle, the rule of the Hellenes over other peoples would be indestructible if they were under a single government.
According to Polybius, the most astute of the Hellenes predicted the conquest of Greece by the Roman legions, if the Hellenes did not stop domestic strife and did not stand up to the enemy with common forces.
However, all these incentives turned out to be insufficient to overcome the differences and strife that existed between individual communities and create a political organization that would embrace the whole of Hellas.
The unification was carried out only in parts, within a larger or smaller territory, at different times, in different forms, to achieve different goals.
Settlements of any significant territory merged into a single political community only in Attica (about 40 square kilometers); in other places, very small polities were formed from settlements located close to each other.
The efforts of Thebes, in historical times, to form from Boeotia a kind of Athenian republic, with one city (in the Hellenic sense) for an entire region, failed completely.
Attempts to unite into one community in the IV century BC were made by Corinth and Argos, the cities of Arcadia with Megalopolis at the head, the cities of Chalkidiki on the initiative of Olynthus, and all of them failed, thanks, most of all, to the opposition of external enemies.
The usual form of unity of the Hellenes on a large territory were unions of independent communities.
Several unions of tribes, not states amphictyonia were formed in the prehistoric period, and the most extensive of them, the Delphi Thermopylae Amphictyonia, had an outstanding role in the last times of independent Greece.
The political union of the Athenians of the fifth century with many Hellenic communities, which had a union treasury on Delos, was in some way adjacent to the original Delian amphictyonia.
Similarly, the shrine of the Onchest amphictyony, the temple of Poseidon, later served as the central sanctuary of the Boeotian union.
The beginning of amphictonia is federal, observing the equality of all members of the union of tribes.
No less ancient were the allied organizations of individual tribes within small territories occupied by the same tribe.
Such were the alliances of the Phocidians, Locrians, Epirotes, Thessalians, Aetolians, Arcadians, Messenians, Achaeans, etc., which became especially noticeable during the Macedonian conquests.
On the same primitive basis of tribal kinship, unions of Ionian or Dorian cities arose in the colonies of Asia Minor.
Of all the tribal or tribal unions, only two, the Aetolian and Achaean, have expanded into political organizations with a diverse composition.
Both federations were democratic, and in their history there is no change in the forms of government — the kingdom, aristocracy, oligarchy, tyranny, democracy — which since the time of the ancient thinkers has been erected into a general law of the political development of Greece.
The federations of the Aetolians and Achaeans conclude the history of independent Greece in the struggle against the Romans.
The intermediate, most brilliant period of the Hellenes ' existence was marked by the formation of the Spartan, Athenian and Theban hegemonies and the struggle between them; this struggle weakened Greece in its main parts and prepared the Chaeronian catastrophe.
However, the failures of the unification policy of Lacedaemon, Athens, Thebes were due not so much to hostile actions from outside against this or that union, as to discord among the allies themselves, the inability to reconcile the claims of the hegemon to primacy with the irresistible desire of individual communities to preserve their autonomy in complete inviolability.
A significant part of Greek history is filled with various ways of uniting the disparate forces of the Hellenes, the temporary success of these experiments and their final collapse.
The unification of elements, if not in practice and not in political relations, then in the sphere of concepts and moods, was greatly facilitated by the fruits of Athenian education, which contains elements of universal significance and interest in abundance.
Social structure Edit
Another, no less important part of the content of ancient Greek history must be timed to the successive changes that individual communities went through in their internal structure and existence, starting from their formation on the basis of tribal relations and ending with the higher development of public institutions in the urban republic and the decomposition of the latter from internecine strife and attacks by external enemies.
In close connection with this side of history are the main achievements of ancient Greek education: fiction, plastic arts, philosophy, eloquence, exact sciences.
The struggle of parties or classes, which was accompanied by a change of institutions or external events, brought to the fore famous political figures and generals and found expression in literature.
Internal changes in the depths of individual communities strongly influenced the international relations of the Hellenes.
The urban community, democratic or aristocratic, self governing and self sufficient, very limited in its territory and possessing all the rights of sovereignty, formed the dominant form of the Hellenic political system, both in the metropolis and in the colonies.
Along with this dominant form, there was another, more primitive one: a village, a settlement, which served as the basis of an urban community and became part of it by gathering several settlements into one city.
Such regions as Arcadia, Messenia, Aetolia, Acarnania, etc., kept the way of life in villages until very late.
And in those areas, however, where the nearby settlements managed to unite more closely into a single urban community, with a common political center and common governing bodies, the village community was not completely absorbed into a more developed and complex organization.
The constituent parts of the city community retained full autonomy in local affairs and educated their residents to social activities in a broader field.
The Athenian Republic was formed from several dozen such settlements, and this method of its formation was the starting point of the Cleisthenes administrative territorial division of Attica into demes.
In historical times, cities were formed: Megalopolis from 40 villages, Mantinea — from 5, Tegea - from 9, from as many Cities, etc.
There were cases of forced dissolution of urban communities into the settlements that made up them or the rejection of some settlements, which indicates the vitality of public institutions in these latter.
In 385 BC , Mantinea was dismembered by the Spartans, and its inhabitants were forced to settle and settle in villages.
The rejection of several districts from Megalopolis and their conversion to equal rights with other members of the Achaean federation was carried out by Philopemen in 192 BC.
The structure of the village settlement was a direct continuation of the tribal relations carried out by the Hellenic race from the pan Aryan homeland, along with the rudiments of communal life.
The most permanent and general institutions of the Hellenes, which to a greater or lesser extent provided self government to citizens, such as the people's assembly, the council of elders and the representative of the whole people (basileus, archon, strategist, chairman, etc.) — an institution that existed both in individual urban and rural communities and in federal unions of communities, were closely adjacent in the organization of governance that was developed and used for many centuries in individual tribal groups, in tribes and in tribal unions.
The predominance of one of the original self government bodies differed from each other in monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, the perversion of which was tyranny, oligarchy and ochlocracy.
Such political formations of the Hellenes were destroyed by themselves, in which the distribution of power in the communities shown above was violated, and there were no sufficiently drastic measures to preserve such organizations in force: this was the case with the Spartan, Athenian, Theban and Macedonian hegemonies.
On the contrary, the ability to resist an external enemy and the strength of internal ties were distinguished by the federations of the Achaeans and Aetolians, in which the union administration was formed according to the original type of tribal and communal structure and which preserved inviolable the rights and institutions of urban communities, as well as the peculiarities of local government in the constituent settlements of these latter.
The misfortune of Greece consisted not in the presence of numerous independent small republics, each of which sought to live an active social life, but in the uneven development of communities, in the geographical fragmentation of the country, in the dispersion of the Hellenes over many lands and islands and in their powerlessness to create for themselves a system of political relations that reconciles all the differences of small states and directs all their disparate forces to common goals and objectives.
Such a system of relations would protect Greece from foreign conquest and would weaken the political and social discord within.
The struggle for power Edit
With the return of the Heraclides, Greece enters a historical period of existence, as opposed to the legendary and mythological, but for a long time our information about Greece does not become either more reliable or less scarce.
A reliable record of events begins only from the first year of the first recorded Olympiad, that is, from 776 BC, and some thoroughness and consistency of historical information, and even then not about all parts of Greece, is acquired not earlier than the VI century BC.
The lack of news is usually made up for by the schematic constructions of ancient philosophers and the rationalistic combinations of later historians.
The colonization caused by the movement of tribes ended at the beginning of the IX century BC, and in the numerous states formed since that time, there was a further complication and development of those relations between authorities and classes of the population that already existed in Homeric societies; at the same time, the need for the greatest possible certainty and stability of public institutions increased.
Inequalities of wealth, as the main source of internal strife, were already inherent in tribal groups and village settlements; they multiplied and worsened in urban communities, especially with the development of trade and crafts in some of them and with the accumulation of movable wealth.
Personal merits for the Homeric basileus were considered a condition of power and honor; the favours of the gods were turned not only to the chosen ones and favorites of the people, but also to their descendants; the mood of the people favored the heredity of the title of basileus in some genera or families; in the sense of strengthening this power, frequent wars during migrations and in the struggle for new places had to act.
The sole management in the city community has become stronger for a while.
But with the onset of a more peaceful state, the claims of the nobility, based on tradition, were not slow to come out — to limit the power of the basileus in their favor; in many cases, these claims found support among the people, and the administration passed from individual to collective.
It should be noted that the bearers of sole lifelong or hereditary power were sometimes not only basileos, but also archons.
The IX and VIII centuries BC were spent in the struggle of noble families for the right to actively participate in management, and almost everywhere the struggle ended not in favor of the Basileos.
Only in a few places the archaic form of citizenship has been preserved, as in Macedonia, for example, or Epirus; in some communities, the original basileia has passed directly into popular law, for example.
in the Achaean cities.
Usually, the tsarist rule was replaced by an aristocratic or oligarchic one, and the power of the representative of the community became urgent, granted in the will of the voters, controlled by these latter and responsible to them.
This was the case in Athens, Corinth, Sikion, Miletus, Ephesus, etc.
The supreme power became the property of not one person and not one family or clan, but a whole class of privileged people who jealously guarded their rights from the claims of the common people to participate in public affairs.
The rule of the nobility was all the more difficult because it added economic oppression to the political disenfranchisement of the masses.
The feelings of the oligarch insulting to the people found expression in the elegies of Theognid, and the elegies of Solon contain enough indications of the lawlessness and oppression of ordinary people by the nobility, Eupatrids.
The troubles that accompanied the changes in the ways of government, dissatisfaction with the new order of things, economic and political humiliation at home, finally the spirit of enterprise and the thirst for enrichment led to the foundation of new settlements that spread along the entire coast of the Mediterranean Sea, crossed the Pillars of Hercules, penetrated even into the lands of the Scythians and Sarmatians.
This secondary colonization movement took place in the VIII—VII centuries BC .
The civilizing significance of new settlements for the metropolis itself was enormous and comprehensive: the colonies owned the initiative in the further successes of the metropolis, artistic, literary, industrial, and political.
Miletus, which itself brought out no less than 81 colonies, became the center of Greek education in the VII century BC: the first thinkers, geographers, historians came from here; the first experiments of literary prose also belong to him.
In the colonies, earlier than in the metropolis, a class of the population was formed, strong in wealth and knowledge and unwilling to tolerate the exclusive domination of the nobility.
Internal unrest in the communities was resolved either by drawing up and issuing written laws, or by the intervention of so called tyrants, who, relying on the people, humbled the ruling class, or changes in the social system in the democratic sense.
The time of tyranny Edit
Mainly of the VII and VI centuries BC , the most famous of the tyrannies are: Corinthian, Sicyon, Megarian, Athenian, Syracuse, the oldest Argive (Phidon).
The oldest written legislation of the Zalevkav Locras of Epizephyra dates back to the half of the VII century.
Generally speaking, the Greek tyrants, who usually went to meet the real needs of the people, at first helped the people to break the resistance of the oligarchic minded nobility, and only in the course of time they or their descendants, forgetting the origin of tyranny and pursuing personal goals, aroused universal hatred against themselves.
The name of the tyrant became shameful, and violent actions against him were considered the most praiseworthy manifestation of patriotism and civic valor.
The completion of the political evolution in most Greek communities was the democratic form of government, as the most stable and culturally the most fruitful.
Much less successful were the experiments of social or economic reconstruction, which were usually reduced to the destruction of debt obligations and to the redistribution of land, or to bloody fights between sufficient citizens and the poor.
Although Greece did not have a common history, at various times the strongest community became the head of a significant part of individual communities, determining their fate and indirectly influencing other communities: this happened in the prehistoric period.
In historical times, the Spartan community acquired a predominant position earlier than others after the Dorian squad finally triumphed over the Laconic Achaeans and adopted a military political organization known as the Lycurgus legislation.
Only the Spartans, descendants of the Dorian conquerors, constituted a full fledged citizenship; the conquered population, many times exceeding the number of conquerors and scattered throughout Laconia in cities and villages, was relegated by the Dorians to the position of philistines, perieks, without political rights; in the vast majority they were Achaeans.
Even more populous were the helots (helots), state slaves attached to the lands of the Spartans and working for them.
The number of land plots distributed to the Spartans from the state, tradition determined at 9,000, the number of plots of perieks — at 30,000; gelotov was not less than 200,000.
The need to secure the dominant position acquired by a long struggle within the Laconic and protect it from encroachments from outside, the incessant expectation of unrest among the conquered and slaves, turned Sparta into a military camp, and the Spartans into a permanent military squad, always ready to fight against external and internal enemies.
The upbringing of children and all the rules of life of adult citizens and even citizens were directed to maintaining such a situation of the community.
Equality and simplicity in the way of life, unconditional submission to the authorities, physical strength and courage were considered indispensable features of the Spartan citizen; they combined rudeness of morals, mental inertia, excessive self conceit and suspicion.
The state organization of the Spartans was formed in a peculiar way from elements of two kinds: some were the legacy of the general Hellenic antiquity, as far as can be judged from the Homeric poems, others were the product of the exceptional circumstances in which the Dorian squadron found itself in Laconica.
The very division of royal power between the representatives of the two houses, the Eurypontids and the Hagiads, was, it seems, an expression of an amicable agreement between two royal families: the alien, Dorian, and the native, Achaean.
The kings were honorary rich representatives of the community, who raised themselves to Hercules himself; they honored the gods on behalf of the state, but had to give up their political significance in favor of the ancestral elders and then the five member college of ephors.
Although the bearer of the supreme power was the assembly of all Spartans at least 30 years of age, which alone gave force to the decisions of the elders, elected both council members, ephors, and other officials, demanded an account from the latter after the expiration of their service, but in fact the rule in Sparta was oligarchic, and subsequently Sparta always favored oligarchy in other Greek communities, and, wherever it could, introduced oligarchic rule, whether in place of the sole power of tyrants, or democracy.
The government initiative and discussion of events, as well as the highest judicial power belonged to the so called.
gerusia, a 30 member college of elders, which, as its chairmen, included two kings.
Any Spartan, at least 60 years of age, could be chosen to the gerusia and remained in the rank of geront until the end of his days.
The significance of the people's assembly was insignificant in comparison with gerusia, where proposals were rejected or accepted by the majority of those present by gerusia, where the right of speech belonged only to the presiding (tsars), where the count of affirmative and negative votes was allowed only in exceptional cases, usually the voting consisted of noisy shouts of "yes" or "no", and by the strength of the exclamations the question was decided in the affirmative or negative sense.
However, such a passive role of the people in the administration was too contrary to the proud mood of every Spartan and the power position of the Spartan community in the country — and now, by the end of the VIII century BC, the ephorate, created in the interests of the people and, as the embodiment of the people's will, quickly gained an advantage over the kings and over Gerusia, controlled the actions of all authorities and brought officials, not excluding kings, to responsibility, became the leading institution in the state.
Military affairs, finance, the court, administration — everything was dependent on the ephors.
The power of the ephorate could not be crushed a few centuries later by the brave and beloved kings, Agis and Cleomenes, who set the good of the same people as the task of their lives.
The success of weapons and the expansion of the sphere of influence in the Peloponnese were not slow to justify the merits of the organization, which was connected with the names of Lycurgus and Theopompus and was firmly established in the IX—VIII centuries BC .
The conquest of the Achaeans in the Eurotas valley was followed by the conversion of Messenia into the property of the Spartan community, and its inhabitants into Gelots.
The hegemony of Argos, once the strongest state in the Peloponnese, after which all the Greek troops in the Trojan campaign were named, came to an end: the cities that depended on Argos came under the rule of Sparta.
The same thing happened to many cities and villages of the Arcadians, and the more significant Dorian states Corinth, Sicyon, Megara sought a friendly alliance with Sparta.
The power of Sparta was recognized far beyond the Peloponnese, both in its own Greece, and in the colonies, and even in the barbarian lands.
It reached this position by the second half of the VI century.
The overthrow of tyranny in many cities with the help of Spartan weapons surrounded the name of Sparta with the halo of the liberator of the Hellenes.
Athens Edit
However, by the time of the struggle with the Persian kings, another Greek state, Ionian and democratic, had strengthened, and the sympathy of the Hellenes had switched to its side during the struggle.
The state is Athens.
The "Athenian Polity" of Aristotle, discovered in 1890, which dates back to the second half of the IV century BC and has come down to us on papyrus of the end of the I century AD, changes some of the ideas established in science about Athenian institutions and their history, exposes the inconsistency of others, supports the third (the most detailed review of the literature of this treatise in Russian is in the article by Professor Buzeskul in " Zh. M. N. Pr.", 1892, July).
The royal administration in Athens was replaced by an oligarchic one around 752 BC, when the supreme ruler, the archon, began to be chosen for 10 years, first from the royal family of the Medontids, and then from all the Eupatrids.
The further strengthening of the oligarchy was the division of the archon's power between three, and later between nine officials with the same name and the reduction of their service period to one year.
This change took place in 683.
The legislative and judicial power belonged to the Areopagus.
"The Council of the Areopagites belonged to the protection of laws, the conduct of the most important state affairs, the supreme court and the punishment in cases of violation of public order.
The archons were chosen from the noble and rich, and from the archons — after the expiration of their service the areopagus was compiled" (Aristotle).
The same council of the Areopagites appointed one year archons to the post.
The seventh century also belongs to the division of Attica into 48 sections( navcraria), 12 in each fillet, and the population of navcraria was obliged to supply and maintain one military vessel.
In the tribal groups, in addition to the nobility, who also had most of the land in their hands, there were also artisans and merchants (demiurges) and farmers (geomorians); both made up the mass of the people, deprived of political rights and oppressed by rich landowners.
An important concession on the part of the oligarchy was the written legislation of Dracont (621), although it legalized the oligarchic order of government.
All those who supported themselves on their own account in the ranks of the heavily armed were declared full citizens; they were granted participation in the people's assembly, in the council and in the lower administration.
Real power remained the privilege of a few, especially since the small and landless majority of the population was burdened with debts in need; citizens left their homeland, were sold into slavery or went into bondage to the rich.
"Sorrow penetrates my soul when I look at the oldest land of the Ionians," Solon exclaimed.
"Fed up filled with contentment, humble your hard heart and bring your arrogance to the limits."
To liberate the people, to save the motherland, to organize the state was entrusted by all parties to Solon (594 BC), "the best of the citizens by personal merits and general respect, and by the state belonged to the average people."
Previously, he destroyed debt obligations (seisakhfiya), abolished bondage for debts in the present and banned it for the future, regulated measures, weight and coin.
The division of citizens that existed before him according to the property qualification into pentakosiomedimns (who received at least 500 measures of fruit or 500 meters of liquid products from their fields), horsemen (who received at least 300 measures or meters), zevgits (at least 200 measures) and fets (all other citizens) — Solon gave greater certainty and paramount political and financial importance to this division; the former divisions of citizens, generic and class, lost their former force, although they were not formally abolished.
Movable property and money were not taken into account by the legislator, so that the republic continued to remain agricultural, and rich, but landless citizens were treated, on an equal basis with the poor, to the last class.
The positions of archons and treasurers were available only to pentakosiomedimns, all the others were citizens of the first three classes.
The Areopagus stopped appointing archons; a double system of elections was applied to them: the election of 10 candidates in each fila and then the determination by lot of 9 persons for the positions of archons.
The Areopagus has, in addition to judicial competence in murder cases, supreme supervision over the integrity of the foundations of democracy and the exact execution of laws, as well as the trial of state criminals.
The areopagus was replenished in the same way, from former archons.
In the now created council of 400, each of the 4 ancient phil sent 100 of its members, obviously from citizens of the first three classes.
State burdens were distributed among the classes in proportion to the rights of each of them.
The fourth, the most populous class of citizens was granted only participation in the people's assembly and in the courts.
If the people's assembly, the ecclesia, the bearer of the supreme rights of the state, had not yet received in reality the meaning that it later enjoyed, then the people's court — the highest judicial instance in the state, correcting and canceling the decisions of officials, removing the report from these latter at the end of their term of service — represented, as Aristotle put it, the strongest bulwark of democracy; through the court, the people became the head of the state.
management.
The merits of the Solon legislation were evaluated only with the passage of time, when democratic rule was firmly established and the mass of the people turned out to be sufficiently united and able to defend their rights from the encroachments of the nobility or tyrants.
At the time of their publication, the Solon laws did not reconcile the parties and did not give full satisfaction to any of them.
The calm lasted for 4 years, and then new troubles followed, among which the republic was twice left without the highest representative of the executive power, the archon; in 581, a certain Damasia was appointed archon, who had been in office for 2 years and 2 months without permission.
The Solon constitution was almost abolished, as evidenced by the events that followed the forcible removal of Damasia from the post of archon: 10 archons were chosen according to the old, pre Solon estates.
The reversal did not calm the minds.
The fighting parties have now formed independently of the primordial and Solon divisions of citizens, according to the territories from which they received their names: pediaks, paralies and diakries.
Led by
