Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

The same rationalising process that finds its first expression in Homer was brought to bear on communal life, with momentous consequences for mankind. As in the Iliad and the Odyssey, war played a part.

One of the inventions in that area of the world, among the Lydians – as we have seen – was coins. This spread quickly among the Greeks and the growing use of money enabled wealth to grow and more men acquired land. This land needed defending and, in conjunction with new weapons, in the seventh century BC a new sort of warrior, and a new sort of warfare, appeared. This was the development of the ‘hoplite’ infantry, boasting bronze helmets, spears and shields (hoplon is Greek for shield). Earlier fighting had mainly consisted of single combat: now, in the hoplite formations, men advanced (mainly in the valleys, to protect or attack the crops grown there) in disciplined masses, in careful formation of eight rows, with each man protected on his right-hand side by the shield of his comrade. If he fell the man in the row behind him took his place.⁹ As more men shared military experience, this had two consequences. One, power slipped from the old aristocracies, and two, a big gap opened up between rich and poor. (The hoplites had to provide their own armour, so they came mainly from middling to rich peasants.)

This gap opened up because land in Attica was poor, certainly so far as growing grain was concerned. Therefore, in bad years the poorer farmers had to borrow from their richer neighbours. With the invention of coins, however, instead of borrowing a sack of corn in the old way, to be repaid by a sack, the farmer now borrowed the price of a sack. But this sack was bought when corn was scarce – and therefore relatively expensive – and was generally repaid in times of plenty, in other words when corn was cheap. This caused debt to grow and in Attica the law allowed for creditors to seize an insolvent debtor and take him and his family into slavery. This ‘rich man’s law’ was bad enough, but the spread of writing, when the laws were set down, under the supervision of Dracon, made it worse, encouraging people to enforce their written rights. ‘Draconian law’, it was said, was written in blood.¹⁰

Dissatisfaction spread, so much so that the Athenians took what for us would be an unthinkable step. They appointed a tyrant to mediate. Originally, when it was first used in the Near East, tyrant was not a pejorative word. It was an informal title, equivalent to ‘boss’ or ‘chief’, and tyrants usually arose after a war, when their most important function was the equitable distribution of the enemy’s lands among the victorious troops. In Athens, Solon was chosen as tyrant because of his wide experience. A distant descendant of the kings, he had also written poems attacking the rich for their greed. He took office in 594 or 592 BC and his first move was to abolish enslavement for debt, and at the same time he cancelled all debts outstanding. He embargoed the export of all agricultural produce, except olive oil, in which Athens was swimming, arguing that the big landowners could not sell their produce in richer markets while fellow Athenians went hungry. His other move was to change the constitution. Until his period in office Athens had been governed by a tripartite system. By this time, there were the nine Archons at the top; next came the Council of Best Men, or aristoi, who met to discuss all major questions; and finally the Assembly of the People (ekklesia, from which we take the French word église, church). Solon transformed the Assembly, extending membership to tradespeople, and not just landowners, and also widened the eligibility for election to Archon. More than that, Archons had to account for their year in office before the Assembly and only those judged a success were eligible for the Council of Best Men. Thus the whole system became a good deal fairer and more open than it had been in the past, and the power of the Assembly was much enhanced. (This somewhat oversimplifies Athenian democracy but it does at least make clear that what we regard as democracy in the twenty-first century is actually elective oligarchy.¹¹)