The Rise of Athens

Compared with statelets like Athens and Sparta, the empire of Persia suffered from elephantiasis and good Hellenes thoroughly disapproved. For them, whether on the mainland, or in the many Greek colonies in Italy, Sicily, or Ionia, the best constitutional arrangement was the polis—that is to say, a small self-governing city that had all the competences of an independent state. Its citizens were potent stakeholders. They felt themselves to be superior to other peoples governed by despots. So far as Greeks were concerned, the man who was not politically active did not deserve to be a citizen, a politēs.

The philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist Aristotle, writing in the fourth century, claimed that “man is by nature a creature of the polis.” Anyone who “by nature and not by chance” is without a polis

is either a bad man or a supernatural being. He is like the “outlaw, without a tribe or a hearth,” whom Homer condemns in the Iliad. Such a person is necessarily by nature a lover of war.

A city should not be too small to be incapable of being self-sufficient or too large to govern effectively. In Aristotle’s opinion, it should be possible to see all its citizens when gathered together in one place in assembly. (It must be remembered that women, slaves, and foreign residents—metics—were excluded from the franchise.) The philosopher Plato was even more specific. He proposed a citizen body of about five thousand men.

The issue of population size was important for one very good reason. The Greeks had no notion of representative democracy. When rule by the people was introduced in Athens in the sixth century (see chapter 7), decisions were taken directly by citizens meeting in public. In the middle of the sixth century, a poet called Phocylides wrote:

…a little

polis

living in good order

In a high place is greater than block-headed Nineveh

Not all poleis

(the plural of polis) were democracies. Among the Ionians the Great King liked to insist on one-man rule or oligarchies. But they maintained citizen assemblies, even if their powers were limited or only a few citizens were allowed to vote.

Despite the recommendations of Plato and Aristotle, the city-state was prone to fierce, sometimes murderous quarreling between two factions, democrats and oligarchs. Civil war was common. Oppositions were invariably disloyal and, if not liquidated, were driven into exile, where they plotted their return and the expulsion or execution of those presently in power.

Nevertheless, unless a Hellene was free and lived in a polis, his condition was felt to be shameful. He was the next best thing to a barbarian—not simply foreign, but the shadow of a man, cowardly, effete, slavish, murderous, susceptible to luxury and comfort.

—

The Persian Empire had not finished expanding. To secure its northwestern edge, Darius led a campaign in 513 to conquer Macedonia and Thrace, home of untamed tribal groups (today, southeastern Bulgaria, northeastern Greece, and the European part of Turkey). There was a lesson here for mainland Greeks who could foresee a day when the Great King might cast a greedy eye in their direction.

Persia already controlled the myriad city-states along the Asian seaboard, having taken them over with Lydia from Croesus. Like all Hellenes, the Ionians were passionate for their liberties and resented foreign control. They were tired of Persian rule. The seeds of revolt against the Great King were sown in the port of Miletus near the mouth of the Maeander River in the satrapy of Caria.

Its leader, a certain Aristagoras, who was deputy governor for the Persians, turned coat, and persuaded the city-states as well as Caria and Cyprus to form an anti-Persian alliance. He crossed over into Greece to win more support. He told the Spartan king Cleomenes: “It is a disgrace that the Ionians are slaves rather than free men.” But he failed to win him over, for in his view the Persian Empire was much too far away to be of concern.

Aristagoras did better at Athens where he won over the assembly by promising that the war would be a walkover. Twenty warships were voted to help the Ionians. It was not the most generous of commitments, but it infuriated Darius when he came to hear of it. Herodotus famously commented: “These ships turned out to be the beginning of evils for both Hellenes and barbarians.”