Dragons and Democracy
The Babylonians had established a rule of law under Hammurabi. The laws were harsh, their origins purportedly divine, and amendments were forbidden under pain of death. The Empire of the East would hold its place as the preeminent power for hundreds of years. Their unrivalled domination would end when a rowdy rabble of Hellenic polities banded together to stop their expansion for good. Chief among them was a city numbering no more than 300,000 inhabitants; a polity by the name of Athens.
The earliest Athenian law was a constitution written six hundred years before Christ. Draco, the first Athenian legislator, collated customary laws from across Athens and fashioned them into one written code. This seminal work shocked Athens, and its resemblance to the law of Hammurabi could be felt in everyday life. The death penalty was commonplace; for murderers and cabbage pilferers alike.[1] Although his laws are not extant, the hushed whispers and solemn tones of his successors allow us to piece together the harshness of his laws. It is not a great revelation to learn that his name, Δράκων, is the Greek for dragon.
The great legal personality of the next century was Solon, whose reforms lessened the most severe excesses of Draco’s law. In aristocratic Athens, Solon’s laws aimed to prevent the worst class conflicts.[2] In addition to the circumstances of one’s birth, wealth became a valid means of wielding political power. Land was redistributed and political office was now open to those of common birth. These reforms were carried through to their natural conclusion by Cleisthenes, the father of Athenian democracy. Each citizen of Athens was enfranchised, administrative duties were determined by lot, and trials precluded judges in favour of juries. By the sunset of the sixth century BC, democracy had prevailed.
It was at this point that Persia demanded Hellenic submission to the King of Kings. The Greeks, led by Athens and Sparta, mounted a stalwart defence of their peninsula. Former rivals put aside their differences to defy the Persian Empire, and the rag-tag band of polities were victorious.
Following the war, one could mistake the Greeks as allies in arms. The fifth century had brought with it the hope of Hellenic unification. The greatest politician of Athens, Pericles, bound together many polities through the formation of a military alliance. After hundreds of years in the shadow of Persia, it appeared as though democracy was to be the saving grace of Greece.
And yet, in the absence of Persia’s dictatorial imperialism, it was Athenian democracy which reared its ugly head. The people desired plenty, luxury, and victory. Taxes exacted from Athens’ allies were used to construct the Parthenon. Pericles boasted of Athens as the cosmopolitan centre of the world.[3] Resistance to this new world order was met with massacre and enslavement.[4]
Hubris had captured the populace of Athens, and nemesis came in the form of Sparta. Pericles died of plague; never seeing the capitulation of Athens. Sparta would institute thirty tyrants to rule over their new subjects. Oligarchy returned, violence ruled the streets of Athens, and democracy would be relegated to the dustbin of history for two thousand years.
In time, democracy’s reputation has improved. People now swear by democracy as a matter of habit. But let us not forget that the laws of Athens, determined by her citizens’ hearts, were not beyond good and evil. Through self-determination, they were capable of great virtue and grave vice alike.
In a democratic world, the responsibility to find virtue is ours.
[1] Plutarch, Vita Solonis 17.
[2] Ibid, 18.
[3] Thucydides, Historia 2.39
[4] Ibid 5.116.