Part 14 (1/2)
”No will of one Holdeth this land: it is a city and free.
The whole folk year by year, in parity of service is our king.”
130. The Voting Population of Athens.--Nevertheless when we ask about this ”whole folk,” and who the voters are, we soon discover that Athens is very far from being a pure democracy. The mult.i.tudes of slaves are of course without votes, and so is the numerous cla.s.s of the important, cultivated, and often wealthy metics. To get Athenian citizens.h.i.+p is notoriously hard. For a stranger (say a metic who had done some conspicuous public service) to be given the franchise, a special vote must be pa.s.sed by the Ecclesia itself; even then the new citizen may be prosecuted as undeserving before a dicastery, and disfranchised. Again, only children both of whose parents are free Athenian citizens can themselves be enrolled on the carefully guarded lists in the deme books. The status of a child, one of whose parents is a metic, is little better than a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.[*]
[*]Of course women were entirely excluded from the Ecclesia, as from all other forms of public life. The question of ”woman's rights”
had been agitated just enough to produce comedies like Aristophanes's ”Parliament of Women,” and philosophical theories such as appear in Plato's ”Republic.”
Under these circ.u.mstances the whole number of voters is very much less than at a later day will appear in American communities of like population. Before the Peloponneisan War, when the power of Athens was at its highest point, there were not less than 30,000 full citizens and possibly as many as 40,000. But those days of imperial power are now ended. At present Athens has about 21,000 citizens, or a few more. It is impossible, however, to gather all these in any single meeting. A great number are farmers living in the remote villages of Attica; many city dwellers also will be too busy to think the 3-obol (9-cent [1914 or $1.55 2000]) fee for attendance worth their while.[*] Six thousand seems to be a good number for ordinary occasions and no doubt much business can be dispatched with less, although this is the legal quorum set for most really vital matters. Of course a great crisis, e.g. a declaration of war, will bring out nearly every voter whose farm is not too distant.
[*]Payment for attendance at the Pnyx seems to have been introduced about 390 B.C. The original payment was probably only one obol, and then from time to time increased. It was a sign of the relative decay of political interest in Athens when it became needful thus to reward the commonalty for attendance at the a.s.sembly.
131. Meeting Time of the Ecclesia.--Four times in every prytany[*]
the Ecclesia must be convened for ordinary business, and oftener if public occasion requires. Five days' notice has to be given of each regular meeting, and along with the notice a placard announcing the proposals which are to come up has to be posted in the Agora.
But if there is a sudden crisis, formalities can be thrown to the winds; a sudden bawling of the heralds in the streets, a great smoky column caused by burning the traders' flimsy booths in the Agora,--these are valid notices of an extraordinary meeting to confront an immediate danger.
[*]”A prytany” was one tenth of a year, say 35 or 36 days, during which time the 50 representatives of one of the ten Athenian tribes then serving as members of the Council of 500 (each tribe taking its turn) held the presidency of the Council and acted as a special executive committee of the government. There were thus at least 40 meetings of the Ecclesia each year, as well as the extraordinary meetings.
If this has been a morning when the Ecclesia has been in session, nothing unusual has occurred at first in the busy Agora, except that the jury courts are hardly in action, and a bright flag is whipping the air from the tall flagpole by the Pnyx (the a.s.sembly Place). Then suddenly there is a shouting through the Agora. The clamor of traffic around the popular flower stalls ceases; everybody who is not a slave or metic (and these would form a large fraction of the crowd of marketers) begins to edge down toward one end of the Agora. Presently a gang of Scythian police-archers comes in sight. They have a long rope sprinkled with red chalk wherewith they are ”netting” the Agora. The chalk will leave an infallible mark on the mantle of every tardy citizen, and he who is thus marked as late at the meeting will lose his fee for attendance, if not subject himself to a fine. So there is a general rush away from the Agora and down one of the various avenues leading to the Pnyx.
132. The Pnyx (a.s.sembly Place) at Athens.--The Pnyx is an open s.p.a.ce of ground due west from the Acropolis. It originally sloped gently away towards the northeast, but a ma.s.sive retaining wall had been built around it, in an irregular semicircle, and the s.p.a.ce within filled with solidly packed earth sloping inwards, making a kind of open air auditorium. It is a huge place, 394 feet long, and 213 feet at the widest. The earthen slope is entirely devoid of seats; everybody casts himself down sprawling or on his haunches, perhaps with an old himation under him. Directly before the sitters runs a long ledge hewn out of the rock, forming, as it were, the ”stage” side of the theater. Here the rock has been cut away, so as to leave a sizable stone pulpit standing forth, with a small flight of steps on each side. This is the ”Bema,” the orator's stand, whence speak the ”demagogues,”[*] the molders of Athenian public opinion. In front of the Bema there is a small portable altar for the indispensable sacrifices. In the rear of the Bema are a few planks laid upon the rock. Here will sit the fifty ”Pryantes” in charge of the meeting. There is a handsome chair for the presiding officer upon the Bema itself. These are all the furnis.h.i.+ngs of the structure wherein Athens makes peace and war, and orders her whole civil and foreign policy. The h.e.l.lenic azure is the only roof above her sovran law makers. To the right, as the orators stand on the Bema, they can point toward the Acropolis and its glittering temples; to the left towards the Peiraeus, and the blue sea with the inevitable memories of glorious Salamis.
Surely it will be easy to fire all hearts with patriotism!
[*]A ”demagogue” (=people-leader) might well be a great statesman, and not necessarily a cheap and noisy politician.
133. The Preliminaries of the Meeting.--Into this s.p.a.ce the voters swarm by hundreds--all the citizens of Athens, from twenty years and upward, sufficiently interested to come. At each crude entrance stands a crops of watchful LEXIARCHS and their clerks, checking off those present and turning back interlopers. As the entering crowds begin to thin, the entrance ways are presently closed by wicker hurdles. The flag fluttering on high is struck. The Ecclesia is ready for action.
Much earlier than this, the farmers and fishmen from the hill towns or from Salamis have been in their places, grumbling at the slowness of the officials. People sit down where they can; little groups and clans together, wedged in closely, chattering up to the last minute, watching every proceeding with eyes as keen as cats'.
All the gossip left over from the Agora is disposed of ere the prytanes--proverbially late--scramble into their seats of honor.
The police-archers move up and down, enforcing a kind of order.
Amid a growing hush a suckling pig is solemnly slaughtered by some religious functionary at the altar, and the dead victim carried around the circuit of the Pnyx as a symbolic purification of the audience.
”Come inside the purified circuit,” enjoins a loud herald to the little groups upon the edge.[*]
[*]Aristophanes's ”Acharnians” (ll. 50 ff.) gives a valuable picture of this and other proceedings at the Pnyx, but one should never forget the poet's exaggerations for comedy purposes, nor his deliberate omission of matters likely to be mere tedious detail to his audience.
Then comes a prayer invoking the G.o.ds' favor upon the Athenians, their allies, and this present meeting in particular, winding up (the herald counts this among the chief parts of his duty) with a tremendous curse on any wretch who should deceive the folk with evil counsel. After this the real secular business can begin.
Nothing can be submitted to the Ecclesia which has not been previously considered and matured by the Council of 500. The question to be proposed is now read by the heralds as a ”Pro-bouleuma”--a suggested ordinance by the Council. Vast as is the audience, the acoustic properties of the Pnyx are excellent, and all public officers and orators are trained to harangue mult.i.tudes in the open air, so that the thousands get every word of the proposition.
134. Debating a Proposition.--”Resolved by the Boule, the tribe Leontis holding the prytany, and Heraclides being clerk, upon the motion of Timon the son of Timon the Eleusinian,[*] that”--and then in formal language it is proposed to increase the garrison of the allied city of Byzantium by 500 hired Arcadian mercenaries, since the king of Thrace is threatening that city, and its continued possession is absolutely essential to the free import of grain into Attica.