The Beginnings of Athenian Democracy
By the late seventh century B.C., Athens' male citizens rich, middle-class, and poor
had established the
first beginnings of a limited form of democratic
government1. Determining why they
moved toward democracy instead of, for example, toward a narrow oligarchy like that of
Sparta remains a difficult problem. Two factors perhaps encouraging the emergence of the
Athenian polis as an incipient democracy were rapid population growth and a
rough sense of egalitarianism among male citizens that survived from the frontier-like
conditions of the early Dark Age, when most people had shared the same meager existence.
These same factors, however, do not necessarily differentiate Athens from other
city-states that did not evolve into democracies because the same conditions pertained
across the Greek world in the Archaic Age. Perhaps population growth was so rapid among
Athenian peasants that they had greater power than at other places to demand a share in
governing. Their power and political coherence was evident, for example, in about 632
B.C. when they rallied “from the fields in a body” to foil the
attempted coup of an Athenian nobleman named
Cylon2. A former
champion in the Olympics and married to a daughter of Theagenes, tyrant of Megara, Cylon
and some of his aristocratic friends had planned to install a tyranny. Athens also had
some influential aristocrats like Solon and Cleisthenes who worked to strengthen
Athenian democracy for differing reasons.
