TPO-40Ancient AthensOne of the most important changes in Greece during the period from 800 B.C. to 500 B.C.was the rise of the polis, or city-state, and each polis developed a system of government that wasappropriate to its circumstances. The problems that were faced and solved in Athens were thesharing of political power between the established aristocracy and the emerging other classes, andthe adjustment of aristocratic ways of life to the ways of life of the new polis. It was theharmonious blending of all of these elements that was to produce the classical culture of Athens.Entering the polis age, Athens had the traditional institutions of other Greek protodemocraticstates: an assembly of adult males, an aristocratic council, and annually elected officials. Withinthis traditional framework the Athenians, between 600 B.C. and 450 B. C., evolved what Greeksregarded as a fully fledged democratic constitution, though the right to vote was given to fewergroups of people than is seen in modem times.The first steps toward change were taken by Solon in 594 B. C., when he broke thearistocracy's stranglehold on elected offices by establishing wealth rather than birth as the basis ofoffice holding, abolishing the economic obligations of ordinary Athenians to the aristocracy, andallowing the assembly (of which all citizens were equal members) to overrule the decisions oflocal courts in certain cases. The strength of the Athenian aristocracy was further weakened duringthe rest of the century by the rise of a type of government known as a tyranny, which is a form ofinterim rule by a popular strongman (not rule by a ruthless dictator as the modern use of the termsuggests to us). The Peisistratids, as the suc...
