2 - Athens and Its Legal System

Summary

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Although we cannot trace the beginnings of Athenian democracy with any confidence in the details, the general trend is clear. Over time, ordinary men, neither well-born nor rich, acquired political power that culminated in a democracy more direct and more radical than any the world has known. Democratic rule was manifest throughout the city's governance, but nowhere did it carry greater weight than in its courts. What follows is a brief sketch of the historical development of this extraordinary democratic system from the late seventh century b.c.e. to the fourth century, the era in which the judicial system is most richly documented.

In the earliest period for which we have some sort of historical evidence, a group of aristocratic families, the eupatridai (literally, those descended from good fathers) enjoyed a monopoly on the political offices known as archonships. Men who had served as archons became life members of the Council on Ares' Hill, or, to use the standard term, the Areopagus. We have only late and controversial evidence for the nature and extent of the Areopagus' powers in this period. It is also likely that there was some form in which popular will could find expression, an assembly, perhaps convened at moments of crisis, of those ordinary men who constituted the Athenian army. But it does seem that in the informal and decentralized politics of the nascent city, domination by the well born was the general rule until some time after the first half of the seventh century.