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Ancient Athens

One 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 was appropriate to its circumstances. The problems

that were faced and solved in Athens were the sharing of political power between

the established aristocracy and the emerging other classes, and the adjustment

of aristocratic ways of life to the ways of life of the new polis. It was the

harmonious 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 protodemocratic states: an assembly of adult males, an aristocratic

council, and annually elected officials. Within this traditional framework the

Athenians, between 600 B.C. and 450 B. C., evolved what Greeks regarded as a

fully fledged democratic constitution, though the right to vote was given to

fewer groups of people than is seen in modem times.

The first steps toward change were taken by Solon in 594 B. C.

，

when he

broke the aristocracy's stranglehold on elected offices by establishing wealth

rather than birth as the basis of office holding, abolishing the economic

obligations of ordinary Athenians to the aristocracy, and allowing the assembly

(of which all citizens were equal members) to overrule the decisions of local

courts in certain cases. The strength of the Athenian aristocracy was further

weakened during the rest of the century by the rise of a type of government