The Greek City and its Institutions

ORGANIZATION OF THE CITY

IN Homeric times, as we have seen, the small districts of which Greece was composed each constituted a city. The word demos denoted either their territory or their population, and only rarely stood for the mass of the people as opposed to the dominant class.¹

The headquarters of the city—the polis or the asty— were of paramount importance, and, as both these terms were used to cover the whole country, the citizens were known sometimes as astoi,² sometimes as politai.³ The Homeric city usually had for centre, therefore, a stronghold where the principal chiefs resided, and which offered refuge to the mass of the population in case of danger.

But the rest of the country contained villages more or less considerable. They too bore the name of asty or polis. It is surprising to note that in the epics there is no word for village or hamlet, although one knows that in Greece there were always regions with no other form of association, regions, that is to say, where the population was organized in komai (κατά κώμας).⁴ Perhaps the poet hesitated to use a vulgar term, and wished to sing only of heroes who came from far-famed places; perhaps he was well-acquainted only with Asia Minor, where landowners lived together in large groups whilst their land was cultivated by tenants or serfs scattered in the surrounding country. Whatever the explanation of this omission, the fact remains that there was in the city-state, under the protection of the principal town, a confused mass of villages. The name asty, which was given to the most celebrated towns, was applied likewise to the innumerable settlements (αστεα ττοΧλά) of purely rural areas.⁵ Crete was an island with ninety or a hundred towns; but of “well peopled” ones the poet mentions only seven.⁶ But of what proportions were even the “well peopled” towns of this epoch ? Agamemnon promised seven as dowry for his daughter; but they were all “near sandy Pylos,” in the midst of pastures and vineyards.⁷ Menelaus contemplated depopulating a Laconian town in order to establish Ulysses there with his followers;⁸ the place in question cannot have been very big. In short, the capital, where chiefs of great families dwelt in magnificent splendour, was surrounded with innumerable small towns, villages and hamlets where lesser families lived in relative obscurity.

At the time of its fullest development the Homeric city was divided into three classes: the nobles, the craftsmen (demiourgoi) and the hired men (thetes).

The nobles belonged to families which were descended from the gods: they were the sons, the nurslings of Zeus. Each of them tenderly preserved the genealogy which was his pride; any occasion was sufficient for him proudly to enumerate the ancestors through whom he traced his origin to the ancestral deity. But even then riches, as well as purity of blood, counted for much. When he had run through the number of his forefathers the Homeric hero sought to strike awe into his hearer by enumerating his possessions. Rich cornfields, vine-clad slopes were his, and pastures where oxen and horses grazed in their thousands and vast fields where cattle swarmed. Jars of wine and perfumed oils, ingots of bronze and iron, chests filled with embroidered raiment, precious cups and arms of damascene enriched his treasure-house. He loved to parade his strength, to lead raids and reprisals by land and sea, killing men and carrying off women and cattle ; or to hurl his chariot into the front of the battle, and, leaping to the earth, a bronze-clad figure, erect behind staunch shield, sword by side, javelin in hand and defiance on his lips, to await an adversary worthy to challenge him in conflict. In the intervals he delighted in displaying his wealth and enjoying his prestige: he went to the king’s palace for sessions of the Council and for banquets ; he stood in the agora ready to give advice in disputes between citizens; he was foremost on feast days when sacrifices, libations and banquets were followed by songs, dances and games. Life was good indeed for the great; a life such as the immortals, their forbears, led.

But on the other hand life was hard for those who formed no part of their gene. We are not speaking of slaves, for they were merely living chattels with whom the master could do as he wished, and with whom the city did not concern itself ; there were, moreover, but few of them at this time. At the moment we are speaking only of free men. Some of them had managed with the sweat of their brow to clear a small patch of ground. The most fortunate were those who by dint of breaking up the soil, manuring and irrigating it, had succeeded in bringing to fruition an orchard like that of old Laertes. Others installed in some mountain nook might even form a family; but since they were reduced to eating roots more often than bread or barley porridge, they hesitated to bring more than one son into the world. There were some who could barely afford to keep the single servant who helped with the work.9 And what was the fate of those who had no land at all ? Some of them were in a tolerably good position. The genos could not always be self-sufficient; hence there existed, especially in large centres, craftsmen who worked for the public, demiourgoi. The profession they followed was almost always hereditary, because from one generation to another there was no other means of livelihood and a very rudimentary division of labour left little scope for choice. Some entered what one might call the liberal professions: they became soothsayers, heralds, physicians, bards. Others worked as artisans; they were classified according to the material they used—namely, carpenters who combined stone-work with wood-work, leather workers, smiths and potters. The majority took up their abode in the towns, where manual crafts concentrated round the arket-place. Some of the demiourgoi won a great reputation; the most proficient were regarded as divinely inspired. Sometimes they were attracted to foreign lands on some lucrative commission and were able to amass a considerable fortune. But always they felt themselves inferior to the landed proprietors: even the soothsayer Calchas, who consorted with kings, recognized that he was a man of little consequence.

There remains the mass of people who were landless and tradeless. These lived as best they could. The idle would beg from door to door or station themselves outside some wealthy house where banquets were frequent. The industrious became thetes, hirelings. They hired themselves out for wages. When they were working on a long contract they were housed, fed and clothed in some sort of fashion; when they were engaged for one particular piece of work they obtained a wage in kind, deducted most often from the product of their own labour. But although they were free men they enjoyed no security. The very fact that they belonged to no genos meant that they had no place in the social structure of the city: to be without hearth (ανέστιος) was to be without phratry (άφρήτωρ), deprived of the protection which tlnemis (αθέμιστος) secured for man, devoid of all social worth and consequently outside all law (ατίμητος).10 The hireling was bound by a contract which in no way bound his employer: having completed his task he might find the wages agreed upon withheld; he might be thrown out of doors, beaten unmercifully, threatened with slavery. The man who had no genos behind him could obtain no redress against injustice.

The Homeric city, indeed, was not the confused assemblage of all individuals who inhabited the same country; it was a combination of gene, of phratries formed by gene, of tribes formed by phratries. It did not embrace indiscriminately all those who were domiciled within its territorial limits, but only those who formed part of the closed societies of which it was composed. It had nothing to do with isolated individuals. Its framework was that of the societies which dovetailed one into the other and which had existed before it. To be accounted a citizen one must first belong to a group of “brothers” (κασίγνητοή, that is to say of kinsmen of some degree, who stood by one another in all circumstances of life; one must in addition be attached to a group of “companions” (ercu), united in virtue of a fictitious relationship by the reciprocal obligations of a wider responsibility.¹¹ The great community had no life apart from the small communities of family origin to which it owed its birth.

In a city of this kind no administration was possible save through the medium of the tribes, the phratries and, finally, the gene.

For the recruitment of the army every father of a family was called upon, under pain of a fine unless redemption had been obtained, to furnish one man chosen as he thought good: a Myrmidon, for instance, draws lots among his seven sons to decide which one shall go.12The units of this army were formed by the association of “companions,” by classes, and in these companies the erat assumed the name of eraipoi¹³ In battle array the troops were grouped by phratries and by tribes. It was a rule of which Nestor reminded Agamemnon: “Dispose your men by tribes and by phratries that phratry may assist phratry, and tribe assist tribe.”,¹⁴ And so the word phylopis, which originally meant the war cry uttered by the tribe, was commonly used for the tumult of battle or even for the host of combatants.¹⁵

The same principle held in the recruitment of the navy. The Catalogue of Ships enumerated in the Iliad always gives one the impression that the ships and their crews had some numerical relation either with the towns placed under the command of the chiefs or with the subdivisions of the cities. Rhodes, inhabited by the Dorian τριγάϊκβς¹⁶ was composed of three large towns, each divided into three tribes: it was represented by nine vessels.¹⁷ From Pylos there were ninety. As if to explain this number the poet names nine localities; but they were of too unequal importance to owe equal contingents. The true explanation is revealed in the passage in the Odyssey in which the Pylians are represented as being assembled in nine sections. Each of the nine sections offered the same number of victims for the public sacrifices; in the same way each equipped an equal number of ships for the navy.¹⁸ When only a single vessel was required the system remained unchanged; the duty of the groups consisted then in furnishing men for the crew. When Alcinous was preparing the ship which was to bring Ulysses home again he announced that oarsmen to the number of fifty-two would be recruited “from the people ” (κατά δήμον). Why that number ? Because at Scheria there were thirteen kings, thirteen chiefs: each of them owed four men.¹⁹

Other impositions were allotted in similar fashion. We have seen how at Pylos the expenses for the feasts fell equally upon the nine sections of the people. To obtain the gifts which he wished to bestow upon Ulysses Alcinous ordered each king to bring a cloak, a tunic, and a talent of pure gold, besides a large tripod and a sacrificial basin; but he added that each should recoup himself from the people as a whole (it is always κατά δήμον).20 Thus all the public services, whether one considers the army, the navy or what one must call the exchequer, respected the natural groupings without which the city could not exist.

All the chiefs, those of the genos, the phratry and the tribe, as well as the chief of the city, bore the hereditary title of king (βασιλεύς). A king, too, was the landowner who, standing on a swath, sceptre in hand, watched over the harvesting, and through his heralds made preparations for the harvest feast.²¹ From the greatest to the least these kings were sons and foster-children of Zeus (Αιογενέες, Διοτρεφεες);²² divine birth conferred on them the right to the sceptre,²³ the sacred badge of priests, heralds and soothsayers. They were the lords (ανακτες), the elders (7εροντες), the guides and counsellors (ηγήτορες ήδε μέδοντες). Since they represented groups subordinated one to the other, they naturally formed a hierarchy of suzerains and vassals, a sort of feudal system. Royalty, therefore, was capable of degrees; all were kings, but one more kingly than another (βασίλβύτερος),²⁴ and one most kingly of all (βασιλεύτατος).²⁵ At Scheria one can see fairly clearly how such a system was organized. The king Alcinous appears with his twelve peers round him. Though he may modestly say: “Twelve great kings rule the people, and I am the thirteenth,²⁶yet in actual fact he was the first,²⁷ the only one who issued commands, because it was he who bore the title “ Sacred Power” (iepov μένος ΆλKLVóOLO) and he whose words were heeded like those of a god.²⁸ But if he associated in his authority the most powerful chiefs, the kings of the tribes, he was also compelled, in order to ensure the execution of measures concerted with them, to summon “geronies in greater number,” the ordinary chiefs of the gene²⁹

THE King

The king of the city, the king of kings, was, therefore, he whose divine origin was most incontestably established. Everyone knew his genealogy. Agamemnon and Menelaus were descended from Zeus by Tantalus, Pelops and Atreus; Achilles by Æacus and Peleus; Ulysses by Arcesius and Laertes; Idomeneus by Minos. Some, as, for instance, Ajax, had Apollo for ancestor, others, such as Nestor and Alcinous, Poseidon. A king embodied all the puissance of a god. In certain States it was admitted that this supernatural power exhausted itself in time; it had to be renewed: every nine years in Crete Minos had to enter the cave of Zeus to render him account of his administration and to be invested for a new period;30 once every nine years in Sparta on a clear moonless night the ephors kept silent watch, with eyes fixed on the sky, and if they perceived a shooting star it was a sign that the kings had committed some sin against the gods and had, therefore, to be declared deposed.³¹ But usually the king exercised power for life and transmitted it to his eldest son.³² Even at a time when monarchy was in jeopardy the Ithacan suitors did not dispute the hereditary right of Telemachus;³³ they sought merely to free themselves of him, and the only way they could see to usurp his position was to attach themselves to the extinct dynasty by marrying the wife of the last king. Failing a son the king’s daughter perpetuated the line. She was the epicleros, one who did not inherit but brought the heir into the world. In order that the line might remain pure she married the nearest male kinsman of her father. Alcinous, for example, became king of Scheria by marrying his niece Arete, the daughter of his brother and predecessor Rhexenor.³⁴ Only in Asiatic countries could the king choose for son-in-law and successor a foreign prince; even then it was essential that by his marvellous exploits he should have proved himself the scion of a god.³⁵

All the kings were sceptre-bearers (σκηπτούχοι), but the king of the city was so pre-eminently ; for his badge of office was the very same which the great god, the ancestor of the dynasty, had borne. The golden studded sceptre which shone in the hands of Agamemnon had a history which rendered it venerable: it had been fabricated by Hephæstus and transmitted by Zeus to Hermes and by Hermes to the Pelopidæ.36 This staff of office which subjected the people to the king was the visible will of a god: it showed to all the man whom Zeus in his wisdom had invested with τψή, with superhuman power and the loftiness of mind which was its necessary complement.³⁷

The king of kings had received from Zeus, therefore, the right of representing the city in every circumstance. In truth the city was the king, as one day Æschylus was to say: σύ τοι πόλις, σύ δή το δήμιον. He had “ sovereignty and power,” “ freedom of action and of speech.”³⁸

First and foremost he was the religious chief, the high- priest. Who better than he could in the name of all hold communion with the gods, secure their favour and turn aside their wrath ? With his own hand he performed the sacrifices, clipped the hair from the heads of the victims and distributed it among the onlookers or cast it into the fire, and sprinkled the lustral water and the sacred barley; he recited the prayers and presided over the preparations for the sacred feasts.³⁹ His palace was the prytaneum; his hearth the public hearth round which the leading men of the community assembled to take part in the offerings which preluded their deliberations on public affairs or the reception of illustrious guests.⁴⁰ He was the mediator between the gods and man ; and more, he was the representative of the gods among men. With the sceptre he received knowledge of the themistes, those supernatural principles which enabled all difficulties to be smoothed away, and, above all, made it possible for internal peace to be restored by the words of justice.⁴¹ According as he fulfilled his mission well or badly, according as he knew or did not know what was meet and fitting (τά αϊσιμα), the royal wizard determined the happiness or unhappiness of his people.

“ When a blameless and god-fearing king maintains impartial justice the brown earth is rich in corn and in barley, and the trees are laden with fruit ; the ewes constantly bring forth young, the sea abounds in fishes; nothing that does not prosper when there is good government, and the people is happy.” 42

In time of war, even more than in time of peace, the king was the all-powerful leader. Then especially did he bear the title which had already been assumed, according to a Hittite document, by one of the Atreidæ in the thirteenth century, the title of koiranos.⁴³ Then especially was it true to say: “Division of power (ποΧυκοιρανίη) is not a good thing: a single koiranos is called for, a single king, he whom the son of Cronus has pointed out.”⁴⁴ If, however, he was too old to take the field, he delegated his powers to his future successor.⁴⁵ In the army the supreme king might, indeed, summon to his tent, as council of war, the kings who were subordinate to him, just as formerly they were summoned to his palace; but, once they had voiced their opinions, it was the king who made the decision. He decided upon the plan of campaign, assigned to each unit its place, and chose the captains.⁴⁶ To give effect to his orders he exercised his themis in the agora of the camp; he had power of life and death over all: the soldier who was cowardly or who disobeyed orders was not “certain of escaping the dogs or the vultures.”⁴⁷ No one save the king could treat with the enemy or with foreigners in general: he received the heralds and ambassadors sent into his camp or town, heard their proposals, informed them of his reply, and, if an agreement were reached, offered the sacrifice and took the oath which hallowed it.⁴⁸

Justice demanded that the chief on whom fell the heavy burden of watching over the welfare of the city should enjoy special privileges. He wore robes of purple; he occupied the place of honour on all ceremonial occasions, and walked at the head of the processions. Brimming cups and the choicest morsels of the victim’s flesh were always his, unless he desired to do honour to one of his guests.49 But he had need of more substantial privileges, for it fell to him to meet the cost of the sacrifices, of the libations offered to the gods, of the feasts to which great men and strangers of distinction were invited. Like a god, he possessed a domain cut off from the communal lands, a temenos, half in corn fields, half in vineyards;⁵⁰ but he enjoyed only the use of this domain which formed no part of his patrimony.⁵¹ Like a god, he levied gifts and dues called themistes, in the shape of domestic animals, in addition to the contribution which he levied through his gerontes in case of extraordinary outlay for the reception of a public guest: one sees, for example, a man of Sicyon furnishing Agamemnon with a race horse in order to gain exemption from military service.⁵² He even levied customs duties on imported goods: in this sense one ought to interpret the passage in the Iliad in which a Lemnian, having arrived with a cargo of wine, offers a hundred measures of it to Agamemnon and Menelaus before exposing the rest for sale.⁵³ Finally, in the division of booty, the king acted like any pirate chief: he deducted first the γεέοας, his share as chief, which accrued to him even if he had taken no part in the business and which might amount to as much as half; and he received also the μοίρα, his share as combatant.⁵⁴ Telemachus, indeed, spoke truly when he declared with charming naïveté: ⁵⁵ It is no bad thing to be a king.”⁵⁶

This feudal king, however, exercised only a patriarchal sovereignty, similar to that which he had inherited on his own domain. The ideal for him was to act as a “good father.”57 The stewards of his lands were not great magistrates but servants. Ulysses had for stable-companion, if one may use that expression, an old slave, Eumæus: the “divine swineherd ” was a chief (ορχαμος άνδρων), just as was his master Ulysses. He had under his command, to tend a flock of from seven to eight thousand head, a carefully graded hierarchy of neatherds, shepherds, swineherds, goatherds and ordinary menials.⁵⁸ But the king in his palace had not only a large staff of men of free or servile birth; he had besides a numerous “household” recruited from the noble families of the country, the therapontes, that is to say servants or squires. They bore official titles and dwelt in the palace itself or in the neighbourhood.⁵⁹ Their duties were of unequal importance. Thus the therapontes were subordinated one to the other : behind the personages known by their names and the names of their fathers was a nameless host, employed in inferior tasks. Consider, for instance, in the Iliad Achilles’ attendants: to Phoenix fell the duty of teaching him the art of war and eloquent speech; Patroclus was his right-hand man, he gave orders to Automedon, the keeper of the stables, and himself had therapontes attached to his person. Or again, consider in the Odyssey the court of Menelaus, where his first squire, Eteoneus, was at the head of a whole administration.⁶⁰

In the first rank of the therapontes were placed those who assisted the king in his religious duties and partook of his sacred character, namely the heralds. Messengers of Zeus and of men, they were “divine,” dear to the gods, honoured above all others by the most powerful chiefs. The sceptre which they bore attested to the wisdom which they had received from on high.61 Their functions were far-reaching since they were the ministers of the king in all the circumstances of public life. They helped him in the offering of sacrifices and libations and officiated at the banquets which followed, sprinkling water on the hands of the guests, giving to each his rightful share.⁶² In the performance of their mission no one, whatever his rank, dared disobey them.⁶³ They convoked the Council.⁶⁴ Armed with proclamations to the people⁶⁵ they also convoked the Assembly, maintained order and silence there, and gave their sceptre into the hands of the speakers to render them inviolable.⁶⁶ They aided the elders in settling quarrels in the agora; they calmed men’s over-violent passions and passed their sceptre to the judges as each in turn spoke.⁶⁷ In the army they carried important messages and gave the signal for battle ⁶⁸ Their sacrosanctity was respected even among foreigners, even among enemies. Whenever Ulysses sent out spies into an unknown land he sent a herald with them. During the Trojan war the heralds of the belligerents went without fear from one camp to the other as ambassadors or envoys of peace, and their intervention was necessary for the sanctioning of treaties. In the midst of the battle, if they but extended their sceptre between two combatants the duel was brought to an end.⁶⁹ What the heralds were in the Homeric era they always remained. Why, then, since their moral force remained unimpaired, did their social position decline ? The reason is to be found in the fact that their office remained specially and exclusively religious. When the high-priest, whose acolytes they were, ceased to be the veritable ruler of the State, they were no longer employed save in leading victims to the altar, in mixing the wine and water in the cups, in scouring the banqueting tables, in washing the hands of the guests, in serving them with bread and meat.⁷⁰ It was of no avail that they passed into the service of the city and became demiourgoi;⁷¹⁷² even when a family of heralds made itself into an hereditary caste, as did, for example, the Talthybiadæ of Sparta and the Kerykes of Eleusis, it was incapable of transforming a quasi-sacerdotal into a political magistracy.

It was not so with the other therapontes. Under the regime of patriarchal monarchy their office had undoubtedly a domestic character; one is constantly being brought up against that fact. In the palace the chief therapon usually filled the office of cupbearer, carver and master of the horse. Patroclus poured out the wine, prepared the food after the sacrifice, carved the flesh and served the guests, not forgetting to offer the first morsels to the gods.73 In the field the servants of the king vied in gallantry to do him honour.⁷⁴ The humblest assisted their master to don his armour, led away the men whom he had taken captive, stripped those who had fallen beneath his blows, and, if he were wounded, tended and protected him.⁷⁵ The sons of great families looked after his horses and his chariot. The most distinguished of all acted as his charioteer: he bore him to the front of the battle and stood aside during the fray, ready to lead him back to the camp.⁷⁶ This was the duty which the illustrious Automedon gloried in.⁷⁷ But one sees that on occasion the duties of the chief therapon were capable of being extended in remarkable fashion. Patroclus, the servitor of Achilles, was none the ess the intimate friend who helped him in the reception of his guests, the confidant whom he named as guardian of his son should misfortune arise.⁷⁸ When a king, on account of old age or for some other reason, did not wish to place himself at the head of his troops, he gave his armour to one of his therapontes, and by that act invested him with supreme command.⁷⁹ As in all patriarchal monarchies it was but a short step from domestic functions to public functions.

III

THE COUNCIL

Powerful though the king seems at certain moments, we know that he could do nothing without the chiefs of the groups which constituted the city. They formed the Council, the Boule, which was ever near him. The other kings stood in the relation of “counsellors” (βονληφόροή to the supreme king. Since they derived their right from the life sovereignty which each exercised in his genos, phratry or tribe, the name of “elders” or “elders of the people” (γέροντες or δημογέροντες) was also given to them : a name which signified that they were for the most part, though not necessarily, men advanced in years. The assembly of the Council or thokos was also given the more general name of agora; for this word, before being applied to the place where the assemblies of the people were held, meant any gathering whatever. Thus the counsellors were essentially “men of the agora,” άγορηταί.80

The Council met together on the initiative and through the exertions of the king. According to the business to be despatched the summons was either addressed to the chiefs of highest rank or to all the chiefs. In closing a session of the smaller Council where only his twelve peers were assembled, Alcinous decided that the deliberations should be resumed the next day with “gerontes in greater number.”⁸¹ The meetings were usually held in the king’s palace or on his ship;⁸² there is one instance, however, in the Iliad, when an assembly took place near Nestor’s ship, and in the Odyssey there is an exceptional case when Alcinous, in place of summoning the Phæacian kings to his palace, was himself summoned by them to an assembly outside it.⁸³

Certain proof that the king’s palace was originally the building later called the Prytaneum or Bouleuterion lies in the fact that every session of the Boule commenced there with a banquet and the great men could come there “throughout the year” (επηετανόν) to eat and drink.84 An invitation to dine was equivalent to a convocation of the Council.⁸⁵ The councillors bore the semi-official title of “table companions” (ανδρες δαιτνμόνες), and “the wine of the elders” (γερούσιος οίνος) was part of their prerogative (γέρας γερόντων).⁸⁶ When they were not in session their cups and their tables were piled in the vestibule of the palace;⁸⁷ when they met all these were moved into the great chamber, into the megaron. There the hearth was situated, the hearth of the king and the common hearth of the city, before which were offered the libations which preceded the banquet. Along the walls were ranged the thrones where the kings sat to eat and later to deliberate.⁸⁸ In the centre, in the place of honour, sat the king. He paid the expenses for these perpetual banquets, for had he not the fruits of his temenos and gifts and themistes for his use and enjoyment ? He was merely discharging a public duty. To drink the “wine of the elders” was, in reality, to drink at the expense of the people (δήμια ττίνειν).⁸⁹ One can understand a little why, in the absence of Ulysses, the petty chiefs of Ithaca considered his house as their own.

When they had eaten, the king opened the consultation either by disclosing the reason for the summoning of the assembly or by calling upon some chief who had a report to present.⁹⁰ But that formality was superfluous when the business of the day was known in advance. In that case the gerontes did not wait to be consulted. Custom demanded that the eldest should speak first: it was the privilege of Nestor in the council of the Achæans, and of Echeneus in that of the Phæacians; Diomedes excused himself for coming forward, though the youngest present, and thought it advisable to justify his intervention on the score of his birth and his wealth.⁹¹ The speaker, whoever he might be, the president no less than the others, rose to address the assembly.⁹² His listeners would from time to time applaud.⁹³ There was no voting. The king decided alone, in the fullness of his sovereignty. Nestor well knew that he could do no more than offer advice ; he himself makes this clear :

“Illustrious Agamemnon, king of men, thou art the first and the last object of this discourse; for thou art king of numerous peoples, and Zeus has given thee the sceptre and the themistes that thou mayest have them at thy command. More than all others ought thou to listen and consider, in order to give effect to the advice of him who shall be inspired to speak for the common good ; it is for thee to decide which counsel shall prevail.”94

Although the gerontes had only an advisory voice in the Council, their competence seems to have extended to all matters of importance. They accompanied the king to the Assembly,⁹⁵ and there sat in places set apart for them.⁹⁶ On their own initiative they could offer a temenos to the prince.⁹⁷ They had a part to play in everything concerned with external relations. The king never omitted to summon them for the reception of a distinguished guest and informed them of his intentions when he wished to bestow gifts upon him and send him back to his own country in a state ship; he made them responsible, each in his group, for the execution of the measures agreed upon, the recruitment of the crew, and the recovery of expenses, etc.⁹⁸ He conferred with them on the despatching of embassies to foreign countries.⁹⁹ In the field they naturally formed the council of war and had an effective say in the conduct of operations.¹⁰⁰ By their oath, the yepovaio Ορκος¹⁰¹ they helped in the fashioning of treaties.

Besides the powers which they exercised under the hegemony of the king, the gerontes possessed one which they could exercise apart from him. Accustomed as they were to administer sovereign justice within their genos, they appeared as the natural arbitrators for disputes which arose among members of different gene. They, like the king himself, had received with the sceptre the secret of the themistes. Of these themistes they, the boulephoroi, could make use on all occasions, since the themistes were, like the oracles, the boulai of Zeus.¹⁰² It was through them that little by little the principles of the family themis penetrated into the customs of the inter-family dike. Not that they had an obligatory jurisdiction: each remained free to defend his person and his goods with the aid of his kinsmen ; no authority could infringe the primordial right of private vengeance and of private transactions, not even to succour the orphan.¹⁰³ But the disputing parties might, if both agreed, appeal to the gerontes. They were there to soothe angry passions and to restore peace by means of one of those adages which they had learnt from their fathers and which expressed heavenly wisdom in the language of men. Here is a vivid picture of them at their work.¹⁰⁴ In the agora a crowd is collecting: a quarrel has just broken out. Two men are disputing about a murder: the one swears that he has paid the blood money, the other that he has not received it. They decide to refer the matter to an arbitrator. Each has his partisans who urge him on with their cries. Heralds keep them apart. The gerontes are seated on benches of polished stone in the sacred circle. One after the other they arise, take in their hand the sceptre which one of the heralds offers and propose a sentence, until one is found which seems “most just.” To its author are given the two talents of gold deposited by the disputants as the price of justice.

For a long time arbitrations of this kind were comparatively rare ; the king then had time to preside over the tribunal and it was his judgments which brought upon the city the blessings of heaven. But the progress of the State at the expense of the genos and the economic development of the whole of Greece increased the number of suits submitted to the gerontes. Henceforth it was necessary to be in session from morning till night.105 The king, even if he had been willing, was not equal to the task. The gerontes, or at least those of them who found it most agreeable, received the name of “judges” (δικασττολοι). They pocketed the deposits of the disputants and were present at the feasts of reconciliation.¹⁰⁶ Justice became a trade. The kings became those “devourers of gifts” who were to be the despair of Hesiod and suited their sentences to their interests. Thus to the picture of blessings diffused by the equity of the king was opposed the description of calamities unloosed by the injustice of the gerontes :

“When the anger of Zeus rages against men who abuse their power in the agora by pronouncing false judgments and who drive out justice without fear of divine vengeance, then all the rivers burst their banks, torrents everywhere ravage the slopes, their onslaught casts mountains into the sea with thunderous noise and destroys the works of men.”107

The Assembly

When the gerontes had been consulted the king had to make known his decisions to the people and to inform them of his plans. In addition to the opinion of the Council there was that of the demos, of the lesser folk as opposed to the great: θώκος δήμοιό ѓε φήμις.¹⁰⁸ The agora was essentially the plenary assembly where all the λαοί gathered, all the citizens in the town, all the warriors in the camp, in short ¹⁰⁹ the whole mass (πληθύς) of those who had no place in the Council.”¹¹⁰ It completed the number of institutions which seemed necessary to the very existence of the city and without which men were merely savages living like the Cyclopes.¹¹¹

It was the king who convened the Assembly, as he did the Council. Only very exceptional circumstances could justify Achilles in taking the initiative in place of Aganlemnon in the army of the Achæans.¹¹² The rule was strict and unquestioned. It explains the anarchical condition of Ithaca in the Odyssey : during the twenty years of Ulysses’ absence the island had known “neither agora nor thokosand when Telemachus, having come of age, assumed his father’s prerogative the advocates of strict legality were at a loss as to what to think.¹¹³ Often the king summoned the Assembly and the Council together in order that he might without delay announce to the people all the decisions arrived at with his intimate advisers. In these circumstances the summons to the common people was made in the usual way, through the proclamation of the heralds, while the king reserved to himself the right to summon the “chief men.”¹¹⁴

The meeting took place in the early morning “in the first light of the rosy-fingered dawn.”115 It was in despite of custom (ον κατά κόσμον) that Agamemnon and Menelaus once convened an assembly of warriors at sunset, and they were punished by the riotous behaviour of half-drunk, uproarious men.¹¹⁶ In the field the assembly might be held anywhere, on some sweeping stretch of beach, for example.¹¹⁷ In the towns the seat of the agora was definitely fixed. At Troy it was on the Acropolis, not far from the palace and the temples of Apollo and Athene; in maritime cities such as Pylos and Scheria it was near the harbour, before a temple of Poseidon.¹¹⁸ It was fashioned in the form of a circle, as the Skias of Sparta and the Tholos of Athens were to be; at Pylos it was an amphitheatre with nine tiers, each capable of holding five hundred people.¹¹⁹ In the middle, in the “ sacred circle,” were the seats of honour, benches of polished stone reserved for the king and the gerontes.¹²⁰ Thus everybody was seated; it was a custom so firmly established that even in the assemblies of warriors everyone sat on the ground and only in a crisis would they remain standing.¹²¹

It might seem from the matters brought before the Assembly that it had considerable powers. Before it came everything concerning the people, everything which was δήμιον.¹²² Remedies for public evils such as pestilences or dissension among the chiefs were discussed there;¹²³ rewards to be given for services rendered to the State were there considered; immigrants who were to be repatriated were presented before it; news of the battlefield was announced to it; and proposals for the opening of peace negotiations were made there.¹²⁴ In the agora of the camp the question of liberating prisoners and captives was discussed, or the arguments for and against prolonging the war were put forward, and proposals submitted by the enemy were examined.¹²⁵ Such were the programmes which might easily lead one to believe in the political power of the people ; but we shall see that its rôle for the most part was limited to that of a passive and almost silent audience.

On leaving the Council, the king generally went to the agora accompanied by the gerontes. He opened the session with an outline of the matter to be discussed, unless he delegated that task to the chief who had been most prominent in seeking a meeting of the assembly.126 Those who wished to speak rose and were invested by a herald with the sceptre which rendered them sacrosanct.¹²⁷

But one must not think that every Tom, Dick and Harry ventured on this step. Normally the gerontes alone took part in the proceedings, and nearly always the same ones who had spoken in the Council then came down to voice their opinions in the agora: βουΧηφόρος and αγορητης, the two words were complementary.¹²⁸ Consequently the oldest of the nobles were the usual speakers in the Assembly. Great store was set by their orations: a reputation for wisdom and eloquence was of no less worth than a reputation for valour;¹²⁹ the poet never tires of praising the mellow voice of Nestor and extolling the old men of Troy “ like unto grasshoppers.”¹³⁰ Sometimes for form’s sake the orators would address the whole audience, Danaans, Trojans or Ithacans; but in reality the king spoke only for the chiefs,¹³¹ and the chiefs for the king.¹³² The discussion was nothing more than a colloquy between two or three great personages. The chiefs, it is true, might be free-spoken. Nestor went in for persuasive methods, but Diomedes adopted a truculent tone and did not even hesitate at violence: such was the “right of the agora” (f) θέμις έστω ayoprj).¹³³ What part did the common man (δήμον άνήρ) play ? If one were a man “of the people” (δήμουẁν), “one did not count.”¹³⁴ Nevertheless in extraordinary circumstances an old man might take it upon himself to voice popular disquietude and curiosity. But for a Thersites, a man of nothing, whose father was unknown, to dare to rise to his feet and, without arming himself with the protecting sceptre, to burst forth into invective against the kings, that was contrary to all forms (ού κατά κόσμον). The whole audience jeered at the insolent fellow, then grew angry, and applauded Ulysses when first he rebuffed him and finally beat him with his staff.¹³⁵

But this does not mean that the opinion of the people was negligible. It always found means of expressing itself either by signs of approbation or murmurs of discontent or even by silence. The imprudence of making a decision contrary to the temper of those who will be responsible for its execution is always obvious. The power of the multitude, vague in the Iliad, begins to define itself in the Odyssey. But in fact it was seldom that men other than members of the Council spoke in the agora, and, in theory, power of decision belonged to the king alone. Let us see what actually happened in the great assemblies described in the epies.

At the very beginning of the Iliad a foreign priest named Chryses comes to ask that his daughter who has been taken prisoner shall be released for a ransom. He appeals to “all the Achæans and especially to the two sons of Atreus.” All the Achæans are of the opinion that the offer should be accepted, yet nevertheless Agamemnon, with threats on his lips, refuses. Just as Apollo avenges his servant by sending down a pestilence, so Achilles, urged by the goddess Hera, takes it upon himself to summon the people to the agora. There arises an altercation of unparalleled violence. Achilles, overcome with passion, hurls forth bitter insults and even goes so far as to draw his sword from its scabbard. Agamemnon furiously retorts, only recovering his majesty with the unanswerable speech: “This man wishes to place himself above all others; he wishes to be in command over all, to rule over all, to give orders to all; but I know one man who will not obey him.” After this quarrel, which Nestor has in vain attempted to compose, the Assembly dissolves. At no’ point in the proceedings did the dispute become generalized.

When Agamemnon thinks that the day has come for the decisive battle he resolves to test the morale of his army. He summons it to the Assembly. Escorted by the Council, whom he has informed of his intentions, he proposes that they shall re-embark. Immediately the erstwhile docile mass turns and rushes towards the ships. But Ulysses hurls himself in front of the mob, Agamemnon’s sceptre in his hand: to the leaders he explains that they have misunderstood the king’s meaning; the common people he thrusts back into the agora with angry words and blows. Once more they sit down. Thersites alone begins to shout that there has been enough of fighting to furnish a king with women and treasure. They laugh at him, they grow angry, and the punishment inflicted on the insolent wretch delights the crowd. When Ulysses asserts that hostilities must be continued he is greeted with shouts of acclamation. When Agamemnon adopts the plan of campaign proposed by Nestor he too is acclaimed. And so they depart before the soldiers can decide otherwise. No formal consultation, no voting: the king has spoken, it is enough.136

Once it happened that occurrences during the Assembly caused the king to modify his opinion, but without impairing his authority. Agamemnon proposes to the Assembly of warriors, seriously this time, that the Troad shall be abandoned and that they shall return to Greece. Icy silence greets this proposal. Diomedes refuses, avails himself of the privilege of the agora, and utters the word cowardice, while the crowd applauds. It is a difficult moment. Then Nestor arises and, to shield the king, asks that the matter be dealt with by the Council. The elders gather together. Nestor is careful to put forward no claims in opposition to the royal prerogative, in which every discussion has its beginning and its end. He merely suggests to the king that he shall be reconciled to Achilles whom he has offended. To this Agamemnon consents: he can acknowledge his mistake without prejudicing his sovereignty; Achilles will receive presents but he will be compelled to submit to one who is “more royal” than himself.¹³⁷

Here, finally, are instances of the way in which the Assembly of the Trojans and that of the Achæans might participate in negotiations. In an agora seething with tumult and terror Antenor proposed to the Trojans that peace should be made. The proposal, amended by Paris, was accepted by king Priam who, of his own initiative, added a demand for an armistice in order that the bodies of the dead might be burned. Furnished with formal instructions the herald Idæus went to the Achæan camp. He was received in the agora but he addressed himself only to the king and the chiefs. His proposals were received in significant silence. In a few words Diomedes demanded that the terms offered should be rejected. “You have heard,” said Agamemnon, “the reply of the Achæans; I make it mine, and so it shall be.” He granted, however, without consulting anyone, a brief cessation of hostilities and confirmed it with an oath. Idæus could do nothing save return and make known to the agora the eagerly awaited reply.138

In the Odyssey the Assembly has not changed its character, at least in normal circumstances. The king Alcinous is still the king “to whom the people hearken as to a god,” because with him lies “action and speech.”¹³⁹ After having come to an understanding with the twelve other kings on the question of the repatriation of Ulysses, he convened the Assembly: to it he presented the noble stranger, announced that a ship was to be prepared for him, and then withdrew with his illustrious escort. The people looked and listened, and said nothing.¹⁴⁰ Even in such an extraordinary situation as that of Ithaca during the absence of Ulysses the people acquired no new rights. On the contrary: no king, no Assembly. When finally Telemachus, having reached his majority, convened an Assembly, all that he desired was to excite the compassion of the people that he might turn it into anger against the suitors, to achieve by violence the expulsion of the intruders who were eating up his wealth. Two citizens supported him; three of the suitors made brutal reply. What would the Assembly do ? Moved with compassion, it preserved a mournful silence, and when the last of the orators commanded that they should disperse, that each should return to his own business, the people scattered without having made the slightest effort to make their wishes known.¹⁴¹

Yet the times were troubled. How was it possible that force of numbers should not exert itself? The acclamation by which the crowd expressed its preferences could make it clear to what lengths popular passion could go; it could announce recourse to arms in case of resistance. Take, for example, the Assembly in which Diomedes rose against Agamemnon; passions were roused and Nestor saw clearly whither they were tending: towards civil war (πόλεμος επιδήμιος).142 Telemachus’ speech when he tried to rouse the Ithacans against his private enemies was leading in the same direction. No other solution is possible when there is no sovereign will to impose its commands. The vote is the prophylactic against civil war; where it does not exist there remains, in default of absolute power, only the alternatives of civil strife or anarchic inertia. In two instances in the Odyssey we see a meeting of the Assembly cut short by the uprising of the commonalty. After the taking of Troy Agamemnon and Menelaus, being at variance on the question of returning, assembled the agora; they exchanged bitter words, and the Achæans rose in frenzied tumult: some remained with Agamemnon, others departed with Menelaus.¹⁴³ In the same way after the murder of the suitors the people of Ithaca assembled in the agora. The adversaries of Ulysses demanded vengéance and cried: “Let us depart!” (ϊομεν). His partisans replied: “Let us remain!” (μη ϊομεν). Law could show no way to deaden such antagonism, and so two camps were formed. There was a rush to arms and blood flowed freely. To put an end to this internal strife (πόλεμος όμοίϊος), a general reconciliation with the customary formalities of a covenant was necessary.¹⁴⁴

The people had no actual rights in judicial affairs, just as they had none in political. How could it be otherwise when even the gerontes themselves could only arbitrate on differences which were submitted to them by the mutual consent of the persons involved ? But here again the people could exercise a moral pressure or could resort to violence. Demon phemis compelled the murderer, whatever his power and whatever the weakness of the injured family, to take without delay the path of exile.145 When Telemachus recounted the misdeeds of the suitors before the agora and declared that he was unable to defend himself, he summoned to his aid popular indignation. It is true he did not succeed; but his adversaries trembled in their shoes lest another time he should be more fortunate and a furious mob ms handle them and chase them from the country.¹⁴⁶ In case of any hostile attempt against the city the people did not bother about questions of competence, but resorted to lynching. “ Were not the Trojans so cowardly,” said Hector to Paris, “they would long ere now have stoned thee.”¹⁴⁷ After an act of high treason Eupeithes was hunted down by the Ithacans, who burned with eagerness “to kill him, to tear out his heart and consume his substance.”¹⁴⁸ It was this same Eupeithes who, when Ulysses had killed his son, attempted to rouse the multitude against the murderer.¹⁴⁹ To conclude, in an epoch when nothing resembling separation of powers existed, in judicial affairs as in everything else, two courses of action alone were open to the people—ineffectual words or a revolutionary outburst of collective feeling.

FOHESHADOWINGS OF THE FUTURE

Thus the age-long traditions which are enshrined in the Homeric poems give us a picture of associations which, in spite of appearances, were always developing. The city was made up of all the inter-related groups which had an existence earlier than its own; it was an agglomeration of gene. Powerful though the king of the city was, all around him were other kings who derived their power, as he did, from their genos. No one was ever to contest the sacerdotal authority with which he was invested, but his political powers were at the mercy of fortuitous events and new ideas.

One foresees in certain parts of the Iliad and still more in the Odyssey, how patriarchal monarchy was to decline. Peleus, now an old man, is in a precarious position, while his son, far from him, in agonized suspense wonders whether he has been forced to suffer insults and contempt, whether even he has been stripped of his majesty.150 Quarrels between brothers, that of Agamemnon and Menelaus after the fall of Troy, for example, were bitter trials for the royal families. Still more dangerous were minorities. Achilles relied upon Patroclus, should he himself die, to place his son in possession of his patrimony; but Ulysses likewise had entrusted his son to the devoted care of the aged Mentor, and one knows what the outcome was. The suitors did not deny dynastic right; but each of them hoped one day to enjoy the position of the queen’s husband; and, meanwhile, there was Eurymachus whom the Ithacans began to regard “ asa god,” and Antinous on whom on occasion was bestowed the title of “ Sacred Power.”¹⁵¹ Foreigners were led to wonder whether an oracle had turned the people from their rightful heir.¹⁵² When finally Ulysses returned and massacred the suitors a whole party arose to avenge them, and the king only triumphed over them and became once more “king for ever”¹⁵³ by making a bilateral covenant analogous to that which was to bind the kings and the people at Sparta and among the Molossians.

It was to the members of the Council, kings of tribes and chiefs of gene, that the powers lost to the monarch were to go. When Alcinous treated as equals the twelve kings who surrounded him, he spoke as a sovereign condescending and courteous; but even then his language expressed something which was to be a reality in the future. Not many incidents such as that in which Diomedes, before the whole Assembly, heaped objurgations on the head of Agamemnon were necessary to show that public authority was no longer inseparable from the royal title. Even the enormous strength which military command gave to the king was threatened: a petty chief of Crete refused to place himself under the command of Idomeneus, fought with a band of followers side by side with the regular army, and assassinated the king’s son who attempted to deprive him of his share of the booty.¹⁵⁴ Moreover, of the nobles who had formerly esteemed it an honour to serve their master as therapontes, we see already some in exceptional circumstances being designated by the king as guardian and future regent, or as general. Appointments of this sort were to be extorted from the weakness of the king or even made without his participation. The time was to come when, aristocracy having reduced the monarchy to a simple magistracy, the one-time major-domo, now Mayor of the Palace, would control the State as archon or as pole- march.¹⁵⁵ The household of the king was to be transformed into the public administrative body, and the simple “carvers of meat” (δαιτροϊ κρβίωνψ)¹⁵⁶ were to be raised to the management of the treasury with the title “ collectors of the fragments ” (κωλακρέται).¹⁵⁷

The birth and expansion of the aristocratic regime can be seen clearly in the monarchy of the epics; and there too can be seen, though in a purely embryonic state, an element of democracy. Though the agora was reduced for the most part to playing a passive rôle, there are instances, especially in the later parts of the Homeric poems, of the voice of the people, the δήμου φήμπ, becoming a by no means contemptible force. On one occasion it was sufficiently threatening to compel a chief to set out for war. “There was no way of resisting,” remarked the person in question.158 But the people could exert only a moral pressure or have recourse to arms; no middle legal course existed. The rule of the subordination of the minority to the majority, the legal procedure of the vote, has not always been known. Even acclamation had, in theory, no obligatory force, such as the boa was to have with the Spartans. Civil wars and disasters without number were necessary before the Greeks could be induced to define the rights of the agora. The time was not yet ripe. When two families quarrelled they had no weapon save the vendetta, and private war could be ended only by a formal treaty of peace: they had not even reached the stage of recognizing that it was better for family quarrels to be settled by calculating the strength of each by means of conjuration and awarding the victory without bloodshed to the one which presented the greater number of combatants. When there was dissension in the agora, if the king was incapable of taking a strong line and if no compromise could be reached, civil war of necessity broke out. The day had not yet come when, to judge the strength of the opposing sides, each in turn was made to shout its war cry, or else each citizen was called upon to raise his hand and swear upon which side he would fight, if it were necessary to fight. It was only through the vote that the opinion of the people was to prevail, that the demon phemis was to become the demon kratos