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Whenever I pass a group of children playing ball, I almost always hear someone shout, “That’s no fair!”
There always seem to be some players who think the others are not playing fair. Sides are always quarreling.
They need an umpire.
When Athens was young there were two sides among the people—the rich and the poor, the aristocrats and the common people—and they were always quarreling. Each side was trying to get more power, and each side said the other wasn’t playing fair.
They needed an umpire.
Athens had had kings, but the kings took the side of the rich, and so finally the Athenians had kicked out the last king, and after that they would have no more kings.
About the year 600 B.C. things became so very bad that a man named Draco was chosen to make a set of rules for the Athenians to obey. These rules he made were called the Code of Draco.
Draco’s Code made terrible punishments for anyone who broke the rules. If a man stole anything even as small a thing as a loaf of bread, he was not just fined or sent to jail; he was put to death! No matter how small the wrong a man had done, he was put to death for it. Draco explained the reason for such a severe law by saying that a thief deserved to be put to death and should be. A man who killed another deserved more than to be put to death, but unfortunately there was no worse punishment to give him.
You can understand how much trouble the laws of Draco caused. They were so hard that a little later another man was called upon to make a new set of laws. This man was named Solon, and his laws were very just and good. We now call senators and other people who make our laws solons after this man Solon who lived so long ago, even though their laws are not always just and good.
Still the people were not satisfied with Solons laws. The upper classes thought the laws gave too much to the lower classes, and the lower classes thought they gave too much to the upper. Both classes, however, obeyed the laws for a while, although both classes complained against them.
But about 560 B.C. a man named Pisistratus stepped in and took charge of things himself. He was not elected nor chosen by the people. He simply made himself ruler, and he was so powerful that no one could stop him. It was as if a boy made himself captain or umpire without being chosen by those on the team.
There were others from time to time in Greece who did the same thing, and they were called tyrants . So Pisistratus was a tyrant. Nowadays only a ruler who is cruel and unjust is called a tyrant. Pisistratus, however, settled the difficulties of both sides, and though a tyrant in the Greek sense, he was neither cruel nor unjust. In fact, Pisistratus ruled according to the laws of Solon, and he did a great deal to improve Athens and the life of the people. Among other things he did, he had Homer’s poems written down, so that people could read them, for before this time people knew them only from hearing them recited. It is remarkable how histories can be passed down orally—just by telling the story. In cultures without writing, people had to have very good memories.
The people put up with Pisistratus and also with his son for a while. Finally the Athenians got tired of the son’s rule and drove all the Pisistratus family out of Athens in 510 B.C..
The next man to try to settle the quarrels of the two sides was named Cleisthenes. It is hard, sometimes, to learn the name of a stranger to whom we have just been introduced unless we hear his name several times. I will say over his name so that you can get used to hearing it:
Cleisthenes;
Cleisthenes;
Cleisthenes.
Your parents may be poor or they may be rich.
If they are poor each has one vote when there is an election.
If they are rich each has one vote but only one vote and no more.
If people break the laws, whether they are rich or whether they are poor, they must go to jail.
It was not always so; it is not always so even now. But long ago it was much worse.
Ostracism
Cleisthenes gave every man a vote—rich and poor alike—but he did not give women a vote. In ancient times, women often were kept out of politics. Still, the people of Athens believed that Cleisthenes ruled wisely and well. Cleisthenes started something called ostracism. If for any reason the people wanted to get rid of a man, all they had to do was to scratch his name on any piece of a broken pot or jar they might find and drop it in a voting-box on a certain day. If there were enough such votes, the man would have to leave the city and stay away for ten years. This was called ostracism , from the Greek name for such a broken piece of pottery, on which the name was written. Even today we use this same word to speak of a person whom no one will have anything to do with, whom no one wants around, saying he had been ostracized.
Have you ever been sent away from the table to the kitchen or to your room for misbehaving?
Then you, too, have been ostracized.
