expelled the Bacchiads by force and did not need a bodyguard. Earlier, in Sparta, the army and its structure was at the heart of the Lycurgan revolution. To put it crudely, if there were 300 Bacchiads armed as
hoplites, it needed only 301 other Corinthians similarly clad and with the added weapon of revolutionary fervour to overthrow them. The much larger numbers involved in Sparta need not yet have acquired
even the measure of cohesion that Tyrtaeus implies, so long as they had enough to make themselves felt.
But military change was in the main only one factor in the mechanics of revolution. It will have affected its course but not its substance. It guided, but it did not generate, except in so far as new conditions
would, of course, help to create a sense of common situation, to bolster confidence; and the newer the conditions the greater would be the effect. The origins of the move against aristocratic monopoly lie further
back, in the consequences of eighth-century adventure and expansion. Economic expansion, even if only agricultural, as in Sparta, relief of population pressure, the experience of different worlds (the word
tyrannos was of eastern origin), these did not create a new 'middle class' of well-fed farmers, still less a party of rich merchants. But they did produce tensions, between aristocrat and aristocrat, lesser aristocrat
and greater, with the odd successful trader or pirate thrown in to complicate things still further. The old rules were not flexible enough, or later clearly enough defined, to cope.
Some states tried a third route to the new world, constitutional, like that of the Spartans, but less idiosyncratic, very much more humane. The setting up of a colony invited, if it did not demand, some conscious
thought about the character of the new settlement, some element of self-consciousness even where the desire may only have been to reproduce what had been left at home (a desire that cannot have been
profound, since most colonists left home because they did not like what they had experienced there). Thus a new need was added to the new instinct for change, or at least dissatisfaction with the existing order,
the need to formulate; and (yet again) eastern experience will have shown that formulation was possible. It is thus no surprise that Crete, a natural link with the East, should have become for Greeks the home of
lawgiving, that Crete (according to one story) should have inspired Sparta, that a Cretan should have taught the earliest named colonial legislator, Zaleucus of Italian Locri (c.670), and that other Italian and
Sicilian colonies should have become a lawgiver's paradise.
But this is all shadow. It is only in mainland Attica that the translation of the desire and the idea into fact can be followed. Attica had survived post-Mycenaean turmoil better than most, but here too there had
been economic collapse and only gradual redevelopment. When things settled down the city of Athens was at the head of whatever association Attica may once have been, not, like Sparta, a city of 'equals'
surrounded by perioikoi or helots, but the centre of an Attica riddled throughout with inequalities. There were aristocrats, free men, and dependents in and around the city as there were in Eleusis, Marathon, or
Sunium. It is not the least of Athenian achievements that she contrived to diminish or delete the distinctions across the country while building up the city as acknowledged capital, preserving at once local pride,
national identity and individual dignity.
Around 630 there was an attempt at tyranny; around 620 the response was a law-code, the work of Draco, of which we know virtually nothing beyond its severity. But to insist on the severity is to ignore the
point that by the mere fact of definition it invited criticism and change, and that Athenians went on to accept the invitation. Zaleucus' code was also said to have been severe, but the Locrians too ultimately
made changes. It is the sad thing about Spartans that what had been 'good enough for grandfather' remained 'good enough for me'.
In Athens the first changes came after some twenty-five years. There arrived a moment of crisis, or near-revolution, when it was decided to appoint an arbitrator to produce a second, very different definition.
Out of the background of discontent with Draco and the aristocratic in-fighting it had generated came the choice of one revolutionary leader, Solon, who, fortunately for us, was not only a politician, but a poet,
albeit a somewhat self-centred, self-righteous, and just a trifle pompous one.
Solon, elected chief magistrate for 594, had one weakness. He did not like killing people. He could have made himself tyrant, but, as he wrote, 'Tyranny is a very pretty position. The trouble is that there's no
way out of it.' Given this fastidiousness, he had to persuade two sides, 'the people' and 'those who had power', to ignore 'those who were in the game for plunder' and agree on a Spartan-type equality which
satisfied both. It was not an easy job. 'Those who had power' had exercised it socially through an Athenian version of the widespread share-cropping system, in which a large number of Athenians paid one-sixth
of their produce to a superior individual, not to the state, in return for freedom to work their land, a system which grew around or upon the phratry system of dependence described above (p. 29). Politically they
had exercised it by an automatic consequence of this; a monopoly of the important magistracies and of the council, the Areopagus, recruited from ex-magistrates, the only deliberative body in the state. There
was a citizen assembly, but it is not likely to have played much part except in moments of crisis when public opinion had to be tested or in annual magisterial elections where at most it might occasionally be
allowed to show preference for the candidates of one noble faction against another. The Areopagus and the magistrates, indistinguishable in class or interest, ran Athens.
Much of what Solon did, like much of what Draco had done, was merely to codify existing practice, but in his search for something that he could present as a fair compromise he made some astute moves.
'Those who had power' kept their property, much of their position and, more seductive still, their lives. In exchange 'the people' were given 'the dignity that was their due'.
How? All debts had been secured upon the person of the borrower, and so a defaulting share-cropper became a defaulting debtor. Now existing debts were cancelled and personal security was forbidden. Share-
cropping ceased to exist ('I freed the soil of Attica that had once been enslaved') and no Athenian could henceforth suffer the indignity of enslavement for debt. The political propagandist added a nice touch: 'I
brought back home many who had been sold abroad. ... who had even forgotten how to speak their native tongue.' One wonders how many he could find.
Politically too some element of equality was sought. The assembly won new authority, perhaps in some ways of which we know nothing (regularity of meeting, possibly? definition of proper business or method
of voting?) but certainly by the acquisition of a new directing body, a rival council to the Areopagus, a 'second anchor for the city'. It does not matter how this council was constituted or what wider powers of
administration it may have had. It prepared the assembly's programme, oversaw the exercise of any further popular say in elections to office, and was a buffer against Areopagite interference. Such things make
a difference. So too did Solon's assertion that the assembly was to be the ultimate court of law. An Athenian could appeal to the assembly or a committee of it against a magistrate's verdict in his court. In the
first decades not many will have had the courage to appeal, but the right was there, and was to be exploited.
To each according to his deserts. All Athenians deserved freedom from the threat of slavery, a guarantee against legal oppression, some voice in the direction of the city. But some Athenians, chief among them
Solon's supporters, deserved more in the way of real political power. Solon, no less than Cypselus, had had some big men behind him, and they wanted a reward. The solution was simple, but very radical.