controlled all of Greece, because he ruled his mother, who ruled Themistocles, who
ruled Athens, which ruled Greece (Plutarch,Themistocles18).
It may well be that ‘‘the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles,’’ as Marx and Engels claimed at the beginning of theCommunist Mani-
festo; certainly class differences loom large in the accounts of ancient Greek authors. It
has nevertheless proved surprisingly difficult to describe with precision their oper-
ations within Athenian society. There is of course no question that the population of
Athens was economically stratified. With his reforms Solon defined a class system
toward the beginning of the sixth century, comprised in descending order of Penta-
kosiomedminoi, Hippeis, Zeugitai, and Thetes. The system survived into the fifth
century: in 458 BC the archonship was thrown open to the Zeugitai (Athenaio ̄n
Politeia26), which shows that the Thetes at this time still suffered from political
discrimination. The Solonian classes continued to have relevance to certain religious
activities, though they had lost their political significance by the latter part of the fifth
century. All through the classical period, however, the wealthy continued to be
politically conspicuous in their performance of liturgies: members of the economic
elite were assigned to pay for certain expensive state-sponsored activities, such as the
outfitting of a warship or the production of a drama. J.K. Davies (1971 and 1984) has
argued that perhaps only 1,000 or 2,000 Athenians had fortunes sufficient to pay for
such activities; the ‘‘liturgical class’’ therefore may have been as small as 2 or 3 percent
of the total citizen population. Even so, in Thucydides’ Funeral Oration Pericles
argues that in Athens class distinctions are irrelevant: ‘‘advancement in public life falls
to reputation for capacity; class considerations are not allowed to interfere with merit;
nor again does poverty bar the way: if a man is able to serve the state he is not
hindered by the obscurity of his condition’’ (2.37). The statement represents an ideal.
The contempt of the wealthy for the poor is illustrated in authors from the Old
Oligarch to Plato. The hostility of the poor toward the rich is abundantly illustrated
in the speeches of the fourth-century orators.
Birth status was similarly important in ancient Athens, though it is even more
difficult to define it or map its social effects. Ancient authors recognized a birth-elite,
describing its members aseugene ̄s(‘‘well born’’) orkaloi kai agathoi(‘‘beautiful and
good’’). Birth status did not necessarily coincide with other criteria of prestige, such
as wealth: the ‘‘well born’’ are not necessarily the same as the wealthy, and many of
the wealthy in Athens were not ‘‘well born.’’ The most obvious criterion of ‘‘good
birth’’ was membership ingenos(a hereditary religious association: see below). In the
archaic period birth-status was an index of political privilege; in the classical period
the correlation had evaporated.
Civic Religion
In the modern world we practice religion in specialized institutions – churches –
overseen by trained professionals. No comparable arrangements existed in the ancient
world. There was no vocational ministry: priests were recruited from the general
population, or from particular families; in neither case did priests receive specialist
training. Likewise much ancient religious observance was civic, which is to say that
religious and political orders were integrated. This connection is apparent in the
Religion and Society in Classical Greece 289