ABSTRACT
In 404 Athens suffered defeat by Sparta and the Peloponnesian League. The democracy in Athens was replaced by a committee of thirty (‘The Thirty Tyrants’) appointed by the Spartans and Athens became a member of the Peloponnesian League. It seemed that that was the end of the Athenian democracy. But the Thirty Tyrants maliciously set about settling personal scores and grabbing what they could, and in 403 a rebellion broke out, fostered by exiled democrats who had fled to neighbouring Boeotia. The democrats soon occupied Peiraieus and then defeated the forces of the Thirty Tyrants which were sent to quell them. The Spartans had the sense to realise that there was little to be gained from supporting the corrupt and vicious regime of the Thirty, and allowed the democracy to be restored. One of its early measures (in 403-2) was the introduction of a payment of one obol-a sixth of a drachma, not a lot-for each attendance at the Assembly (or to be precise for the first 6,000 to turn up at each meeting of the Assembly), presumably to encourage attendance. But this seems to have been ineffective (if you were not very interested in going, you would not go for an obol!) and very quickly it was increased to three obols, the same rate as for dikasts attending the courts. This did the trick, and in 392 Aristophanes in the Ekklesiazousai (lines 300-3), made fun of the crush there now was to get into the meetings of the Assembly But all this is an interesting commentary on the apathy that had set in after the defeat of 404. Nevertheless, the democracy continued until 322/1, when Antipater, Alexander’s successor in Macedonia, quelled a rebellion in Athens and insisted on a change to the constitution which set a property qualification on full Athenian citizenship, reducing those eligible to vote in the Assembly by about a half. The old democracy was in effect dead.
