We've talked about the development of Pallas, we've talked about different kind of government that arose.

In particular that at Sparta, and at the various tyrannies such as the one at Corinth. Today we're going to turn our attention. To another one of the great palace and that is Athens. This is a picture you've seen before and It'll start a little bit with the myth with Theseus arriving back in the city being greeted by the patron Divinity, who is Athena. In fact Athens is Athena's people, that's what the name means. She is from the beginning, the tutelary divinity, the supervising divinity of the city. It is said that she and Poseidon had a contest and that Poseidon. Hit the rock on the Acrpolis with his trident and the Salt Spring miraculously bubbled up. So, symbolizing Athenian control of the sea, but Athena gave the Athenians the olive tree. Where do the Athenians come from, well this is also a sort of an odd story. Because they prided themselves on being what's called autochthonous; that is, of having been born of the Earth, of always having been there. This creates sort of a problem, as you can imagine, not least because Athena, herself, is a fiercely virginal goddess. She has no romantic attachments whatsoever, but the myth around this is that the lame smith God has Hephaestus, shall we say fell in love with or got an infatuation with Athena and started chasing her around the acropolis. She kept resisting him, but finally, he got so excited that, sorry, a little graphic detail here, he ejactulated on her leg. She took a piece of wool, wiped off the semen, threw it on the ground and from that, there emerged. A figure called Erichthonius, whose name seems to be something like wool and ground, and he's the first Athenian.

This scandalous little story gives an explanation in mythical terms of how the Athenians managed to be born both of the earth and of Athena, and always to have been there. Moving from myth to geography. The territory of Attica, as we've said before, is quite substantial. It's this part here. This is a much later illustrating a later situation, but you can get some idea. It's about a 1,000 square miles. With this big expansive territory there is plenty of opportunity for good natural resources and indeed they had. There was silver at a place called Lorean. There was marble, there was ample room for olive cultivation, they had good potters clay, and Athenian pottery very soon joined that of the Corinthians as being highly prized. And highly sought after, and very widely distributed. There was good Timber at least for a time. And there was of course, this massive long coastline. Finally, there was the part, the harbor of Athens down at Piraeus. So, Attika was Wealthy, at least potentially wealthy, hospitable etcetera. We know that in terms of its development, some kind of synoecism had been completed by the end of the eighth century. That is, by about 700. There was a group of people who identified themselves as Athenians. There were four original tribes that they again identified themselves as variously belonging to. There was also, as in so many other places. A hereditary elite who called themselves the eupatridae, which means those who had good fathers. These would, like elites everywhere, they would have controlled the best lands and grazing lands, biggest flocks, olive groves, et cetera. And they also dominated the political system. Theseus was king but he was only a king in myth, there is not historical king that we

know of instead what we have is a council. Which met on the hill of Ares, it's called the Areopagus. Clearly, they must have been so-, the members of this council, these adult males, would have been selected by the Eupatridae to represent their interests. And it seems that the members of this council, the, the Areopagites as they were called, selected the chief, the chief magistrates, who are called the Archons, the leading man. Initially there were three, there was the Archon Basileus, which means the king archon. Who retain some of the primitive powers of early kingship he might have been for example the chief justice. There was the Polemarch, who is the war archon and commander in chief. And then there was what's called the archon or the Eponymous archon. Because this magistrate gave his name to the civic year. So you would talk about something having occurred in the Archonship of X, whoever it would have been. And then there was also an assembly of citizens. Probably divided in some ways, by those four tribes, but we don't really know much about them at all. The situation, at least, at this point, in the mid-archaic age, is a little bit unusual. Athens did not participate yet in the great colonizing movement. And there is finally some sign of severe strain. In either 636 or 632, a young nobleman one of the members of one of these elite clans who's name was Kylon, decided to stage a revolt. This is what we saw happening in Corinth with Cypselus, that is, some disaffected member of the elite probably with the support of other disaffected members of his class and some of those newly empowered hoplites. Kylon decided to stage a revolution and seize the Acropolis. He must of been terribly disappointed when

instead of following him and taking up the banner of revolution, the ordinary people baricaded him in there and forced him out. Finally, Kylon himself and a couple of his followers managed to escape, but several of their co conspirators who had taken refuge in the temple, the early temple of Athena that had been built there, were being starved into submission. At that point, one of the archons named Megacles, committed an awful sacrilege. He promised the conspirators safe passage out of the temple. But when they emerged, he had them killed. This is a terrible religious infraction. You don't kill hoplites. Megacles belonged to one of the great old Eupatridte clans called Alcmaeonidaes. We will see them again and again, in different aspects of the Athenian politics and culture. But from this time on, from the late 7th century the Alcmaonidaes' also labored under a curse. Shortly after this infraction, Megacles and the other members of his family had to leave Athens, they were sent into exile because of the crime he had committed. But Kylon's attempt, even though unsuccessful, revealed that there were strains, serious strains growing, in Athenian society. That may have been in response to Kylon's attempt to establish himself as tyrant, that the Athenians had their first law code. Again the date is a little bit ambiguous, it depends on which Olympiad you put it in, but around 624 that is, either 12 or 8 years after Kylon's attempt. Draco formulated the first code of laws for the Athenians. But Draco is a very, very shadowy figure. His name means dragon or snake. We're not at all sure that he was historical. And later on his code became renowned for its severity. It was claimed that Draco prescribed death as the punishment for any infraction. You cross against a light at the intersection, death.

You kill somebody the punishment is death. Because he, it is claimed he said that for the lesser infractions, they deserved it. For the greater infractions he couldn't think of anything worse. Draconian is at least in English still an adjective that means unreasonably harsh, his name lives on. But, archeologists found a reinscription of Draco's code on homicide. Was one of these laws that was passed down generation after generation. And what they found was really quite astonishing. Because the first line that survives on that stone is that even if someone kills someone unintentionally, he must go into exile. Why is this so astonishing? Because it takes into account the circumstances of the murder, the frame of mind of the murderer. It draws a distinction between what we would call voluntary homicide, or murder in cold blood, where you deliberately kill somebody else. And something that we might call manslaughter or involuntary or accidental homicide, where the victim winds up just as dead, but you didn't mean to do it, and clearly, the penalty for voluntary, deliberate homicide is execution, is death. But for involuntary homicide, that is for manslaughter, it's prescribed that the accused has to go into exile from which he can be recalled by vote of the victim's kin. And can rejoin the community after he has gotten purified at Delphi. So Draco's code is not as barbarous in any way as the legend had it, but it is a sign that things are getting tenser and tenser. Another sign is that Athens finally participates in the colonizing movement. Sometime just after Draco, in the period of roughly 620 to 610, the Athenians send out two colonies to the Hellespont, the modern day Bosphorus, one on either side. As we have seen over and over again, colonies serve as safety valves, as ways to relieve social and political tension.

They may have done so, but the crisis continued to mount. Until finally, a few years later, the Athenians were forced to name somebody to resolve this crisis, and that was Solon. We've talked about him before. He was one of the seven sages. And we'll look at him much more closely when we come back.