City-states

The societies described so far were overwhelmingly rural. Their members were nomadic or semi-nomadic, as many tribes without rulers were almost to the present day; alternatively they lived in villages that might be more or less permanent.

³⁰ The weaknesses of African nineteenth-century chiefdoms - the most sophisticated of all - are analyzed in M. Gluckman, Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965), pp. 147ff.

³¹ The case for believing that chiefdoms frequently ‘‘devolved” into tribes without rulers is made by M. Mann, The Sources of Social Power (London: Cambridge University Press, 1986), vol. I, pp. 69-73. practiced mostly at the subsistence level. Only in some of the more developed chiefdoms did the existence of a court and of an aristocratic ruling class create a demand for luxury goods and thus permit economic specialization and professions other than agriculture to emerge. Some chiefdoms, such as those of the ancient Goths and others in nineteenth­century West Africa, were familiar with writing, though normally it was imported from outside and used mainly for religious purposes by special­ized personnel. Still, the number of the people engaged full-time in specialties other than producing food - they were often members of a separate, hereditary caste - was minuscule relative to the total population.

Cities, though, are a different matter. A city may be defined as a permanent settlement with houses constructed of a durable material such as stone or brick. It contains a temple, a market place such as the Greek agora and Roman forum, as well as a building or buildings devoted to government, and a considerable number of inhabitants who no longer depend on agriculture as their principal occupation.^[19] Having mastered the art of writing or at any rate that of record-keeping, they engage in handicrafts, manufacturing, and trade, including, where conditions (usually access to waterways) permit, long-distance trade.

Considered from a political point of view, cities may be divided into three classes. Probably the majority were ruled by petty chiefs. A chief was known as lugal in the ancient Middle East, wanax in the Mycenean world, and kshatriya in India;^[20] in the biblical book of Joshua we find that each of several dozen cities occupied by the invading Israelites was ruled by a ‘‘king,” though precisely what his powers were is nowhere specified. This type is distinguished from chiefdoms mainly by their more sophisticated administrative system and a more complex social structure. To aristocrats and commoners was added a group of appointed officials - who, since they had to be literate, were not simply sub-chiefs - as well as a separate class of unfree persons, or slaves. The latter might be owned by the ruler, by private individuals, or, sometimes, by the temple.

A second class of cities did not represent independent communities at all. Instead they formed part of much larger political entities whom they served either as capitals or as provincial centers. Such, as far as it is possible to see, was the case in Mesopotamia after its unification at the hands of Sargon around 2350 BC; China from the time of the first imperial dynasties; India during the periods of centralized empire (320­185 BC, AD 320-500, and AD 1526-1707); and pre-Columbian Latin America as far back into history as we can see.³⁴

Finally, the third type comprises self-governing cities. This type may have existed in pre-dynastic Mesopotamia, but in the main it was limited to the Mediterranean littoral. Only in such self-governing cities were Greeks, Romans, and possibly also Etruscans and Phoenicians (Car­thage) able to come up with a new principle of government; only here was that form of government maintained during a period measured in cen­turies and constituting the ‘‘classical” world.

The way classical city-states grew out of the communities which must have preceded them is largely unknown. Assuming, as recent research does,³⁵ that the communities in question originally consisted of ‘‘big­men’’ type societies in which government was largely confined to the household, at some time there must have taken place what subsequent Greek authors called a synoikysmos or ‘‘joining of the households.” How­ever it was brought about, from this point on government was neither confined to the extended family, as in tribes without rulers, nor concen­trated in the hands of a single person as in chiefdoms; instead cities were regarded as collective enterprises and ruled by the many. To this purpose it does not matter whether any particular city was an oligarchy, as most initially were and many remained for a long period of time, or else went through a democratic transformation; nor, in the former case, does it

³⁴ For this kind of city and its government, see B. Sjoberg, The Pre-Industrial City: Past and Present (New York: Free Press, 1961), pp. 108-44, 182-255.

³⁵ For some modern attempts at explanation, see Y. Ferguson, ‘‘Chiefdom to City-States: The Greek Experience,” in T. Earle, ed., Chiefdoms: Power, Economy and Ideology (London: Cambridge University Press, 1991), ch. 8; and M. Stahl, Aristokraten und TyrannenimarchaischenAthen(Stuttgart: Steiner, 1987),particularlypp. 140-4,150-75. make a difference whether the elite from among whom the rulers were drawn represented true aristocrats (which was how they liked to describe themselves), or merely oligarchs who owed their position to their wealth (which is how they tended to be seen by their opponents).

There is another way of looking at the matter. Under the political systems outlined so far - as well as the empires and feudal societies which I shall describe in the next section - the distinction between ‘‘gover­nment” and ‘‘ownership” was unknown or, at any rate, fuzzy.³⁶ Weak or strong, a ruler governed - that is led, commanded, issued decrees, judged, taxed, and if necessary punished - those who were ‘‘his,” regardless of whether they were such as members of his lineage or as sub-chiefs, followers, domestics, retainers, tenants, or slaves (who, in the form of prisoners-of-war, did exist in some of the more developed chiefdoms). This is to say that ‘‘political” rule in the modern sense of that term did not exist; and neither, of course, did the term. In all these societies there were some persons who exercised authority over others, whether as simple lineage heads, as big men, or as full-fledged chiefs. However, without exception, they did so not as ‘‘public” officials but as individuals who, owing to their sex, age, divine descent, or some combination of these, were considered elevated over the rest and hence deserved to rule.

The situation in the classical city-state was entirely different. To be sure, both the Greekpolis (as far as our information goes) and the Roman Republic for a long time retained traces of an earlier system. In both the citizens did not constitute a single body but were divided into ‘‘demes,” ‘‘phratries,” ‘‘curies,” ‘‘centuries,” and ‘‘tribes” which, in Rome at any rate, cast their votes en bloc. Still, neither was organized around blood ties; provided they were not closely related, citizens could freely marry each others' daughters.

The situation just described has led to endless debate among scholars as to whether, in these societies, ‘‘private property” did or did not exist. See, e.g., A. M. Bailey and J. R. Llobera, eds., The Asiatic Mode of Production (London: Routledge, 1981). drew a very sharp line between the private (idios, res privata) and the public (demosios, res publica) spheres. Within the house (oikos, domus), social relationships were based on ownership as exercised by the pater­familias over his related and unrelated dependents (the latter being slaves), who, of course, did not possess a legal persona of their own. Outside the house's walls there was political authority, or government.

As far as we can determine, these distinctions, like the polis itself, were still absent from the Mycenean civilization that spread over southern Greece and the Aegean during the second millennium BC. Nor are they found in Homer's Iliad which was populated exclusively by chiefs (basileis), the members of their lineages, and their - for the most part anonymous - followers.^[21] Their existence is indicated for the first time in that other and presumably younger epic, the Odyssey. Written not long before 700 BC and thought to describe social circumstances as they were perhaps a century or two earlier,^[22] it contains a passage where Telem­achus, the hero's son, informs his host Menelaus that he came ‘‘on his own business, not of the people.'' As if to drive home the fact that a brave new world has appeared, there are two other places where the poet resorts to similar terminology.

Additional evidence on the emergence of the polis as a new type of political entity comes from an inscription found in Crete and dated to the second half of the seventh century BC. In it, the citizens of Dreros solemnly lay down and decree that the magistrate known as kosmos should not hold the same office for the second time before ten years have passed; should he do so nevertheless, then he would be disenfranchised and ‘‘anything he should do as kosmos [emphasis added] will be null and void.'' Note the distinction between the office, which is temporary, and the person who occupies it and who will continue with his private life after he has laid it down. At present this is the earliest direct reference to a magistrate that we possess.^[24]

As perhaps the most critical political invention of all time, the mature theory of the distinction between government and ownership - in what-

ever form - probably took centuries to develop. Nor was the earlier point of view which confused the two easily laid to rest. In Athens, for example, it was only during the reforms of Solon in 594/3 BC that debt-bondage was abolished and an absolute line was drawn between free (citizen) and unfree (servile) status; in Rome the same reform had to wait longer still. The last important political theorist who, looking backward into history, wanted to govern the city as if it were an extended household was Plato in the Republic. For this he was criticized by Aristotle who pointed out, with perfect justice, that family and city were entirely different institutions and that the social principles that underlay the one were inapplicable to the other.^[25] Using Plato as his punching ball, Aristotle, writing near the middle of the fourth century BC, devoted most of the first part of his Politics to working out the distinction in detail.^[26] Nor was he wrong in placing it at the beginning of his book. Compared with it, all other constitutional arrangements which he discusses - or which existed in the daily life of various city-states - were of secondary, almost trivial, signifi­cance.

The city-state’s organs of government did not correspond to our cus­tomary separation between executive, legislative, and judiciary.^[27] Per­haps the most important single institution was the popular assembly. Rome seems to have been unique in that it did not have a single assem­bly but four different ones, each comprising a different section of the population, voting according to a different system, and attaining con­stitutional importance vis-a-vis the other three during a different his­torical period. Elsewhere there was a single assembly comprising all citizens, in other words all adult males who were neither part of the household of others (slaves) nor foreigners. It met at the request of the presiding magistrates, either at regular intervals or as the occasion de­manded; in Athens, the only city about which we have such informa­tion, there seem to have been some forty meetings a year. The assem­bly’s main function was to pass laws, known as nomoi in Greece and leges in Rome; but it also elected the magistrates and pronounced the final word on questions of war and peace. Finally, in Athens and possibly in other Greek cities as well, the assembly possessed the right to use os­tracism in order to force citizens whom it considered a public danger into exile.

Next in importance to the assembly were the various magistrates. Whereas many might be selected by lot, the most important ones were invariably elected. With few exceptions, the term of office was one year. Only in Sparta did the so-called kings rule for life; but even here they were little more than hereditary officials whose power was strictly limited and subject to supervision by a special group of five ephors.^[28] Besides sum­moning the assembly, as has just been mentioned, the magistrates were responsible for running the city's day-to-day affairs. These included commanding in war (the Greek strategoi and polemarchs, the Roman consuls and dictator; the latter was a temporary commander elected for six months), looking after the finances (the Roman quaestores), erecting public buildings and supervising markets (the Roman aediles), and exer­cising justice, as well as keeping internal order (the Roman consuls and praetors together). In Greece - though rarely in Rome where aristocratic traditions were more powerful and lasted longer - the objective was usually to enable as many citizens as possible to rule and be ruled in turn. Hence the number of magistrates, especially those occupying minor posts such as supervising markets and keeping the streets clean, was often quite large.

Though the details are obscure, the military origins of government are betrayed by the fact that all cities probably demanded that citizens enlisted for service and participated in a prescribed number of military campaigns before standing for election to a magistracy. Many must also have maintained a minimum age which a person had to reach before he could be elected, though that rule - like the one which, in Rome, pro­hibited magistrates from serving twice in the same office - was sometimes waived in an emergency. Contrary to the practice of modern government organizations, in most cases there seems to have been no mandatory progression of offices through which an individual had to pass before he could reach the top; since, in the interest of avoiding tyranny, no magis­trate possessed authority over the rest, government was diffused. Again the only known exception to the rule was Rome. Here there existed a highly structured cursus honorum, or honors career, which took the aspir­ing politician from the humblest positions to the most senior ones. Roman magistrates also possessed coercitio (the power to coerce), a power whose name speaks for itself and which was not shared by their Greek colleagues. Still, even in Rome the two consuls were co-equal. No policy could be carried out except by the consent of both; this led to the absurd arrangement whereby, until some time during the Second Punic War, they commanded the army on alternate days. Furthermore, and precisely because Roman government was so strong, it was found necessary to appoint special magistrates - the tribunes - to protect the plebes against any excesses that their rulers might commit, and also to give them at least some share in the government.

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A further peculiarity of the system was that priests, too, were subject to annual rotation. Although in Athens and elsewhere some priestly posi­tions were monopolized by certain families, as a rule the priesthood was not hereditary nor did it consist of specialists; instead priests were simply magistrates whose job happened to be that of serving the city's deities and keeping them happy. Each temple, god, and function had a college of priests which was responsible for it; Rome was unique because it had a pontifex maximus, or high priest, who exercised authority over official religion as a whole. Insofar as they were in charge of the various curses, auguries, and omens that permitted or prohibited certain actions, priests, whether individually or in their colleges, could and did influence the policies of the remaining organs of government; for example, they might decide whether this or that day was suitable for founding a temple, concluding an alliance, or fighting a battle. Still, the system meant that their influence could not become institutionalized or persist over time. A conflict between polity and church, such as very often arose in other societies, was thereby rendered impossible.⁴⁵

The third organ composing the government of the city-state was the boule or council. The one in Sparta was known as gerousia and thus clearly originated in a tribal council of elders, and the same was true in other cities. Though the precise steps can no longer be traced, in historical times the councils of most cities lost their aristocratic character in favor of a system whereby members were appointed by lot and served for the usual period of one year. Only in Rome were the senators appointed ex officio from among ex-magistrates who had served their term. Unless disqualifi­ed by the censores (two magistrates who were elected every five years and whose responsibility it was to hold an inquiry into the property and conduct of each citizen), senators retained their position for life.

The council's principal functions were to prepare bills for presentation in the assembly and also to supervise the magistrates' work by checking their accounts and receiving complaints. In Greece it was normally the least important part of the government, but in Rome it acted as a sink where the political expertise of the republic accumulated. The Senate's influence over political affairs, both domestic and foreign, was immense. As well as exercising the above-mentioned functions, it replaced the

⁴⁵ A good account of the relationship between religion and polity in Rome in particular is D.

Potter, Prophets and Emperors: Human and Divine Authority from Augustus to Theodosius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 147-58. assembly in receiving the envoys of foreign rulers; it was authorized to suspend civil rights by declaring a state of emergency or tumultus; and, on at least one occasion, it used a technicality in order to invalidate consular elections and force new ones to be held.^[29] Still, even in Rome at its second-century BC zenith, the authority (auctoritas) of the Senate was never formalized. Unlike a modern parliament it did not pass laws; the most it could do was deliberate and pass consulta (strictly speaking, advice) to the magistrates. However, it could not issue orders to them or hold them accountable, let alone override the citizen-assembly which always retained sovereignty - if the term is appropriate at all - in its own hands.

Finally, and as befits a community that had emancipated itself from the rule of an individual, the city did not have a unified juridical system. There existed neither appellate courts - decisions, once made, were final - nor a minister of justice, nor chief justices. Instead there was a variety of unrelated courts, each one meeting daily and often known, after the different premises in which they met, by such names as the New Court, the Triangular Court, the Small Court, and so on. The decision as to which case would be tried in which court was made by officials who specialized in that business, such as the Athenian archontes and themos- thetai and the Roman praetors. Membership of the courts consisted of ordinary citizens. Like modern jurors, they served on a case-by-case basis without having received any special training for the purpose. In Athens from at least the time of Pericles they were given modest pay for their services - barely enough to keep them financially solvent, it would seem.

The jury system meant that a considerable part of the population was involved in the exercise of justice. Thus, in Athens, the assembly elected a pool of 6,000 potential jurors each year; to forestall bribery, the decision as to who would serve on each court each day was made by lot with the aid of a specially constructed machine.^[30] The system meant that, instead of executive and juridical powers resting in the hands of the same persons, as was customary in all previous and most subsequent societies until well into modern times, they were separated. In this way the classical city-state became the first, and for a very long time only, political community to take juridical powers out of the hands of the ruler(s). No magistrate, not even the Roman consuls whose power was greater than that of all the rest, in an ancient city-state possessed the right to inflict capital punishment on a citizen in peacetime unless he had first been permitted to present his case before a citizens' court; which in some cases might be represented either by the council or by the assembly. In Rome this right, justly described by Cicero as a cornerstone of liberty, was known as provocatio.

In the absence of the state as a legal persona against which offenses could be committed, our modern distinction between civil and criminal jurisdiction did not apply.^[31] It made no difference whether the matter brought before a court involved a dispute over an inheritance or murder; instead a line was drawn between cases which involved only individuals and those which, like peculation, treason, impiety, and - in Rome - insulting the greatness or majestas of the Roman people, concerned the community as a whole. In the former cases, the only ones who could bring suit were the injured person or, if he was no longer alive, his relatives; the second type could be prosecuted by any citizen who wished to do so. As a result it was sometimes used for getting rid of undesirables of whom the most famous one happened to be Socrates. In addition, persons who were involved in politics could persuade somebody else to press charges of this kind against an opponent, a method known as sycophancy.^[32] In point of procedure a difference existed insofar as the number of jurors assigned to ‘‘political'' offenses was much larger - either 501 or, in special cases, as many as 1,001. Still, even in such cases there was no state-appointed prosecutor in our sense of that term.

As they were governed not by the few but by the many, classical city-states failed to develop either specialized personnel, large administra­tive machines, or regular armed forces. It was a matter of principle that, with a few exceptions (such as those which, in some cities, restricted certain priesthoods to the members of certain families), any citizen could become a magistrate; after a prolonged struggle which pitted patricians against plebeians this became true even in Rome. Nor was there any attempt to prepare or train professional personnel in such fields as police work, accounting, diplomacy, etc. There seems to have been remarkably little administration. Initially, at any rate, even the laws themselves were regarded as god-given and available only in the form of oral traditions. Long after this had ceased to be the case and the laws were published - in Rome, this event took place in 451 BC when twelve bronze tables were inscribed and set up in the forum - the paperwork that did exist seems to have been carried out by the magistrates in person. They received no salaries but, at most, small sums of money intended as expenses. Having no staff except, in Athens, a secretary or two, they often employed their own domestics, slaves, and politically ambitious relatives on administra­tive tasks.

Together with the secular character of government, the virtual absence of a bureaucracy in our sense of the term meant that Greek and Roman magistrates, unlike many other types of rulers before and since, were public figures first and foremost. The very fact that they had to stand for election made them such; having entered into office, they could be seen on a daily basis as they walked to and from the public assembly places in the center of the city. At most they might have a modest guard such as the lictores who attended Roman consuls and praetors. However, nothing could prevent people from accosting them in the streets in order to submit petitions and launch complaints; Pericles on one occasion provided a citizen who had insulted him with a light and had him escorted back home by a slave. It was in the open spaces of the agora and the forum, as well as the public structures surrounding them, that the magistrates carried out most of their duties. The remainder they probably performed from the privacy of their own homes.^[33]

What was true of the administration also applied to the armed forces. In both Greece and Rome, whenever a war ended the troops - comman­ders and officers not excepted - simply dispersed and went home. When­ever a new one broke out, the responsible magistrates would proceed to the designated place - such as, in Rome, the Campus Martius or Field of Mars - refer to a list of citizens and hold a levy. They would take volunteers first, and only then turn to other citizens who had not yet served the number of campaigns stipulated by the law. In Rome and possibly elsewhere, each time a levy was held the men had to be sworn in afresh - not to the Republic, it should be noted, but to the person of the commanding consul. Should the latter die on campaign, then the ceremony had to be repeated in his successor’s name. The citizen­soldiers, who of course did not wear uniform, were supposed to present themselves with their own arms, for which purpose they were divided into property classes.^[34] Since war was seen as an affair of the people they did not receive pay for their services; at most, subsistence-money might be distributed.

Thus the city-state’s armed force, known as stratos or exercitus, is best described as a host. Like the levies of tribes without rulers, but unlike regular armies, it was not clearly distinguishable from the citizen-body at large. It did not lead a separate existence as an organization, nor con­sequently was it able to develop a militarist esprit de corps. Mercenaries could be and were employed, especially in Greece from the time of the Peloponnesian War on when they provided specialist troops such as archers, slingers, and javelin-throwers. But mercenaries, though often highly professional, by definition were not citizens. Instead of forming part of their employer’s polity, they were paid off and dismissed as soon as possible and as far away as possible. Only in Sparta did the existence of helots - a class of hereditary serfs who performed most productive work - give the citizens leisure and enable war to be turned into a national industry, with the result that they were, in Plutarch’s words, ‘‘professors of war.’’^[35] Elsewhere it was carried on mainly by semi-trained amateurs, a shortcoming which Plato in the Republic identified and inveighed against.^[36]

Remarkably, in view of the skills that some Romans in particular developed, the system also extended to commanders. Their position depended on their ability to get themselves elected by the people; hence they were almost always politicians first and military men second. If Nicias, who commanded in several campaigns and was finally chosen by the Athenians to lead the largest military expedition in their history, possessed any special training for the job, we are wholly ignorant of it. But even such a soldiers’ soldier as the Roman consul Gaius Titus Flamininus, who in 197-196 BC defeated Macedonia and conquered Greece, had no specialized training as an officer. Instead he ‘‘learnt how to command others by being commanded himself.’’^[37] For most city­states, and during most of their history, the system of unpaid amateur soldiers put strict limits on their ability to engage in military operations at a distance from home and also to conquer and dominate other cities.^[38]

Possessing neither an extensive bureaucracy nor regular armed forces, city-states were for the most part able to do without directly taxing their citizens. A military emergency might call for the imposition of a special levy, especially on property or else in the form of a poll tax. In case the conflict was protracted this could become very burdensome; in 215 BC, for example, the Roman Senate both doubled the contributions due from each citizen and advanced the date at which they were collected. However, even on such occasions the fundamentally democratic and egalitarian nature of the community meant that there was always a tendency to shift the burden to the weaker, for which read non-voting, classes. An excellent case in point is provided by the Roman Senate's attempt to tax rich widows during the Second Punic War. This caused the women to protest that, since they did not form part of the citizen­body and had no quarrel with Hannibal, they should not be made to bear its expenses.^[39]

The normal method for meeting the expenditure of government in peacetime was to rely on market duties and the fruits of the justice system in the form of fines and confiscated property. For religious purposes there were the leftover parts of sacrificial animals, which were sold, as well as the financial operations of the temples which acted as depositories and lent out money at interest. Cities that were so fortunate as to have mines on their territory could grant individuals a lease on their operation and utilize the proceeds, either by devoting them to some public purpose (such as the Athenian navy, built on Themistocles' advice) or else simply by distributing them among the citizens. Some of the more cosmopolitan cities, such as Corinth, could count on customs, harbor-dues, and the payments made by foreigners in return for the right to reside and trade. Finally, a few of them were able to rule other cities. In exchange for the ‘‘protection'' they offered, they received tribute. This was the case with Athens, which, having established its dominion over the remaining mem­bers of the Attic-Delic League, used the money it collected from them to pay its rowers and maintain its naval supremacy in the Aegean.

However, by far the most important source of revenue enjoyed by ancient city-states - Greek ones as well as Roman - consisted of the so-called liturgies. These are best described as contributions made by the richer citizens for specific purposes. It might be a question of staging a play; providing supplies to the gymnasium or exercise hall; erecting a public building; or constructing and even manning a warship.^[40] Liturgies were assigned to individuals by the responsible magistrates on the basis of property lists which, of course, took into account contributions already made in the past; unlike modern charities, they were not voluntary but represented a civic duty that one could escape only by pointing to some­body else who possessed more but had given less. In a sense they were payments made by the rich in order to protect their property against being expropriated by the poor,^[41] but in fairness it should be said that making those payments was considered honorable. Many donations were com­memorated in inscriptions set up either by the grateful recipients or by the donors themselves. Often citizens paid more than they had to as a means for obtaining popularity, influence, and, in the not unlikely eventuality of being taken to court, a measure of sympathy among the jurors; and indeed our knowledge of the subject owes much to cases of this sort.

The great variety represented by these sources of income meant that few if any cities maintained a single public treasury to which all money went and which, in turn, was responsible for making all public payments. Rome, which did not have liturgies in the same form and which at some unknown date developed the treasury or aerarium, was the exception to the rule. However, even here the magistrates often bore the burden of public expenditure, including what we today would regard as military expenditure, out of their own pockets. For example, during the Han- nibalic War, the dictator Quintus Maximus Fabius Cunctator used his personal resources to pay for the release of some Roman prisoners. When the son of Scipio Africanus (who at that time was acting as de facto commander-in-chief) was captured during the war against Antiochus in 190 BC, it was he and not the Republic who had to come up with a

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ransom.

As Rome grew wealthier and the gap between rich and poor widened, greater use was made of private money and private armed forces consis­ting of relatives and clients to accomplish public objectives. The system peaked in the careers of such figures as Crassus and Pompey who, in 73-71 BC, used their own resources to suppress the Spartacus Revolt, thus earning the gratitude of the Senate and the people. During the following two decades their example was followed by Julius Caesar, originally a minor nobleman who made his fortune first by vanquishing pirates in the Mediterranean and then by conquering Gaul which had been assigned to him as a province by the Senate. The three of them together attained so much power and popularity as to undermine and finally destroy the Republic.

Here and elsewhere the financial system, as best we can follow it, operated largely ad hoc. Specific sums were voted by the assembly, distributed among the classes according to their ability to pay, and collected for specific purposes. Most of the time this was done not at regular intervals but simply as the occasion demanded. Once the money had been collected it was deposited in a fund dedicated to some god; a case in point was the aerarium itself which was located in the temple of Saturn on the Capitol. In 431 BC, embarking on the risky enterprise known as the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians passed a resolution to

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Livy, The Histories, XXII, xxiii, 8; Polybius, The Histories (London: Heinemann, Loeb Classical Library, 1922-), xxi, 15.

the effect that, except in an emergency, anyone who proposed violating the 5,000-talent reserve kept in the temple of Athena would be put to death. Whatever the physical place where the money was kept, it was administered by the responsible magistrate or magistrates. There seems to have been no attempt to create a centralized accounting system to link the various funds, let alone an overall budget.

So long as they did not come under the dominion of an outside power or fall victim to a tyrant (in which case the polis, properly speaking, would cease to exist) each classical city-state enjoyed freedom (eleutheria, liber­tas') both in respect to its external affairs and internally. Externally ‘‘free­dom” meant something very close to the modern sovereignty. The citi­zens worshipped their own gods and lived according to their own laws, i.e., they enjoyed autonomia; they were judged in their own courts, presided over by elected magistrates and manned by fellow citizens; they were not subject to, and did not pay, a compulsory tribute (phoros, tributum) to any other city or ruler; and, by way of guaranteeing all the above, they did not have to suffer a foreign garrison in their midst.^[42] Internally it meant that citizens possessed the right to participate in political life and were considered equal before the law; nor, so long as normalcy prevailed, did they have to pay too many direct taxes. Short of a coup mounted by a tyrant, usually with the aid of mercenaries brought in from outside, the rise of arbitrary government was prevented by the elaborate system of checks and balances just described.

Above all, it was by separating the person of a ruling magistrate from the office that he held and making the latter both temporary and elective that classical city-states made a monumental contribution to political life. They thereby discovered a method which permitted the talents of every citizen to be freely mobilized on behalf of the polity as a whole; and which, in principle and very often in practice as well, could lead to a change of government without resort to conspiracy, civil war, or, indeed, violence of any kind. Since then their example has often been obscured and during certain ages it was even considered dangerous; in Russia Tsar Nicholas I (1825-55) went so far as to have all references to ‘‘republic” and ‘‘repub­licanism” removed from textbooks dealing with the classical world. Con­sider this description of the ancient city-state at its best:

Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law; when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses. No one, so long as he has it in him to be of service to the polis, is kept in political obscurity because of poverty...

We are free and tolerant in our private lives... we give our obedience to those whom we put in positions of authority, and we obey the laws themselves, es­pecially those which are for the protection of the oppressed, and those unwritten laws which it is an acknowledged shame to break.⁶¹