The thetes of Athens

Miriam A. Valdés Guía

The thetes of Athens

Dynamics and developments of the Athenian lower classes
(seventh to fourth centuries BC)

Lausanne · Berlin · Bruxelles · Chennai · New York · Oxford

To Domingo Plácido, an excellent historian and good friend

In memory of my parents, Carmen and Pedro

Table of Contents

List of Tables

Prologue

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction

PART I
Contextualising the thetes: seventh-century processes of degradation and enslavement

Chapter 1. A historiography of the thetes

Introduction

View of the thetes – “hired labourers” – in social history since the mid-twentieth century

The term thetes and democracy in historiography

Conclusion

Chapter 2. The thetes and hektemoroi before Solon

The Homeric and Hesiodic thes

Thetes and hektemoroi in pre-Solonian Athens and the degradation of the peasantry

Hektermoroi as sharecroppers

Two situations among the peasantry

Conclusion

Chapter 3. Atimoi and agogimoi: Reflections on debt slavery in archaic Athens

Introduction

Solon’s Amnesty Law and the atimia penalty

Being ‘deprived of rights’ in seventh-century Athens and the status of pre-Solonian thetes

The meaning of agogimos in the pre-Solonian Athens and the Solonian restoration of atimoi

Conclusion

Chapter 4. Hybris in archaic Athens: the forms of exploitation and violence employed by the aristoi against the demos

Introduction

Economic exploitation

Physical violence

Ideological constraint

Institutional violence: ‘justice’

Chapter 5. The cult of Zeus and the Attic peasantry: Dike and Zeus Eleutherios

Zeus, the giver of justice and agricultural prosperity

Zeus Eleutherios

PART II
The demos ‘in the middle’: integration and evolution of the lower classes in sixth-century Athens

Chapter 6. The social and cultural background of hoplite development in archaic Athens: peasants, debts, zeugitai and Hoplethes

Introduction

Hesiod: independent farmer or member of the elite?

Γῆ ἐλευθέρα (Sol. Fr. 36 W -30 G-P-, lin. 5 and 7): demos, debt and zeugitai

Hoplites in the collective imagination: Hoplethes, the giants in the Panathenaic Games and Heracles

Conclusion

Chapter 7. A new reading of Solon’s law on stasis: the sovereignty of the demos

Introduction

The meaning of the expression ‘θέμενος τὰ ὅπλα’. Taking up arms on behalf of the demos, the democracy, the polis or the fatherland

Solon and the assembly of the demos ‘in the middle’

Solon’s law on stasis and the Eretrian law against tyranny (and oligarchy)

A possible reconstruction of the Solonian formulation of the law

Conclusion

Chapter 8. The Attic demos in the sixth century: between agency (and political awareness) and clientelism

Introduction

The demos flocked en masse (pandemei) to the Acropolis and the Damasias episode

The social structure of seventh-century Athens

‘Vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ stasis

The demos in the political sphere and the followers of Pisistratus

The interconnection between ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ stasis: Diakrioi and Hyperakrioi

The demos and the religious/cultural community of Attica under Pisistratus

The leading role and political agency of the demos after the tyranny

Chapter 9. Census classes, dekate and demography in sixth-century Athens

Qualifications for the Solonian census classes

Dekate

Demography

Conclusion

PART III
The identity of the thetes and zeugitai in fifth-century democracy: political and military involvement

Chapter 10. Zeugitai in fifth-century Athens: social and economic qualification from Cleisthenes to the end of the Peloponnesian War

Introduction

Evidence on zeugitai in the fifth century and the scholarly debate on the use of the census classes in the military organization

Hoplites and zeugitai: numbers, wealth and land ownership in fifth-century Athens

Cleisthenes’ measures: monetary requirements for belonging to the zeugite census class and military reforms

Conclusion

Chapter 11. Thetes, the Athenian empire and demography

Introduction

The thetes as a population segment

Colonies and cleruchies

Benefits of the misthos and full employment

Conclusion

Chapter 12. Thetes epibatai in fifth-century Athens

Introduction

The epibatai as hoplites with high socioeconomic status

Thetes epibatai

A note on the census classes and their role in fifth-century recruitment

Thetes demography

Possible allusions to thetes epibatai in the sources

Conclusion

Chapter 13. Socrates, as poor as a thes

Introduction

Socrates’ poverty

Socrates, the sculptor (lithourgos)

Socrates: a thes or a zeugites?

Conclusion

Chapter 14. The ‘Five Thousand’ and the demos in the oligarchic coup of 411: eisphora and reform of the census classes

Introduction

The ‘Five Thousand’ in the regime of the Four Hundred and the eisphora levy during the Peloponnesian War

The ‘Five Thousand’ in the government of the Five Thousand

Conclusion

PART IV
The drift of the lower classes in the fourth century: towards the revival of dependencies

Chapter 15. The resurgence of dependency in the fourth century: the spaces of thetes and misthotoi, parasitoi and beggars

Introduction

The resurgence of rural wage labour and the leasing of land to the poor

Salaried work in the asty

Ptocheia

Benefits of citizenship, euergesia and parasitism

Conclusion

Chapter 16. Debt as a source of dependency and exploitation in classical Athens

Introduction

Public debtors

Private debtors

Charis

Conclusion

Chapter 17. Some brief notes on demographics, the eisphora and the diapsephismos in fourth-century Athens

Demographics

The Eisphora

The Diapsephismos of 346

Conclusion

Conclusions

Tables

Bibliography

List of Index terms

List of Tables

Table 1: Census classes with Solon (594 BC)

Table 2: Census classes under Cleisthenes

Table 3: Census classes with the revision of Solon’s laws (403 BC) to adapt them to the eisphora levy (measures given in Arist. [Ath. Pol.] 7.4 and Poll. 8.130) after the Peloponnesian War

Table 4: Hypothetical citizen population in Solonian Athens

Table 5: Hypothetical population in Athens in 490 BC

Table 6: Hypothetical population growth from Solon to Marathon (594-490 BC)

Table 7: Hypothetical population in Athens just before the Peloponnesian War

Table 8: Hypothetical (citizen) population growth during the Pentecontaetia

Table 9: Hypothetical (citizen) population growth by segments during the Pentecontaetia

Table 10: Hypothetical citizen population in the second half of the fourth century BC before Antipater

Table 11: Athenian citizens under Antipater and Demetrius of Phalerum

Prologue

In 1966, E. P. Thompson published a brief essay entitled ‘History from below’. This expression is known to have had earlier versions linked to prominent figures in the development of the so-called Annales school, whereas Thompson himself seems to have been reluctant to use the phrase, which was supposedly coined by the editor of the Times Literary Supplement in which his text was published. Even so, it has since become the name of a historiographical approach based on the vast and justified influence of the British historian. Beyond the ambiguities of the notion and the revisions and criticisms it has been undergone, this phrase simply delimits, identifies and makes room under the same roof for analytical perspectives that, despite their diversity, seek to address and understand the history of forgotten or neglected social groups, popular sectors and subaltern classes, in brief, a people’s history.

The historian Miriam Valdés’ book brilliantly continues this tradition by proposing a history of the Athenian lower classes, viz. the thetes. Yet, in terms of its approach, this history from below is not a partial one. Quite the contrary, its goal is to study the lower classes as a total history which, as the author rightly acknowledges, is nothing less than that of Athenian democracy itself. By examining the situation of the poor in Athens, the book therefore addresses one of the greatest developments of classical antiquity from the perspective of history from below as a total history. To my knowledge, there is virtually no monograph with such a comprehensive scope as regards both its subject matter and time frame, as well as its theoretical and historiographical discussions.

Certainly, the development of democracy in Athens, and in ancient Greece in general, cannot be understood without a deep social analysis of the lower classes, which is one of the meanings of the term demos, the true agent of this historical process according to the approach taken by Valdés. Of course, the author does not ignore that the term demos also signifies the political body as a whole and the assembly. But the main issue of the book lies in the leading role played by the demos in the broad sense of the lower classes, paying particular attention to the thetes in this context.

The study of the evolution of the Athenian thetes as a prolonged historical process (between the seventh and fourth centuries BC) allows the author to address the extent to which the institutional meaning acquired by this term as the name of one of the Solonian census classes, from the beginning of the sixth century, overlaps with the general meaning of thes as a day labourer and/or wage earner and/or landless pauper, already present in the Homeric poems. The topics are examined diachronically, thus providing a comprehensive overview of the Athenian lower classes in a historical sequence whose successive events are explained as part of a global process, while also describing their repercussions for subsequent developments.

In pre-Solonian times, many thetes were sharecroppers of sorts known as hektemoroi, but others were landless workers or owners of very small plots who even ran the risk of falling into debt bondage. Although Solonian legislation changed this situation by abolishing personal dependency and granting political rights to the thetes, it also more firmly established the demos as the lower classes as a whole within the citizen body. Accordingly, not only the thetes but also the zeugitai are the subject matter of this book because both formed part of the demos: the lowest socio-economic stratum in which small and middling peasants constituted the poor of Athenian democracy.

This is an important conceptual approach adopted by the author when defining the peasantry in terms of personal freedom and access to full ownership of the land legally granted by citizenship. Indeed, the model of the 5-ha autonomous farmer with a yoke of oxen and capable of affording hoplite weapons serves as an essential reference for performing a comparative analysis on the situation of the thetes.

But the book also clarifies that after Solon the separation between the two census classes had an actual impact on ongoing historical processes. The thetes were the lowest-ranking members of the demos, with little land or none whatsoever, who gradually became the sub-hoplite demos owing to the fact that they lacked the means to acquire the hoplite panoply that moderately well-off peasants could afford. With the advent of the Athenian democracy, the place of the thetes in society and their relationship with the zeugitai census class directly above them brought into sharp relief the differentiated military roles that the two groups respectively played in the hoplite infantry and the fleet’s crews.

According to the author’s interpretation, there were socioeconomic changes that conditioned this distinction between both groups, even though they formed part of the same lower-class demos. During the sixth century, the thetes were predominantly agrarian and therefore more akin to the zeugite farmers. But in the fifth century, the former evolved to become a section of society mainly engaged in non-agricultural activities. This evolution was largely driven by the development of the fleet, the resources deriving from the empire and the introduction of public salaries, after the establishment of the so-called ‘radical democracy’. These aspects impacted the specific situation of the lower classes and made the greatest contribution to building a particular idiosyncrasy and identity of the sub-hoplite demos of the thetes in relation to Athenian power.

In this context, the unfolding of the different events covered in the book leads to extremely thorough discussions on the definitions of slaves and slavery which help to gain a deeper understanding not only of situations of dependency, such as those of the hektemoroi and debt slaves, but also of the relationship between the citizenry and chattel-slavery. This form of subjection and exploitation is another condition that, together with the resources of the empire, allowed poor Athenians to gain power during radical democracy. This is another relevant argument that the author deploys and develops masterfully.

In this context, the book also places the spotlight on the important contributions of recent scholarship on poverty. The thetes were constantly at risk of falling into extreme poverty; without the effective protection of their citizenship rights and access to economic resources, they would have been on the verge of permanent dependency and/or legal slavery. It was thus a complex state of affairs in which the lower classes benefited from the massive influx of foreign slaves, thereby guaranteeing their freedom. According to the hypothesis put forward in the book, it was thanks to the presence of slavery that the Athenians enjoyed free time to participate in political and military activities. Yet the main effect of external slavery on the lower classes was not that it freed them from having to work for others but from doing so in a situation of personal dependence.

In the fourth century, this situation was reversed, giving rise to the development of new forms of internal dependence. The Solonian census classes lost much of their meaning; the mutations in the functioning of democracy in this period allowed for new political and institutional structures, with those members of the citizenry included in the thetic class now beginning to see themselves increasingly more threatened by renewed forms of personal subjection.

It is not necessary to agree with all the interpretations that are put forward in the book. For example, there is the idea that, because of the socioeconomic changes of the fifth century, the thetes became a predominantly urban group, decoupled from agricultural activities, and that during the fourth century new forms of internal dependence almost became a matter of course for the Athenian poor. Both are concrete historical phenomena, of course. There were purely urban-dwelling poor citizens in the fifth century and also Athenians who found themselves in situations of personal dependence in the fourth century. The crux of the matter is the relative importance attached to these phenomena. But this is not the place to discuss an issue about which there is an ongoing debate that gives us feedback on our positions. For what is important here and now is to highlight the consistent approach taken by Valdés to support and argue the interpretive hypotheses that throughout the book subtly and skilfully thread together a historical image of the Athenian lower classes.

The very incomplete synopsis presented here does not do full justice, nor ever will, to the many themes, problems, concepts and approaches that a work like this has had to encompass in order to offer a comprehensive overview of the history of the lower classes and democracy in Athens. Readers will discover in the following pages the fascinating and rigorous way in which Valdés has combined the analysis of an enormous quantity of literary, epigraphic and archaeological sources, plus specialist literature, with the discussion of diverse theoretical and historiographical positions. She has performed this task without ever losing sight of the fact that her research is a history from below as a total history.

Julián Gallego

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to thank the Ministry of Science and Innovation¹ for funding this work (especially the translations and editing), which is directly related to the subject of our project. Secondly, I am indebted to all the editors of the previously published works that have been updated here, to whom specific reference is made at the beginning of each chapter and who have made this book possible.

As many of these chapters are the result of reflections made and papers presented at the GIREA colloquia, I would like to express my gratitude to the members of this group, especially to its honorary president Domingo Plácido and its heart and soul Antonio Gonzales, for their generosity and always enriching vision of the history of disadvantaged groups and their historical social dynamics. I am also obliged to all the members of the Ancient Greek History Research Group (https://www.ucm.es/eschatia), which I am currently co-directing with Mª Cruz Cardete, and to the members of the Poverty Project for their contributions and suggestions in the debates and seminars in which we have participated together during these years. Recently defended PhD dissertations, such as that of Aida Fernández Prieto on poverty in classical Athens, and those still in progress, like that of Francisco Martínez Uriarte on the Athens of Epicurus, have been particularly inspiring.²

I am especially indebted to Domingo Plácido, my teacher, PhD supervisor (in 1999), colleague and friend, to whom I dedicate this book, for sharing his fund of knowledge with me over the years. His thoughts on democracy and the demos of Athens in classical times have served as an inexhaustible source of inspiration for me and whose enlightening guidance has allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of the history of this city.

Finally, I would like to thank my family, especially my parents, Carmen and Pedro, now deceased, who always supported and followed my teaching and research work with such enthusiasm and affection. I also dedicate this book to their memory. Last but not least, my husband and teenage children have my eternal gratitude for always being there and for constantly stimulating and supporting my daily work in a thousand different ways.

Abbreviations

AIO Attic Inscriptions Online (https://www.atticinscriptions.com/)

CID Corpus des inscriptions de Delphes [CID], I-IV

Ditt. Syll Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum, by: Dittenberger, Wilhelm, 1840–1906.

FGrH F. Jacoby, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker.

GHI Osborne, R. & Rhodes, P. J. 2017. Greek Historical Inscriptions 478-404 BC, Oxford.

IG Inscriptiones Graecae

IMT M. Barth, J. Stauber (eds), Inschriften Mysia und Troas, Leopold Wenger Institut, 1993.

Inschr. v. Ol. W. Dittenberger, K. Purgold, Inschriften von Olympia, 1896.

IPArk G. Thür & H. Taeuber, Prozessrechtliche Inschriften der Griechischen Poleis: Arkadien, 1994

LIMC Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, Zurich, Munchen: Artemis & Winkler Verlag, 20 vols., 1981-2009

LSJ H. G. Liddel, R. Scott, H. S. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.

M&L R. Meiggs, D. M. Lewis (eds), A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century BC, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.

Nomima Nomina. Recueil d’inscriptions politiques et juridiques de l’archaïsme grec, 1. Cités et institutions (coll. EFR, 188), 1994.

PCG Kassel, R and Austin, C., Poetae Comici Graeci, Berlin & New Yord 1983-2000,

P. Oxy. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vols. i.–xvii., by B. P. Grenfell & A. S. Hunt

SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum

Most of the abbreviations of the ancient authors are those appearing in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD: https://oxfordre.com/classics/page/3993).

For journals, the abbreviations appearing in L’Année Philologique have been used.

Introduction

This book is the result of many years of work examining the social dynamics of the “thetes”, namely, the Athenian lower classes in the Archaic and Classical periods. To this end, I have compiled a large number of articles, book chapters and conference papers, many of which presented at GIREA (Groupe International de Recherche sur l’Esclavage dans l’Antiquité) colloquia, which I have published over the years, as well as including several unpublished chapters. In addition to specifying the source of each chapter, the bibliographies and content of all these texts have been revised and updated in an attempt to standardise and group them together in a coherent manner, while respecting the diachrony of historical developments in Athens. As the book covers the period from the seventh to the fourth century, it is closely related to the developments leading to the advent of Athenian democracy and to democracy per se, which cannot be understood without this in-depth analysis of the Athenian lower classes, the demos, the real support and sustenance of society, as well as the main “agent” subject of the historical developments of these periods.

The reflections on the historiography of the Athenian thetes on which this book is based were made at a colloquium on dependency and slavery since Antiquity (XXIX GIREA Colloquium “Historiografía de la esclavitud”), because the members of this social group, whose first meaning is that of the “landless”/hirelings without an oikos but nonetheless free, were on the brink of permanent dependence and at constant risk of falling into legal slavery because of their poverty.

The second meaning of the term thetes appeared as a result of Solon’s reforms at the beginning of the sixth century, as the name given to the last census class established by the lawgiver. Thenceforth, in addition to the “landless” (or those without enough land to subsist), the “thetes” (as a census class) also included small landowners. It is precisely the line separating the thetes and zeugite census classes that has been one of the most hotly debated issues of late among historians of archaic and classical Athens. With respect to this debate, I am clearly in favour of accepting that the term “thetes” corresponded, after Solon, to the members of the demos of the lowest status (small landowners and non-landowners), those who in time would emerge as the “sub-hoplite demos”, since they did not generally have the means to purchase the hoplite panoply. Therefore, in the zeugite census class, technically those peasants owning a yoke of oxen, there were also many small landowners (probably with at least c. 40 plethra, as will be seen in the following chapters), plus others who subsequently formed part of this census class, especially from Cleisthenes onwards, who did not own land but had other assets and therefore the means to purchase the hoplite panoply.

Accordingly, the zeugitai are also the object of study here as part of the demos and lower classes of Athens in both the Archaic (sixth century) and Classical periods. In his poems, Solon conceptualises the demos (heterogeneous as it was, as with the elite) as unitary (thus integrating those of lower socioeconomic status with little or no land into the demos, together with small and middling landowners). The lawgiver attempted to reinforce the demos, in the sense of the ‘lower classes’, in the citizen body through legislation (like his amnesty, hybris and neutrality laws), as will examined in these pages, without neglecting the cultural and religious constructs accompanying these processes.

Solon created the census classes for political, probably fiscal but not apparently military purposes, although they did have repercussions for this last aspect, especially with the Cleisthenic restructuring of army organisation and recruitment by tribes from the hoplite katalogoi.

In this way, the thetes, in both the above-mentioned meanings of the word, gradually morphed into a “sub-hoplite demos”, especially in the fifth century. Both this “sub-hoplite” demos (mostly agrarian in character in the sixth century and then chiefly associated with non-agricultural activities in the following one) and its “hoplite” counterpart were perceived as the Athenian “demos” in the sense of the unitary (despite their heterogeneity) “lower classes”, as a political subject like, for example, in the poems of Solon. They were the “many” and the “poor” as opposed to the “few” and the “rich” of the city.

However, the fifth-century imperialist expansion and the development of the Athenian fleet, together with the advent of radical democracy (with the introduction of public wages), contributed to construct a particular idiosyncrasy and identity of the sub-hoplite demos (the thetes) relating to the empire and Athenian power.³ The apparent “divide” in the demos in discourse (the peasant and hoplite demos vs. the “sub-hoplite” demos linked to naval affairs) can be first glimpsed in the plays of Aristophanes; the oligarchic sectors, especially during the Peloponnesian War (but not only, as evidenced by Cimon), emphasised this divide with a rhetoric whose purpose was to restrict democracy. This discourse can be perceived in the oligarchic revolutions and in proposals such as that of Phormisius, at a time of democratic restoration and crisis exacerbated by the war and the ultimate defeat and loss of the empire.

My intention here is to highlight the leading role played by the demos in a broad sense, but paying special attention to the thetes in both meanings of the word, from a total history perspective. This should help to understand the social dynamics of the lower classes in the context of the development of democracy which also had a strong and complex relationship with that of slavery, as well as how the advent of democracy was interwoven with the imperialist expansion of Athens. The (radical) democracy of Athens was underpinned by imperialism and slavery.

Furthermore, the aim here is to identify the “divides” or “rifts” and, on the contrary, “continuities” or “overlaps” not only in the demos as a whole (the sub-hoplite vs. hoplite demos, landowners vs. the “landless”, peasants vs. artisans, zeugitai and thetes, etc.) but between the demos and those “outside” or on the margins of citizenship, viz. foreigners, metics, slaves, freedmen and atimoi. These excluded collectives comprised a “potential demos”, despite their distinctions (which the members of the hoplite and “sub-hoplite” demos also drew between themselves and “outsiders”) especially in the field of culture (e.g. autochthony and the role of the Athenians as the liberators of Greece). This did not only have to do with the fact that the members of the Athenian demos could themselves – because of their poverty – be mistaken for outsiders (e.g. in Against Eubulides) but because they (the excluded) could “aspire” and “be prone to” being integrated into the demos (as occurred with the spectacular demographic growth during the Pentecontaetia, and afterward at those moments when Pericles’ citizenship law was relaxed during the Peloponnesian War or, in more formal and “official” proposals under Cleisthenes, Thrasybulus and Hyperides, which were more or less successful). This interrelation/competition between the demos (in the sense of the lower classes) and slavery was also a result of the mass development of chattel or external slavery which to a certain extent guaranteed the freedom of the demos (especially that of the lowest status). Broadly speaking, chattel slavery meant that citizens had more leisure time to become involved in political activity. Chattel or external slavery thus contributed “to free” the local rural population (especially the poorest) from dependent productive work in Athens itself.⁴ Indeed, a large part of the local rural population of Attica would not have had access to citizenship or would have been disenfranchised without these developments.⁵

In addition to the lower classes, the demos can be understood as the body politic and assembly as a whole.⁶ For this reason, the relationship between the lower classes and the elite, the aristoi in the Archaic period and since Solon apparently only the “rich” (plousioi) – although lineage continued to be relevant – should not be overlooked. The social dynamics of these relationships and their interrelations in the elite power struggle (the “horizontal” stasis) provide insights into the historical developments that led, for example, to the rise of Pisistratus and the election of Cleisthenes. In these developments, the demos’ gradual rejection of clientelism played an essential role, as did its adoption of an “autonomous personality and conscience” (without, however, completely detaching itself from the aspects mentioned above), which allowed its members to elect Cleisthenes as their leader, thus leading to the advent of democracy.