Only adult male Athenian citizens who had completed their military training as ephebes had the right to vote in Athens.

Another interesting insight into Athenian democracy comes from the law that excluded from decisions of war those citizens who had property close to the city walls-on the basis that they had a personal interest in the outcome of such debates because the practice of an invading army at the time was to destroy the land outside the walls.

A case can be made that discriminatory lines came to be drawn more sharply under Athenian democracy than before or elsewhere, in particular in relation to woman and slaves, as well as in the line between citizens and non-citizens.

Proponents ( especially of majoritarianism ) deny these accusations, and argue that any faults in Athenian democracy were because the franchise was quite limited ( only male citizens could vote — women, slaves and non-citizens were excluded ).

Athenian democracy took the form of a direct democracy, and it had two distinguishing features: the random selection of ordinary citizens to fill the few existing government administrative and judicial offices, and a legislative assembly consisting of all Athenian citizens.

Athenian democracy was not only direct in the sense that decisions were made by the assembled people, but also directest in the sense that the people through the assembly, boule and courts of law controlled the entire political process and a large proportion of citizens were involved constantly in the public business.

Athenian citizens were familiar with rhetoric in the assembly and law courts, and some scholars believe that Euripides was more interested in his characters as speakers with cases to argue than as characters with lifelike personalities.

In Athenian democracy, idiots were born and citizens were made through education ( although citizenship was also largely hereditary ).

Although ten years of exile would have been difficult for an Athenian to face, it was relatively mild in comparison to the kind of sentences inflicted by courts ; when dealing with politicians held to be acting against the interests of the people, Athenian juries could inflict very severe penalties such as death, unpayably large fines, confiscation of property, permanent exile and loss of citizens ' rights through atimia.

A further source of provocation was an Athenian decree, issued in 433 / 2 BC, imposing stringent trade sanctions on Megarian citizens ( once more a Spartan ally after the conclusion of the First Peloponnesian War ).

A majority of the dikasts ( Athenian citizens chosen by lot to serve as jurors ) voted to convict him.

Themistocles proposed that the silver should be used to build a new fleet of 200 triremes, whilst Aristides suggested it should instead be distributed amongst the Athenian citizens.

However, as happened to many prominent individuals in the Athenian democracy, Themistocles's fellow citizens grew jealous of his success, and possibly tired of his boasting.

In response to the pleadings of a number of Athenian citizens, Cleon's decree to destroy the population of Mytilene is reversed with only the ringleaders of the Mytilenean revolt being executed.

Plato famously formalized < nowiki > the </ nowiki > Socratic elenctic style in prose — presenting Socrates as the curious questioner of some prominent Athenian interlocutor — in some of his early dialogues, such as Euthyphro and Ion, and the method is most commonly found within the so-called " Socratic dialogues ", which generally portray Socrates engaging in the method and questioning his fellow citizens about moral and epistemological issues.

There was an assembly of Athenian citizens ( the Ekklesia ) but the lowest class ( the Thetes ) was not admitted and its deliberative procedures were controlled by the nobles.

* The Athenian Archonship becomes elective by lot from all the citizens, an important milestone in the move towards radical Athenian democracy.

The identification of Ajax with the family of Aeacus was chiefly a matter which concerned the Athenians, after Salamis had come into their possession, on which occasion Solon is said to have inserted a line in the Iliad ( 2. 557 – 558 ), for the purpose of supporting the Athenian claim to the island.

Kotys had already married his daughter to the Athenian general Iphicrates.

Running the courts was one of the major expenses of the Athenian state and there were moments of financial crisis in the 4th century when the courts, at least for private suits, had to be suspended.

Athenian democracy had many critics, both ancient and modern.

Even with respect to slavery the new citizen law of 450 BC may have had effect: it is speculated that originally Athenian fathers had been able to register for citizenship offspring had with slave women ( Hansen 1987: 53 ).

Xanthippus, the Athenian commander at Mycale, had furiously rejected this ; the Ionian cities were originally Athenian colonies, and the Athenians, if no-one else, would protect the Ionians.

The Epidaurians had been accustomed to make annual offerings to the Athenian deities Athena and Erechtheus in payment for the Athenian olive-wood of which the statues were made.

The plot failed owing to the late arrival of the Athenian force, when Nicodromus had already fled the island.

Herodotus had no Athenian victories to record after the initial success, and the fact that Themistocles was able to carry his proposal to devote the surplus funds of the state to the building of so large a fleet seems to imply that the Athenians were themselves convinced that a supreme effort was necessary.

In 510 BC, with the aid of Cleomenes I, King of Sparta, the Athenian people had expelled Hippias, the tyrant ruler of Athens.

The Persians sailed down the coast of Attica, and landed at the bay of Marathon, roughly from Athens, on the advice of the exiled Athenian tyrant Hippias ( who had accompanied the expedition ).

Furthermore, raising such a large army had denuded Athens of defenders, and thus any secondary attack in the Athenian rear would cut the army off from the city ; and any direct attack on the city could not be defended against.

The Athenians had honed their style of fighting in combat with other phalanxes, wooden shields smashing against wooden shields, iron spear tips clattering against breastplates of bronze ... in those first terrible seconds of collision, there was nothing but a pulverizing crash of metal into flesh and bone ; then the rolling of the Athenian tide over men wearing, at most, quilted jerkins for protection, and armed, perhaps, with nothing more than bows or slings.

The Athenian wings quickly routed the inferior Persian levies on the flanks, before turning inwards to surround the Persian centre, which had been more successful against the thin Greek centre.

The two tribes which had been in the centre of the Athenian line stayed to guard the battlefield under the command of Aristides.

The Athenian politician Aristides would spend the rest of his life occupied in the affairs of the alliance, dying ( according to Plutarch ) a few years later in Pontus, whilst determining what the tax of new members was to be.

By 454, the Delian League could be fairly characterized as an Athenian Empire ; at the start of the Peloponnesian War, only Chios and Lesbos were left to contribute ships, and these states were by now far too weak to secede without support.

It would be a mistake to attribute the fall of Aegina solely to the development of the Athenian navy.

There are many variations of this theory, but perhaps the most prevalent is that the cavalry was re-embarked on the ships, and was to be sent by sea to attack ( undefended ) Athens in the rear, whilst the rest of the Persians pinned down the Athenian army at Marathon.

Since the Persian force obviously contained a high proportion of missile troops, a static defensive position would have made little sense for the Athenians ; the strength of the hoplite was in the melee, and the sooner that could be brought about, the better, from the Athenian point of view.

It is therefore probable that this arrangement was made, possibly at the last moment, so that the Athenian line was as long as the Persian line, and would not therefore be outflanked.

The battle was a defining moment for the young Athenian democracy, showing what might be achieved through unity and self-belief ; indeed, the battle effectively marks the start of a " golden age " for Athens.

It seems that the Athenian playwright Aeschylus considered his participation at Marathon to be his greatest achievement in life ( rather than his plays ) since on his gravestone there was the following epigram:

The Trojan Women for example is a powerfully disturbing play on the theme of war's horrors, apparently critical of Athenian imperialism ( it was composed in the aftermath of the Melian massacre and during the preparations for the Sicilian Expedition ) yet it features the comic exchange between Menelaus and Hecuba quoted above and the chorus considers Athens, the " blessed land of Theus ", to be a desirable refugesuch complexity and ambiguity are typical both of his ' patriotic ' and ' anti-war ' plays.

According to Eusebius and Plutarch, Herodotus was granted a financial reward by the Athenian assembly in recognition of his work and there may be some truth in this.

Minos required that seven Athenian youths and seven maidens, drawn by lots, be sent every seventh or ninth year ( some accounts say every year ) to be devoured by the Minotaur.

A supposedly older tree, the " Peisistratos Tree ", is located by the banks of the Cephisus River, in the municipality of Agioi Anargyroi, and is said to be a remnant of an olive grove that was planted by Athenian tyrant Peisistratos in the 6th century BC.

Ostracism (, ostrakismos ) was a procedure under the Athenian democracy in which any citizen could be expelled from the city-state of Athens for ten years.

There was no charge or defense, and the exile was not in fact a penalty ; it was simply a command from the Athenian people that one of their number be gone for ten years.

Ostracism was crucially different from Athenian law at the time ; there was no charge, and no defence could be mounted by the person expelled.

In Plutarch, following as he does the anti-democratic line common in elite sources, the fact that people might be recalled early appears to be another example of the inconsistency of majoritarianism that was characteristic of Athenian democracy.