=Athenian Revolutions.=—­Later still the kings were suppressed.  In their place Athens had nine chiefs (the archons) who changed every year.  This whole history is little known to us for no writing of the time is preserved.  They used to say that for centuries the Athenians had lived in discord; the nobles (Eupatrids) who were proprietors of the soil oppressed the peasants on their estates; creditors held their debtors as slaves.  To reestablish order the Athenians commissioned Solon, a sage, to draft a code of laws for them (594).

Solon made three reforms: 

  1.  He lessened the value of the money, which allowed the debtors
  to release themselves more easily.

  2.  He made the peasants proprietors of the land that they
  cultivated.  From this time there were in Attica more small
  proprietors than in any other part of Greece.

3.  He grouped all the citizens into four classes according to their incomes.  Each had to pay taxes and to render military service according to his wealth, the poor being exempt from taxation and military service.

After Solon the Athenians were subject to Pisistratus, one of their powerful and clever citizens; but in 510 the dissensions revived.

=Reforms of Cleisthenes.=—­Cleisthenes, leader of one of the parties, used the occasion to make a thoroughgoing revolution.

There were many strangers in Athens, especially seamen and traders who lived in Piraeus near the harbor.  Cleisthenes gave them the rights of citizenship and made them equal[68] to the older inhabitants.  From this time there were two populations side by side—­the people of Attica and those of Piraeus.  A difference of physical features was apparent for three centuries afterward:  the people of Attica resembled the rest of the Greeks; those in Piraeus resembled Asiatics.  The Athenian people thus augmented was a new people, the most active in Greece.

THE ATHENIAN PEOPLE

In the fifth century the society of Athens was definitely formed:  three classes inhabited the district of Attica—­slaves, foreigners, and citizens.

=The Slaves.=—­The slaves constituted the great majority of the population; there was no man so poor that he did not have at least one slave; the rich owned a multitude of them, some as many as five hundred.  The larger part of the slaves lived in the house occupied with grinding grain, kneading bread, spinning and weaving cloth, performing the service of the kitchens, and in attendance on their masters.  Others labored in the shops as blacksmiths, as dyers, or in stone quarries or silver mines.  Their master fed them but sold at a profit everything which they produced, giving them in return nothing but their living.  All the domestic servants, all the miners, and the greater part of the artisans were slaves.  These men lived in society but without any part in