Transcript Page 133 Discussion.

 For years, the laws in Athens were never written down.
 The Aristocrats would often bend the rules to suit themselves.
 The aristocrats would justify it by saying the gods had given them the power.
 People eventually became unsatisfied with this explanation.
 They demanded for the laws to be written down.
 The first written laws were by a man named Draco.
 They were said to apply to all members of society, not just the poor.
 Death was a very common punishment including for stealing fruit or sleeping in a
public place.
 These harsh laws added to the anger of the poor who were already losing their
land to wealthy aristocrats.
 If a person could not repay their debts they became a slave to their debtor.
 The poor began to threaten violence.
 The Athenian ruler Solon was asked to solve the problem.
 He created a compromise that eased the tension between rich and poor.
 He created four social classes based on wealth.
 He outlawed debt slavery.
 He only allowed members of top 3 classes to hold political office.
 But, any citizen could participate in the Athenian assembly.
 Also any citizen could bring charges of wrongdoing against any person.
 Allowed all citizens to submit drafts of laws for the assembly to consider.
 Created the Council of 500 whose job was to propose law to assembly.
 The Councils’ members were supposed to be chosen at random.
 Only free adult males were able to participate in the political process.
 Women slaves and foreigners were excluded.
 The Athenians believed in a well rounded education for boys.
 They focused on most of the same subjects we teach in American schools.
 Girls were expected to learn from their mothers or nanny’s about child raising,
weaving, cooking and other skills that they believed would create good wives and
mothers.
 In 725 B.C. they were running out of farmland so they conquered the neighboring
Messenians.
 They made slaves of the people and called them helots.
 They made the helots give them half their crops each year.
 The Messenians revolted.
 The Spartans were outnumbered 8 to 1 and they barely won.
 This increased their dedication and focus toward war.
 Boys were taken from home at age 7.
 They could not speak at will.
 They were purposefully underfed to encourage them to steal food and learn to be
stealthy.
 They slept without blankets on hard benches.
 Some of the most promising teenagers were sent to live in the woods and murder
helots who plotted revolt.
 Study of literature, arts and music was forbidden in order to maintain unity in
thinking.
 There was a council of 28 men over the age of sixty along with 2 kings.
 This “Council of Thirty” wrote and proposed laws to be considered by the
assembly.
 The assembly could approve or reject the laws.
 There was also a group of men called Ephors who were elected annually.
 They could bring charges against the king and even imprison him.