m
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 it; they had not even the disposition of their
own bodies, being wholly the property of other men. They were thought of
only as objects of property; they were often referred to as "a body"
({~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL
LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}). There was no other law for
them than the will of their master, and he had all power over them--to
make them work, to imprison them, to deprive them of their sustenance,
to beat them. When a citizen went to law, his adversary had the right to
require that the former's slaves should be put to the torture to tell
what they knew. Many Athenian orators commend this usa