for example, a law that was set up in the second half of the seventh century in the sanctuary of Apollo Delphinios at Dreros on Crete prescribes a series of regulations concerned with a magistracy named the kosmos (ML 2/Fornara 11). A sacred law from the citadel of Tiryns, dated to ca. 600 BCE, lists officials named as platiwoinarchoi, hiaromnamōn, and epignōmōn (SEG 30.380) while a kosmos, a kosmos ksenios (a magistrate charged with regulating non-residents?) and a gnōmōn are documented at Cretan Gortyn for the sixth century (IC 4.14). By the second quarter of the sixth century, Argos was administered by officials known as damiourgoi (IG IV 614; SEG 11 314). A law from Chios (ML 8/Fornara 19), dated to ca. 575–550 and now in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, refers to a dēmarchos (leader of the people) but also testifies to the fact that the formerly generic term basileus had been repurposed as the title of a formal office; the same may be true at Athens, if the late fifth-century republication of Dracon’s law code (ML 86/Fornara 15B) employs genuine titles that go back to the late-seventh century. It is, then, intriguing that named offices do not as a rule feature in the fragments of the archaic poets. Aristotle (Pol. 1285a) characterizes Pittacus as an aisymnētēs, or “elected tyrant,” and this is a magistracy that is later attested in some cities (e.g., IG VII 15 from Megara), though we cannot gauge the credibility of Aristotle’s source here. Sappho’s reference (fr. 161 Campbell) to the “basileis of poleis is unlikely to refer to titled officials but neither can we be sure that it is employed in the Homeric sense, as opposed to denoting non-Greek or mythical rulers. Perhaps the avoidance of specialized titles was an attempt to evoke a milieu that seemed more panhellenic and less local.
Just as important as the mere attestation of the title kosmos in the Dreros inscription is the fact that a term-limit is imposed: we learn that individuals were prohibited from holding the office more than once in any 10-year period. At Gortyn, there was a 3-year prohibition on iteration of the office of kosmos, 5 years in the case of the kosmos ksenios, and 10 years for the gnōmōn. The intention would seem to have been, negatively, to prevent certain individuals or families from becoming too powerful and, more positively, to ensure that there was an equitable distribution of executive offices among the group of those eligible to rule.6 This principle of the rotation of office, “ruling and being ruled in turn,” would be a fundamental characteristic of the Greek polis, regardless of the type of constitution it adopted, and it accounts for why so many early Greek laws are focused on matters of procedure. As for the qualifications for office, there is nothing to contradict the view that eligibility was determined by birth and/or wealth. The Aristotelian author of the Constitution of the Athenians (7.3) claims that the early sixth-century poet and statesman Solon reorganized, rather than instituted, property qualifications for the holding of office, but the most important office of archōn was not opened up to more than a narrow elite until as late as 457 BC ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 26.2).
It is, then, the second half of the seventh century that witnesses the “institutionalization and formalization” of the early Greek state (Gehrke 2009: 405). Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in what may be the earliest constitutional document to survive from archaic Greece—namely, the Great Rhetra of Sparta, preserved only in Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus (6). In Plutarch’s account, the Great Rhetra sets out provisions for (i) the foundation of sanctuaries to Zeus and Athena; (ii) a reorganization of the civic body into “tribes” (phylai) and either villages or tribal subdivisions (obai); (iii) the establishment of a council of 28 elders (gerousia) together with the 2 archagetai—i.e., the two “kings,” who at Sparta, unusually, were hereditary; (iv) the regular holding of assembly meetings (apellai) at which proposals will be introduced or set aside; and (v) the ultimate power of the people (damos [i.e., dēmos, or “people”]), although a “crooked” decision by the people could be vetoed by the kings and the elders.7 That the provisions of the Rhetra may actually date back to the seventh century is suggested strongly by what appears to be a reference to them in some verses by Tyrtaeus (fr. 4W quoted by Diod. Sic. 7.12.5–6 [in italics]):
Having listened to Phoebus (Apollo), they brought home from Pytho (Delphi) the prophecies and truthful words of the god: the god-honored basileis, who care for the lovely polis of Sparta, and the aged elders are to be in charge of deliberation; then the men of the dēmos, responding to (or with?) straight proposals (or utterances?), are to speak noble words and do just deeds and not give [crooked] council to the polis. Victory and power are to accompany the mass of the dēmos. For thus did Phoebus reveal about these things to the polis.8
That the kings and the—presumably aristocratic—council of elders had the ultimate say is far less surprising than the assertion that kratos (power) rests with the damos. But in light of the veto clause, this is probably best understood as meaning that the popular assembly was simply expected to validate proposals submitted by elite officials—a legacy of an earlier period when leaders of much smaller communities sought to immunize their precarious status by seeking consensus for their decisions and actions. If it is true that decision-making in the early Greek city was characterized by both elite office-holding and popular participation,9 then perhaps arguments as to whether there was originally a property qualification for attending the assembly are misplaced.
Certainly, the law regulating the office of kosmos at Dreros (ML 2/Fornara 11) was endorsed by the community as a whole (“this has been decided by the polis”) and was sworn to by the kosmos, the damioi (perhaps the name of a magistracy, if not the members of the dēmos itself), and “the twenty”—probably a council akin to the gerousia at Sparta. Similar institutions are attested elsewhere. Alcaeus (fr. 130B Campbell) bemoans his life as an exile, distanced from the deliberative mechanisms of his home community
I, wretch that I am, live a rustic life, desiring to hear the assembly (agora) being summoned, Agesilaidas, and the council (bolla); but I have been driven from the property which my father and my grandfather held into old age, amidst these mutually-destructive citizens, and I live as an exile in the borderlands.
The law from Chios (ML 8/Fornara 19) refers to a popular council (bolēn dēmosiēn), which is presumably distinct from an older, aristocratic council and a popular council may also have existed at Athens in this period, in addition to the aristocratic council of the Areopagos: Solon, at any rate, is credited with establishing a new council of 400 ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 8.4).10
The Rise of an Aristocracy
There is some reflection in the archaeological record of this transition from achieved to ascribed authority and from a ranked, pre-state to a stratified statal society.11 The archaeology of eighth-century Argos reveals no evidence for aristocratic cemeteries, but there is a handful of “warrior graves” belonging to different generations and different settlement nuclei, which is suggestive of basileis presiding over small-scale communities (Hall 2014: 134–135). In Eretria, the 16 wealthy burials belonging to the cemetery by the West Gate, dated ca. 720–680 BC, are more likely to belong to a single family than a ruling class (Bérard 1970; Ducrey 2006), while the apsidal structure (the so-called “Daphnephorion”) excavated within the sanctuary of Apollo Daphnephoros is better appointed but certainly not much more luxurious than its neighbors (Verdan 2013), suggesting the residence of a primus inter pares. Like the earlier monumental building in the Toumba plot at Lefkandi, the Eretria house seems to have been in use for only a short period of time, which might reflect the intergenerational instability of such authoritative regimes (Whitley 1991). Further buildings have been tentatively identified with basileis at Thermon in Aetolia, Nichoria in Messenia, and Koukounaries on Paros.12 Open spaces may have served as venues for meetings of the community as early as the eighth century at sites such as Koukounaries, Dreros, Zagora on Andros, and Emborio on Chios (Hölscher 1999)—although they could also have served ritual or festal functions—but it is not until the second half
