This is the History of the World Podcast with me Chris Hasler

And you're listening to volume three, the classical world

episode 8

Ancient Athens Part 2. Oh, Last time on the history of the World Podcast we took a close look at the early development of ancient

Athens. We looked at how the city recovered from the Lake Bronze Age collapse and how after reverting back to a basic lifestyle

the city was slowly begin to acquire wealth and the population would grow. We saw how the wealthiest families would be regarded as the Athenian

aristocracy and how they would create an oligarchic style of rule, with many elected archons annually ruling the

police and with a council of elders called the Ariopagus overseeing.

In the meantime, other Polace were developing in a similar manner,

creating a necessity for success in order to keep up with the neighbours

and forcing Polace like Athens to advance quickly.

The pressures would result in an attempted coup d'etat, which failed but worried the aristocracy enough to make radical reforms in order to keep the lower classes on their side. A man called Solon was made the tyrant of Athens

temporarily in order to create the necessary changes and he would create a general assembly of common citizens

who would have the ability to vote on the fortunes of Athens.

Despite these modernising reforms, Athens went from one form of dysfunctionality to another, and

this would result in a successful coup which was supported by the General Assembly

in the year 561 B.C. and led by a man called Piscisstratus.

Piscis would rule as tyrant and would make the necessary reforms

in order to keep Athens up with its neighbours. Now we need to find out

what happened next in the story of ancient Athens. As we mentioned in last week's podcast, Pissistratus was a good tyrant.

He opened up the restricted trade laws of Athens allowing for artisans and producers of resources much more opportunity to make money.

He would also allow people to borrow money from the state to buy land for agricultural means which would now have more value with more

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