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This is not the place to discuss in detail whether the society depicted in the Homeric epics is in any sense historical or, if it is, whether it can be located precisely in time and space or viewed instead as a mélange of societies that belong to different periods and localities (for a more extended discussion, see Hall 2002: 230–236). Although Homeric characters traverse a landscape that is undeniably that of Late Bronze Age Greece, persuasive arguments have been made that the social structures, customs, and values portrayed in the epics must have been at least partly meaningful to audiences of the eighth and early-seventh centuries.⁵ With Hesiod’s Works and Days, however, we are on firmer ground. One does not need to read autobiographically the Hesiodic persona of the peasant-poet, squabbling with his brother over an inheritance, to recognize that the moral and didactic nature of the poem would be severely compromised if the situations described were unimaginable to an audience (Hall 2014: 25–26).

One of the more significant developments of the seventh century is the appearance of named magistracies, which signals a shift from societies where status and authority were “achieved,” through charisma, the ability to persuade, and the demonstration of military prowess and conspicuous generosity, to a situation where status is “ascribed” by the office one holds (Hall 2014: 142). In the poems of Hesiod, for example, leadership in the community is exercised by a plurality of basileis (e.g., Theog. 80–90, 429–438; WD 37–39). The word basileus had, in the Mycenaean period, denoted a medium-ranking official in the palatial administration although by the classical period it came to be used either of monarchs, especially foreign ones, or of an elected or appointed official, such as the archōn basileus at Athens ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 57.1). In Hesiod, however, its employment seems less well defined—especially when considered in the light of the term’s meaning in the Homeric epics. When Nestor describes Agamemnon as the “most basileus” (basileutatos) of the Achaeans (Il. 9.69) or when Agamemnon argues that he is “more of a basileus” than Achilles (9.160), it is clear that basileus connotes a relative, rather than absolute, status. In essence, the Homeric basileus is more akin to what some anthropologists have termed a “big man” or a “chieftain” than to a sovereign ruler (Sahlins 1963; though see Yoffee 2005: 22–41). Because such positions are “achieved” through personal virtues, they risk instability across generations: there is certainly some aspiration toward hereditary succession (e.g., Il. 2.100–108; Od. 4.62–64) but there is no certainty that Odysseus’ son Telemachus will inherent his father’s position, while Odysseus himself wields authority even though his father Laertes is still alive (Qviller 1981; Donlan 1985; 1997; Tandy 1997: 84–111).

What is interesting is that, unlike in the Iliad, the Odyssey preempts the situation described by Hesiod, whereby communities were ruled by a plurality or college of basileis: Antinous tells Penelope that there are “many other basileis of the Achaeans in sea-girt Ithaca, both young and old” (1.394–5) while Alcinous notes that he is one of 13 basileis who hold sway over the Phaeacians (8.390–1). This is largely, no doubt, a consequence of a rise in population that can be traced back to the second half of the eighth century even if the scale of this increase is disputed (Snodgrass 1980: 15–48; Morris 1987: 156–167; Scheidel 2003). The archaeology of ancient cities such as Athens, Eretria, Corinth, and Argos suggests that the physical epiphenomenon of demographic increase was an expansion of formerly discrete, village-like clusters of habitation to create a single, continuous settlement area (Hall 2016: 282, 285). Community leaders had essentially two options: either to subdue, or yield to, a fellow basileus or to subscribe to a power-sharing arrangement. The latter is almost certainly what accounts for a transition from a hierarchically structured elite, where preeminence was always contested and precarious, to a collective ruling class regulated by legal procedures (Stein-Hölkeskamp 2015: 85)—a transition that is documented initially in the epigraphic record by the emergence of named magistracies.

So, 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