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Updated: May 4, 2025
This obstacle is generally thought to have ceased by the adoption of the representative system. But to surmount it completely, required the press, and even the newspaper press, the real equivalent, though not in all respects an adequate one, of the Pnyx and the Forum.
All hands were on deck, all the afternoon, with books and maps and glasses, trying to determine which "narrow rocky ridge" was the Areopagus, which sloping hill the Pnyx, which elevation the Museum Hill, and so on. And we got things confused. Discussion became heated, and party spirit ran high. Church members were gazing with emotion upon a hill which they said was the one St.
Thousands crowded the lane betwixt the temples and porches, seeking the assembly place,—through a narrow, ill-built way, but the great area of the Pnyx opened before them like the slopes of some noble theatre. No seats; rich and poor sat down upon the rocky ground.
The people streamed thither, but they did not weep. They only wondered what would now happen, and felt almost glad of a change. Cleon the tanner stood in the orator's pulpit in the Pnyx. Among his most attentive hearers were Alcibiades, Anytos, and Nicias. Cleon said: "Pericles is dead, and Pericles is buried; now you know it.
But he established a council of four hundred men, elected annually by the people, whose duty it was to consider the business upon which the assembly was to act. And the assembly could only deal with business that was brought before it by this council. The assemblies of the people took place on the Pnyx, a hill that overlooked the city, and from which could be seen the distant sea.
The term used to designate the assembly of the faithful was the Hebrew Kahal, which was rendered by the essentially democratic word Ecclesia, which is the convocation of the people in the ancient Grecian cities, the summons to the Pnyx or the Agora.
Thrice the call in vain; but at the fourth time a wave of silence swept across the Pnyx. A figure well beloved was taking the wreath and mounting the Bema. The words of Themistocles that day were to ring in his hearer’s ears till life’s end. The careless, almost sybaritic, man of the Isthmus and Eleusis seemed transfigured. For one moment he stood silent, lofty, awe-inspiring.
Then, smiling sweetly, "Dear boy," said he, "were I such as you fancy, how should I be here now, discoursing with you concerning truth, instead of conning my speech for the Pnyx, like Alcibiades, that I may become a demagogue, deceiving the mob with flattery, and win for myself houses, and lands, and gold, and slave-girls, and fame, and power, even to a tyranny itself?
Nevertheless, upon receipt of the news, the Athenians manned twenty ships and called immediately a first assembly in the Pnyx, where they had been used to meet formerly, and deposed the Four Hundred and voted to hand over the government to the Five Thousand, of which body all who furnished a suit of armour were to be members, decreeing also that no one should receive pay for the discharge of any office, or if he did should be held accursed.
The irresistible reason, as well as the proud and resolute bearing of this discourse, set forth with an eloquence which it was not possible for Thucydides to reproduce together with the age and character of Pericles carried the assent of the assembled people, who when in the Pnyx, and engaged according to habit on public matters, would for a moment forget their private sufferings in considerations of the safety and grandeur of Athens.
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