Athenian Zeugitai and the Solonian Census Classes: New Reflections and Perspectives

Abstract

It has recently been claimed that the Solonian zeugitai were, according to Lin Foxhall (1997), moderately well-off farmers, or, in the opinion of Hans van Wees (2001; 2006), landowners who were members of the Athenian (with at least 8 or 9 hectares excluding fallow land, or some 16 ha if land periodically left uncultivated is included). This would mean that the zeugitai belonged to the wealthy elite that made up approximately 15 or 20 % of the citizen population of the archaic and classical periods. As a result, van Wees has directly called into question the very existence of a middle of farmers and suggested that the thetes regularly served in the Athenian army as hoplites, but on a voluntary basis. The principal arguments put forward by both Foxhall and van Wees rely on the evidence of Aristotle's Athenian Constitution (Ath. Pol. 7.4), reproduced by Plutarch (Sol. 18.1-2) and possibly by Pollux (8.130) in a rather different version. In this article we propose to reflect on the zeugitai of the archaic and classical periods offering new arguments in favour of the hypothesis that supports their importance as a broad group of middling peasants, who reached the level of hoplites, owned a yoke of oxen and, according to modern calculations, possessed a certain level of income derived from an average landholding of about 4-6 ha1. We shall develop our argument on the basis of three fundamental questions. First, we shall analyse the arguments that suggest that the great majority of the zeugitai in the fifth century were a of middling peasants that made up the bulk of the Athe nian hoplites. So they did not belong to a leisured class, and on occasions aligned themselves with the thetes. Secondly, we shall look at the formation and consolidation of this class of hoplite peasants in Athens during the archaic era. Finally, we shall reflect on the conditions in the late fifth or fourth century that paved the way for the situation described (and the measures) we find in Aristotle and Pollux associated with Solon's reforms.