The Athenian Constitution   

Part 1

...[They were tried] by a court empanelled from among the noble
families, and sworn upon the sacrifices. The part of accuser
was taken
by Myron. They were found guilty of the sacrilege, and their bodies
were cast out of their graves and their race banished for
evermore. In
view of this expiation, Epimenides the Cretan performed a
purification
of the city.

Part 2

After this event there was contention for a long time between the
upper classes and the populace. Not only was the constitution at
this time oligarchical in every respect, but the poorer classes,
men, women, and children, were the serfs of the rich. They were
known as Pelatae and also as Hectemori, because they cultivated the
lands of the rich at the rent thus indicated. The whole
country was in
the hands of a few persons, and if the tenants failed to pay their
rent they were liable to be haled into slavery, and their children
with them. All loans secured upon the debtor's person, a custom
which prevailed until the time of Solon, who was the first to appear
as the champion of the people. But the hardest and bitterest part of
the constitution in the eyes of the masses was their state
of serfdom.
Not but what they were also discontented with every other feature of
their lot; for, to speak generally, they had no part nor share in
anything.

Part 3

Now the ancient constitution, as it existed before the time of
Draco, was organized as follows. The magistrates were elected
according to qualifications of birth and wealth. At first they
governed for life, but subsequently for terms of ten years. The
first magistrates, both in date and in importance, were the King,
the Polemarch, and the Archon. The earliest of these offices was
that of the King, which existed from ancestral antiquity. To this
was added, secondly, the office of Polemarch, on account of some of
the kings proving feeble in war; for it was on this account that Ion
was invited to accept the post on an occasion of pressing need. The
last of the three offices was that of the Archon, which most
authorities state to have come into existence in the time of Medon.
Others assign it to the time of Acastus, and adduce as proof the
fact that the nine Archons swear to execute their oaths 'as in the
days of Acastus,' which seems to suggest that it was in his time
that the descendants of Codrus retired from the kingship in
return for
the prerogatives conferred upon the Archon. Whichever way it may be,
the difference in date is small; but that it was the last of these
magistracies to be created is shown by the fact that the
Archon has no
part in the ancestral sacrifices, as the King and the Polemarch
have, but exclusively in those of later origin. So it is only at a
comparatively late date that the office of Archon has become of
great importance, through the dignity conferred by these later
additions. The Thesmothetae were many years afterwards, when these
offices had already become annual, with the object that they might
publicly record all legal decisions, and act as guardians of