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The Alcmaeonidae or Alcmaeonids (???ľa????da?) were a powerful noble family of ancient Athens
Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
, a branch of the Neleides
Neleides

Neleides was a patronymic of ancient Greece derived from Neleus, son of the Greek god Poseidon, and was used to refer to his descandants. In literature, this name typically designated either Nestor , the son of Neleus, or Antilochus, his grandson....
 who claimed descent from the mythological
Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
 Alcmaeon, the grandson of Nestor
Nestor

Nestor may refer to:*Nestor , the son of Neleus, the King of Pylos and Chloris in Greek mythology*Nestor *Nestor , a genus of parrots in ornithology...
.

The first notable Alcmaeonid was Megacles
Megacles

Megacles was the name of several notable men of ancient Athens:1. Megacles was possibly a legendary Archon of Athens from 922 BC to 892 BC....
, who was the Archon Eponymous
Archon

Archon is a Greek language word that means "ruler", frequently used as the title of a specific public office. It is the masculine present participle of the verb stem ???-, meaning "to rule", derived from the same root as monarch, hierarchy and anarchism....
 of Athens in the 7th century BC. He was responsible for killing the followers of Cylon of Athens
Cylon of Athens

Cylon was an Athens associated with the first reliably dated event in Athenian history, the Cylonian affair.Cylon, one of the Athenian nobles and a previous victor of the Olympic Games, attempted a coup in 632 BC with support from Megara, where his father-in-law Theagenes was tyrant....
 during the attempted coup of 632 BC, as Cylon had taken refuge as a suppliant at the temple of Athena
Athena

In Greek mythology, Athena is the shrewd companion of Hero and the goddess of Hero endeavour. She is the virgin patron of Athens, which built the Parthenon to worship her....
.






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The Alcmaeonidae or Alcmaeonids (???ľa????da?) were a powerful noble family of ancient Athens
Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
, a branch of the Neleides
Neleides

Neleides was a patronymic of ancient Greece derived from Neleus, son of the Greek god Poseidon, and was used to refer to his descandants. In literature, this name typically designated either Nestor , the son of Neleus, or Antilochus, his grandson....
 who claimed descent from the mythological
Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
 Alcmaeon, the grandson of Nestor
Nestor

Nestor may refer to:*Nestor , the son of Neleus, the King of Pylos and Chloris in Greek mythology*Nestor *Nestor , a genus of parrots in ornithology...
.

The first notable Alcmaeonid was Megacles
Megacles

Megacles was the name of several notable men of ancient Athens:1. Megacles was possibly a legendary Archon of Athens from 922 BC to 892 BC....
, who was the Archon Eponymous
Archon

Archon is a Greek language word that means "ruler", frequently used as the title of a specific public office. It is the masculine present participle of the verb stem ???-, meaning "to rule", derived from the same root as monarch, hierarchy and anarchism....
 of Athens in the 7th century BC. He was responsible for killing the followers of Cylon of Athens
Cylon of Athens

Cylon was an Athens associated with the first reliably dated event in Athenian history, the Cylonian affair.Cylon, one of the Athenian nobles and a previous victor of the Olympic Games, attempted a coup in 632 BC with support from Megara, where his father-in-law Theagenes was tyrant....
 during the attempted coup of 632 BC, as Cylon had taken refuge as a suppliant at the temple of Athena
Athena

In Greek mythology, Athena is the shrewd companion of Hero and the goddess of Hero endeavour. She is the virgin patron of Athens, which built the Parthenon to worship her....
. Megacles and his Alcmaeonid followers inherited a curse and were exiled from the city. Even the bodies of buried Alcmaeonidae were dug up and removed from the city limits.

The Alcmaeonids were allowed back into the city in 594 BC, during the reign of Solon
Solon

Solon was an Athens statesman, lawmaker, and lyric poetry. He is remembered particularly for his efforts to legislate against political, economic and moral decline in Archaic period in Greece Athens....
. During the tyranny
Tyrant

This article is about the political ruler. For other uses see Tyrant and Tyranny In modern usage, a tyrant is a single ruler holding absolute political power over a state or within an organization....
 of Pisistratus
Peisistratos (Athens)

Peisistratus was a tyrant of Athens from 546 to 527/8 BCE. His legacy lies primarily in his institution of the Panathenaic Festival and the consequent first attempt at producing a definitive version for Homeric epics....
, the Alcmaeonid Megacles married his daughter to Pisistratus, but when the tyrant refused to have children with her, Megacles banished him. When Pisistratus returned for his third tyranny in 546 BC, the Alcmaeonids were exiled once more. Nevertheless their reputation remained high, and Megacles was able to marry (for a second or third time) Agarista
Agariste of Sicyon

Agariste was the daughter, and possibly the heiress, of the tyrant of Sicyon, Cleisthenes of Sicyon. Her father wanted to marry her to the best of the Greeks and, subsequently, he organized a competition, whose the prize was his own daughter....
, the daughter of the tyrant Cleisthenes of Sicyon
Cleisthenes of Sicyon

Cleisthenes was the tyrant of Sicyon from c.600-570 BC, who aided in the First Sacred War against Kirrha that destroyed that city in 595 BC. He is also told to have organized with success a war against Argos because of his anti-Dorians feelings....
. They had two sons, Hippocrates and Cleisthenes
Cleisthenes

Cleisthenes was a noble Athens of the Alcmaeonidae family. He is credited with reforming the constitution of ancient Athens and setting it on a Athenian democracy footing in 508 BC or 507 BC....
, the reformer of the Athenian democracy. Hippocrates' daughter was Agariste, the mother of Pericles
Pericles

Pericles was a prominent and influential statesman, orator, and general of History of Athens during the city's Age of Pericles?specifically, the time between the Greco-Persian Wars and Peloponnesian War wars....
.

This Cleisthenes overthrew Hippias
Hippias (son of Pisistratus)

Hippias of Athens was one of the sons of Peisistratos , and was tyrant of Athens in the 6th century BC.Hippias succeeded Peisistratus in 527 BC, and in 525 BC he introduced a new system of coinage in Athens....
, the son and successor of Pisistratus, in 508 BC. He had bribed the oracle at Delphi
Delphi

Delphi is an archaeology site and a modern town in Greece on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis. Delphi was the site of the Pythia, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, when it was a major site for the worship of the god Apollo after he slew the Python , a deity who lived there and protecte...
 (which the Alcmaeonidae had helped to build while they were in exile) to convince the Sparta
Sparta

Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the Eurotas River in the southern part of the Peloponnese. From circa 650 BC it rose to become the dominant military power in the region and as such was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars....
ns to help him, which they reluctantly did. Cleisthenes was, at first, opposed by some who felt the curse made the Alcmaeonidae ineligible to rule; the Spartan king Cleomenes I
Cleomenes I

Cleomenes , was an Agiad Kings of Sparta in the 6th century BC and 5th century BC. During his reign, which started around 520 BC, he pursued an adventurous and at times unscrupulous foreign policy aimed at crushing Argos and extending Sparta's influence both inside and outside the Peloponnese....
 even turned against Cleisthenes and the latter was briefly exiled once more. However, the citizens called for Cleisthenes to return, and the restored Alcmaeonids were responsible for laying the foundations of Athenian democracy
Athenian democracy

Athenian democracy developed in the Ancient Greece city-state of Classical Athens, comprising the central city-state of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica, around 500 BC....
.

The Alcmaeonidae were said to have negotiated for an alliance with the Persians
Persian Empire

The 'Persian Empire' was a series of successive Iranian or Persianization empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau, the original Persian homeland, and beyond in Southwest Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus....
 during the Persian Wars, despite the fact that Athens was leading the resistance to the Persian invasion. Pericles
Pericles

Pericles was a prominent and influential statesman, orator, and general of History of Athens during the city's Age of Pericles?specifically, the time between the Greco-Persian Wars and Peloponnesian War wars....
 and Alcibiades
Alcibiades

Alcibiades Cleiniou Scambonides , was a prominent History of Athens statesman, oratory, and general. He was the last famous member of his mother's aristocratic family, the Alcmaeonidae, which fell from prominence after the Peloponnesian War....
 also belonged to the Alcmaeonidae, and during the Peloponnesian War
Peloponnesian War

The Peloponnesian War which lasted from 431-404BC was an Ancient Greece military conflict, fought by Athens and its Athenian empire against the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta....
 the Spartans referred to the family curse in an attempt to discredit Pericles. Alcibiades, as the previous generation of Alcmaeonidae had done, tried to ally with the Persians after he was accused of impiety. The family disappeared after Athens' defeat in the Peloponnesian War.

Family tree

Because of a family tradition of naming descendants after their forebears, members of the family can easily be confused. Hence, what follows is a partial family tree of the historical Alcmaeonid family. Males are in blue, females in red, and those related by marriage in white.

Other sources