Cleisthenes

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Cleisthenes

Cleisthenes (also Clisthenes or Kleisthenes) was a noble Athenian

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....
of the Alcmaeonid

Alcmaeonidae

The Alcmaeonidae or Alcmaeonids were a powerful noble family of ancient Athens, a branch of the Neleides who claimed descent from the Greek mythology Alcmaeon , the grandson of Nestor....
family. He is credited with reforming the constitution of ancient Athens

Athens

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....
footing in 508 BC or 507 BC. He was the maternal grandson 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....
, as the younger son of the latter's daughter Agariste

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....
and her husband 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....
.

rding to William Smith, Cleisthenes was the maternal grandfather of 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....
.

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Cleisthenes (also Clisthenes or Kleisthenes) was a noble Athenian

Athens

Alcmaeonidae

Athens

Athenian democracy

Cleisthenes of Sicyon

Agariste of Sicyon

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....
.

Biography

According to William Smith, Cleisthenes was the maternal grandfather of Alcibiades

Alcibiades

Cleinias

Cleinias, son of Alcibiades,, and member of the Alcmaeonidae family, was an Athens who married Deinomache, the daughter of Megacles, and became the father of the famous Alcibiades....
(d. 447 BC Battle of Coronea

Battle of Coronea

The Battle of Coronea can refer to:*Battle of Coronea *Battle of Coronea ...
), son of his Cleisthenes' friend Alcibiades (the elder), and had a son Alcibiades. His mother's cousin 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....
became her son's guardian. Also, he was credited for increasing power of assembly and he also broke up power of nobility for Athens.

Rise to power

With help from the Alcmaeonidae

Alcmaeonidae

The Alcmaeonidae or Alcmaeonids were a powerful noble family of ancient Athens, a branch of the Neleides who claimed descent from the Greek mythology Alcmaeon , the grandson of Nestor....
(Cleisthenes' genos, "clan"), he was responsible for overthrowing 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 tyrant

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....
son 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....
. After the collapse of Hippias' tyranny, Isagoras

Isagoras

Isagoras , son of Tisander, was an Athenian aristocrat in the late 6th century BC.He had remained in Athens during the tyrant of Hippias , but after Hippias was overthrown he became involved in a struggle for power with Cleisthenes, a fellow aristocrat....
and Cleisthenes were rivals for power, but Isagoras won the upper hand by appealing to 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....
to help him expel Cleisthenes. He did so on the pretext of the Alcmaeonid curse. Consequently, Cleisthenes left Athens as an exile, and Isagoras was unrivaled in power within the city. Isagoras set about uprooting hundreds of people from their homes on the pretext that they too were cursed, and attempted to dissolve the council. However, the council resisted, and the Athenian people declared their support of it. Hence Isagoras and his supporters were forced to flee to the Acropolis

Acropolis

Acropolis literally means city on the edge . For purposes of defense, early settlers naturally chose elevated ground, frequently a hill with precipitous sides....
, remaining besieged there for two days. On the third, they fled and were banished. Cleisthenes was subsequently recalled, along with hundreds of exiles, and he assumed leadership of Athens.

Contributions

After this victory Cleisthenes began to reform the government of Athens. In order to forestall strife between the traditional clans, which had led to the tyranny in the first place, he changed the political organisation from the four traditional tribes, which were based on family relations, into ten tribes according to their area of residence (their deme
Deme

In Ancient Greece, a deme was a subdivision of Attica, the region of Greece surrounding Classical Athens. Demes as simple subdivisions of land in the countryside seem to have existed in the 6th century BC and earlier, but did not acquire particular significance until the reforms of Cleisthenes in 508 BC....
). Most modern historians suppose there were 139 demes (this is still a matter of debate), organized into thirty groups called trittyes ("thirds"), with ten trittyes divided among three regions in each deme (a city region, asty; a coastal region, paralia; and an inland region, mesogeia). He also established legislative bodies run by individuals chosen by lot, rather than kinship or heredity. He reorganized the Boule

Boule

The term Boule may refer to:* Boule , plural boulai, assembly forming part of city governments in Ancient Greece* Boule , block of synthetically-produced crystal material...
, created with 400 members under 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....
, so that it had 500 members, 50 from each tribe. The court system (Dikasteria — law courts) was reorganized and had from 201–5001 jurors selected each day, up to 500 from each tribe. It was the role of the Boule to propose laws to the assembly of voters, who convened in Athens around forty times a year for this purpose. The bills proposed could be rejected, passed or returned for amendments by the assembly.

Cleisthenes also may have introduced ostracism

Ostracism

Ostracism was a procedure under the Athenian democracy in which a prominent citizen could be exile from the city-state of Athens for ten years....
(first used in 487 BC), whereby a vote from more than 6,000 of the citizens would exile a citizen for 10 years. The initial trend was to vote for a citizen deemed a threat to the democracy e.g. by having ambitions to set himself up as tyrant. However, soon after, any citizen judged to have too much power in the city tended to be targeted for exile (e.g. Xanthippus in 485/84 BC). Under this system, the exiled man's property was maintained, but he was not physically in the city where he could possibly create a new tyranny.

Cleisthenes called these reforms isonomia
Isonomia

Isonomia from the Greek ?s?? isos, "equal," and ????? nomos, "usage, custom, law" is said to be the historical and philosophical foundation of liberty, justice, and democracy....
("equality vis à vis law", iso=equality; nomos=law), instead of demokratia
Democracy

Democracy is a form of government in which power is held directly or indirectly by citizens under a free electoral system. It is derived from the Greek language d?????at?a , "popular government" which was coined from d???? , "people" and ???t?? , "rule, strength" in the middle of the 5th-4th century BC to denote the political syst...
. Soon after his reforms his life becomes a mystery, as no ancient texts mention him thereafter. It is possible that Cleisthenes himself suffered ostracism, for seeking support from the Persians against the Spartans.

Cleisthenes' ideas revolutionised the way of thinking in Hellas at the time. But even Cleisthenes could not bring full change to Athens, and old institutions of the rich aristoi

Aristoi

Aristoi comes from Ancient Greek and means "the best". The term was used to describe the aristocracy in ancient Greece, those of a status above the common people....
still existed, such as the areopagus

Areopagus

The Areopagus or Areios Pagos is the 'Hill of Ares', north-west of the Acropolis, Athens, which in classical times functioned as the high Court of Appeal for criminal and civil cases in Athens....
. However, some scholars would argue that modern day western politics are shaped by his work.