Cleisthenes and the Birth of Athenian Democracy (508 BC)

Cleisthenes was the Athenian aristocrat whose reforms of 508/507 BC are generally seen as the birth of Athenian democracy. After a power struggle that ended with the people of Athens rising against a Spartan king, he reorganised the citizens into ten new tribes based on local communities called demes and created a Council of 500. His system lasted, with changes, for nearly two centuries and became the model that later ages had in mind when they spoke of democracy.

Background: Athens after the tyrants

In the 6th century BC Athens was a large city-state covering the whole region of Attica. Earlier reforms by Solon in 594 BC had eased debt slavery and divided citizens into property classes, but they did not end feuds between powerful families.

From 546 BC the city was ruled by the tyrant Pisistratus and then by his son Hippias. After the murder of Hippias’ brother Hipparchus in 514 BC, the regime grew harsher. In 510 BC a Spartan army under King Cleomenes I expelled Hippias, encouraged by the exiled Alcmaeonid family.

The Alcmaeonids were one of the richest and most controversial clans in Athens. Cleisthenes, son of Megacles and of Agariste, daughter of the tyrant Cleisthenes of Sicyon, was their leading member. He had served as chief archon, the senior annual magistrate, in 525/524 BC under the tyranny, showing that the family had at times cooperated with the rulers it later opposed.

The struggle with Isagoras

With the tyranny gone, Athenian politics returned to rivalry between aristocratic factions. Cleisthenes’ main opponent was Isagoras, who had ties to Cleomenes and was elected archon for 508/507 BC.

Losing ground among his fellow aristocrats, Cleisthenes took a new step. In Herodotus’ words, he brought the ordinary people into his faction, proposing reforms that would give them a much larger share of power. This won him broad support.

Isagoras appealed to Cleomenes, who demanded the expulsion of the “accursed” Alcmaeonids, a reference to an old religious pollution on the family. Cleisthenes withdrew from Athens. Cleomenes then arrived with a small force and, according to Herodotus, expelled 700 families named by Isagoras.

He also tried to dissolve the existing council and hand power to Isagoras and some 300 supporters. The council refused, and the people of Athens rose up. Cleomenes and Isagoras took refuge on the Acropolis, where they were besieged for two days. On the third day they left under a truce, and the Athenians recalled Cleisthenes and the exiles.

This popular uprising is significant in itself. It was the Athenian people, not an aristocratic faction alone, that defeated a Spartan king and secured the way for reform.

The reforms of 508/507 BC

The core of Cleisthenes’ programme was a new way of organising citizens. The four old Ionian tribes, dominated by aristocratic networks, were replaced as the main political units by ten new tribes (phylai).

The building blocks were the demes, the villages and city neighbourhoods of Attica. There were about 139 or 140 of them. Every citizen was registered in a deme, and membership became hereditary, so a family kept its deme even if it moved. Citizens were increasingly identified by their deme name rather than by their father’s name alone, which helped to integrate new citizens.

Attica was divided into three zones: the city and its surroundings, the coast and the inland. Demes in each zone were grouped into ten units called trittyes, or “thirds”, making thirty in all. Each tribe received one trittys from each zone, so every tribe combined townsmen, coastal people and farmers from the interior.

This deliberate mixing cut across old regional loyalties. In the 6th century, factions known as the Plain, the Coast and the Hill had been led by rival nobles; now no tribe could be captured by a single regional bloc.

The ten tribes were named after legendary Athenian heroes. Ancient sources say the oracle at Delphi chose the ten names from a list of one hundred proposed by the Athenians.

The Council of 500 and new institutions

Cleisthenes created a new Council (boule) of 500 members, fifty from each tribe. Seats were allocated to demes roughly in proportion to their population, so large and small communities were all represented. Councillors served for one year.

The council prepared business for the citizen assembly (ekklesia), in which every adult male citizen could speak and vote. Each tribal group of fifty took turns to serve as the standing committee, called the prytany, for one tenth of the year.

Several further changes are dated to the years after 508/507 BC. The Constitution of the Athenians states that in 501/500 BC councillors began to swear an oath and that ten generals (strategoi) were elected, one from each tribe. The same work credits Cleisthenes with introducing ostracism, a vote to exile a powerful citizen for ten years, although it was first used only in 487 BC.

Contemporaries probably described the new order with the word isonomia, “equality before the law”. The word demokratia, “rule of the people”, is not securely attested until somewhat later in the 5th century BC.

By the numbers

The exact number of demes is uncertain because the lists that survive date from later periods, when a few demes had been added, split or merged. Estimates of the adult male citizen population at the time are also uncertain, with figures of roughly 20,000–30,000 often proposed.

Key people

Cleisthenes (c. 570 – after 507 BC) was the reformer. His motives are debated: some historians see an idealist, others a skilled politician who used popular reform to defeat his rivals. Both may be true.

Isagoras was his aristocratic opponent and archon in 508/507 BC. After the failed coup he fled with Cleomenes, and his supporters left behind were executed.

Cleomenes I was the Agiad king of Sparta. He had helped to expel Hippias in 510 BC, intervened for Isagoras in 508/507 BC and organised a failed invasion of Attica in 506 BC.

Consequences

The new state was tested at once. In 506 BC Sparta, Boeotia and Chalcis attacked Attica. The Peloponnesian army broke up when Corinth and the other Spartan king, Demaratus, withdrew. The Athenians then defeated the Boeotians and the Chalcidians, reportedly on the same day, and settled colonists on Chalcidian land. Herodotus saw these victories as proof that free citizens fought better than subjects of a tyrant.

In the same period Athenian envoys sent to Sardis to seek an alliance with Persia reportedly offered earth and water, the tokens of submission. Herodotus says the Athenians repudiated the deal when the envoys returned. Relations with Persia soon worsened, leading to Athenian support for the Ionian Revolt and to the Persian invasion defeated at Marathon in 490 BC.

Over the following decades the Cleisthenic framework was extended. Archons were chosen by lot from 487 BC, the Areopagus council lost most of its powers in 462/461 BC, and pay for jurors and officials was introduced in the time of Pericles.

Legacy

Cleisthenes’ tribes, demes and council remained the skeleton of Athenian government until the late 4th century BC. The demes also became centres of local life, with their own assemblies, officials, festivals and finances.

Pericles, the leading Athenian statesman of the mid-5th century, was Cleisthenes’ great-nephew through his mother. The democracy that Pericles praised in the famous funeral oration rested on the institutions Cleisthenes had created.

Modern democracies differ greatly from Athens. Athenian democracy was direct rather than representative, and political rights belonged only to adult male citizens, excluding women, slaves and resident foreigners. Yet the idea that ordinary citizens should decide public affairs together, and that political units should cut across local and family power, is often traced back to 508/507 BC.

Myths and facts

Myth: Cleisthenes single-handedly invented democracy. He laid its institutional foundations, but the uprising of 508/507 BC was a popular movement, and key elements of classical democracy were added by later reformers.

Myth: Cleisthenes was the first victim of ostracism. This story appears only in the late writer Aelian and is not accepted by most historians. The first securely recorded ostracism, in 487 BC, removed Hipparchus son of Charmus.

Timeline

• 525/524 BC: Cleisthenes serves as chief archon under Hippias.
• 510 BC: Spartan intervention ends the tyranny of Hippias.
• 508/507 BC: Isagoras becomes archon; Cleisthenes proposes his reforms and is forced into exile.
• 508/507 BC: Athenians besiege Cleomenes and Isagoras on the Acropolis; Cleisthenes returns and reforms are enacted.
• 506 BC: Athens defeats the Boeotians and Chalcidians after a Spartan-led invasion collapses.
• 501/500 BC: Councillor’s oath introduced; ten generals elected by tribe.
• 487 BC: First recorded ostracism.

Why it matters

Cleisthenes’ reforms turned Athens from a city run by rival noble clans into one governed by its citizen body. The ten tribes and the Council of 500 made broad participation workable, and they set the stage for Athens’ role in the Persian Wars and its classical golden age.