Cleisthenes Led a Revolution That Overthrow Tyranny, Then Created Democracy
Cleisthenes, born circa 570 BC, overthrew tyranny in Ancient Athens, and replaced it with democracy. Before that, Athens had been ruled by strongmen known as “tyrants”. The most famous and successful of them, Peisistratos, died in 527 BC and was succeeded as co-tyrants by his sons Hippias and Hipparchus. After Hipparchus was assassinated in 514 BC, his brother Hippias grew paranoid, and his rule became oppressive as he lashed out at enemies real and imagined.
Hippias’ descent into violence eroded the popularity that tyranny had enjoyed in the days of Peisistratos, and the number of victims and exiles forced to flee Athens grew. Cleisthenes was an exile who organized other exiles to overthrow the tyranny. Invasion was considered, but Hippias had a well equipped army, and the exiles did not. So they sought to enlist Sparta, which had the Greek world’s best army, to liberate Athens.
The Spartans were known for their piety, so to enlist their help, Cleisthenes bribed the priests of Delphi, the Greek world’s most important religious site and home of the Oracle of Delphi. The Oracle usually gave petitioners cryptic answers that could be interpreted in a variety of ways. Now, it suddenly began giving every Spartan who showed up the same uncryptic answer: “Liberate Athens!“.
So the Spartans marched into Attica in 508 BC, liberated Athens, then marched back home. Left to govern themselves, the Athenians immediately split into rival camps. An oligarchic camp wanted government by the wealthy, while a populist camp, led by Cleisthenes and comprising a majority of Athenians, wanted a democracy ruled by a popular Assembly. The populists prevailed, but the oligarchs solicited Spartan aid to overthrow the democracy.
The Spartans were extremely conservative, and no fans of democracy. So they sent another army to Attica, overthrew Athens’ democracy, and replaced it with an oligarchy. Cleisthenes and 700 democracy-supporting Athenian families were exiled. However, Cleisthenes and the exiles soon returned, the population rose up in revolt, and the aristocratic faction and the Spartans were besieged in the Acropolis, Athens’ fortified hilltop. Cleisthenes allowed the Spartans to leave, but the Athenian anti-democrats were massacred.
Having decisively dealt with the oligarchic threat, Cleisthenes set about establishing the Athenian democracy, and reorganizing the city body of Athens. Before, Athenians had been grouped into four tribes, based on kin groups that fostered factionalism. Cleisthenes replaced that with an artificial classification system that divided the citizen body into ten at-large tribes, with membership drawn at random from all classes and all parts of Attica. With each tribe containing a representative sample of the entire population, parochialism would be eliminated, as no tribe would have cause to act out of geographical or familial loyalties at the expense of Athens as a whole.
At a stroke, Cleisthenes eliminated a parochialism that had plagued Athens for generations, and granted the entire male citizen population access to institutions and powers previously reserved for aristocrats. His reforms established basic democracy in Athens, and created the constitutional structure for further incremental reforms to transform Athens into a direct democracy.