When tyranny came to an end in 510 BC, the aristocrat Cleisthenes, who had played an important part in the struggle against Hippias, came into conflict with his fellow aristocrats. This was nothing uncommon, but it was unusual for Cleisthenes to turn for support to the demos in the way he did. The historian Herodotus puts it like this: “Cleisthenes added the demos to the number of his supporters.” Cleisthenes did so by championing the political emancipation of the Athenian demos, an emancipation that had been instigated by Solon and Pisistratus before him. The events of the years between 510 and 508/7 BC cannot be reconstructed, but we can be certain that Cleisthenes initiated a program of political reforms that resulted in the shifting of the center of power to the demos, especially to the large group of the zeugitai. The military importance that the zeugitai gained as hoplites would have played its part. A newly formed body, the annual Council of 500, was the focal point of the arrangements. This council, or boule, was composed of 10 groups of 50 men,
Figure 19 Ostraca found in the Athenian Agora (5th c. BC). The potshards illustrated here date from the 5th century BC and were found on the Agora in Athens (they now are kept in the Agora Museum). They are so-called ostraca (ostrakon is the Greek word for potshard), which were used for the ostracism. In the years between 487 and 417 BC at least nine ostracisms were held in Athens. For an ostracism, the citizens came together in their assembly, with a quorum of 6000, and voted in a secret ballot that determined which Athenian had to be banished for a period of ten years, because he was becoming too powerful and a threat to Athenian democracy. Excavations have brought to light thousands of ostraca, carrying about 70 different names of Athenians, some known from other sources, and some not. On the shards illustrated here we read, clockwise from top left (the names are given here transcribed from the Greek and not Latinized, so that one may compare them with the writing on the ostraca): Aristeides, son of Lusimachos; Kimon, son of Miltiades; Themistokles, son of Neokles from the deme of Frearrioi; and Perikles, son ofXanthippos. Aristides was indeed ostracized in 482, Themistocles sometime around 470, and Cimon in 461. Pericles was never banished, but his father Xanthippus was ostracized in 485/484. Photo: American School of Classical Studies at Athens: Agora Excavations
Map 10 The Cleisthenic organization of Attica
Each group of 50 carefully selected to represent all of the Athenian polis. The same principle was applied to the army, composed of 10 units.
So, for the purpose of the boule and the army, the Athenian citizenry had to be divided into ten sections, in such a way that every section was, so to speak, the polis in miniature. These ten sections were the ten fulai on which the Cleisthenic system was based. The word Cleisthenic implies that all of this was Cleisthenes’ brainchild, but it is in fact possible that this rearrangement of Athenian political and social life only took shape in the course of the first half of the 5th century BC. But we cannot trace the developments in any detail, and as Cleisthenes apparently was the one who set it all in motion, it seems justified to continue to speak of the Cleisthenic reform and the Cleisthenic system.
In order to create the ten Cleisthenic fulai, all local communities in Attica, the so-called demes (demoi, singular demos; here we will use the anglicized forms “deme” and “demes,” in order to avoid any confusion with demos, “the people”), were grouped in 30 areas. Of these 30 areas, the so-called trittues, 10 were city trittues, 10 were coastal trittues, and another 10 were inland trittues. From each of these three categories, city, coast, and inland, one trittus was taken, and the three trittues selected in this way were combined into a single fule (three trittues to every fule: trittus means “third part”). In this way, ten fulai were created, which were artificial constructions that had nothing to do with the four fulai which existed before Cleisthenes. Every fule was composed of a city, a coast, and an inland trittus, three sets of demes that did not border each other (sometimes two trittues of a fule bordered each other, but never did all three). In every Cleisthenic fule, the Athenian citizens were mixed together, which achieved the goal of making every fule representative of the polis as a whole. Membership of the deme, trittus, and fule was hereditary. This conflicted with their territorial character, but the intent was to keep the size of each fule more or less equal, even if people migrated to the city.
At the same time, or somewhat later, the so-called practice of ostracism was introduced. The word “ostracism” is from the Greek ostrakon, which means “shard.” Every year the citizens of Athens voted on whether an ostracism should be held or not. If the vote was positive, a quorum of 6000 citizens would come together, and each would scratch on a shard the name of a politically active citizen whom one would like to see banished from Athens for a period of ten years. Those who could not write could acquire a “prescratched” shard with the name of their choice. The individual who acquired the largest number of votes had to leave the city for ten years; hence, our usage of the verb “to ostracize.” Although in the course of the fifth century BC ostracism became a weapon in the hands of ambitious political leaders seeking to oust their opponents, the original intent must have been to safeguard the young Athenian democracy by expelling potential turannoi.
Toward the end of the 6th century BC in Athens, power had shifted from the elite to the collective. Demos now takes on the meaning of “the whole of the citizenry,” and not merely “the non-aristocratic people.” This demos wielded kratos, the power to rule. In the course of the 5th century BC, Athenian democracy was radicalized, and the remaining powers of the aristocracy dwindled. In 487 BC, it was decided that the most important magistrates, the archontes, would no longer be selected, but would be chosen by lot. The archonship lost some of its power in the process, and with it the Areopagus, the council peopled by ex-archons. In 462 BC, almost all jurisdiction was transferred from the Areopagus to the new jury courts, and the supervision over Athens’ magistrates to the Council of 500. Around the middle of the century, the archonship was opened up to people of the third census class, and the radical democracy culminated in pay for magistrates, bouleutai, and jury members. In the early 4th century BC, assembly pay was even extended to the ekklesia. Such fees made it possible for all citizens, also those who could not miss a day’s work, to participate in the running of the polis. In other words: the poorest among the citizens, the thetes, were empowered to be politically active. This has been seen as the logical outcome of the importance of these thetes as Athens’ mariners: it was the thetes who manned the fleet that was so important to Athens.
World History
