Herodotus (6.131.1) credits Cleisthenes with “having instituted the tribes (phylai) and the democracy for the Athenians.” The term demokratia is actually anachronistic in a late sixth-century context (p. 204) and it may not even be intended as a compliment - especially since Herodotus elsewhere (5.69) suggests that Cleisthenes’ tribal reforms were motivated in part by emulation of his maternal grandfather, the tyrant of Sicyon (see pp. 211-13), and in part by his desire to distance the Athenians from their Ionian brethren by changing the names of their tribes. Nonetheless, the fact that Herodotus can associate the tribal reforms with the establishment of democracy suggests that this was a linkage that was recognized by his fifth-century contemporaries. To what extent, then, was Cleisthenes the “father of democracy”?
Prior to the end of the sixth century, the Athenian citizen body had been divided among four phylai (p. 211). These were not entirely disbanded - they continued to perform some religious functions, for example - but their political function was neutralized by the creation of ten new phylai, named after Attic heroes. Each phyle was divided into three trittyeis, one situated in the city, one in the coastal regions, and one in the inland, and to each trittys was assigned a variable number of demes (demoi) or villages - often, though not always, contiguous to one another. To date, some 140 demes have been identified from inscriptions and literary sources, though since much of this evidence dates to the fourth century we cannot be absolutely certain that there had not been some subsequent revisions to the system instituted by Cleisthenes. The precise number of demes assigned to a trittys was directly dependent on the size of those demes, the idea being that the number of citizens assigned to each of the ten new phylai should be approximately equal. Let us take, by way of example, the phyle Pandionis. The city trittys included the large deme of Kydathenaion, which lay to the northeast of the acropolis in the area of the modern Plaka district. The coastal trittys included the medium-sized deme of Myrrhinous, together with the smaller settlements of Angele, Kytherros, Steiria, and Prasia, all situated on the eastern Attic seaboard in the vicinity of the modern Porto Rafti. The inland trittys included the large deme of Lower Paiania, the smaller deme of Oai, and the tiny villages of Upper Paiania and Konthyle, situated on the eastern slopes of Mount Hymettus close to where the Eleutherios Venizelos International Airport is now situated.
A citizen’s immediate loyalty was to his own deme, in which he would need to be registered upon attaining the age of eighteen if he did not want to be deprived of his citizen rights. The army, however, was brigaded by tribal regiments with ten strategoi or generals being elected annually, one for each phyle. In addition a council (boule) of 500 was instituted, to which each phyle appointed by lot a slate of fifty members (known as a prytany) on an annual basis. Recruitment to the prytany was based on a fixed quota per deme, directly proportional to the number of inhabitants resident there. So, for example, in the fourth century, the populous deme of Achamae in the foothills of Mount Fames sent as many as twenty-two bouleutai to Athens each year whereas only one councilor represented Upper Paiania. Each prytany served in rotation as the executive council for the boule for each of the ten “months” of the administrative year. The boule’s prime function was “probouleutic,” meaning that it was charged with drafting the agenda for motions debated by the assembly, though it also oversaw administrative matters. It is unclear whether thetes were admitted to the council of 500 from the beginning although it cannot have functioned in the Classical period without their participation.
In some senses, Cleisthenes’ reforms were not as radical as is sometimes claimed. The council of 500 may have assumed functions and duties from an earlier Solonian council (p. 206), while the former four phylai had also been divided into three trittyeis, with each trittys further subdivided into twelve naukrariai (Aristotle, AC 8.3). Intense scholarly interest in whether - and if so, why - the naukrariai derive their name from naus (“ship”) has diverted attention away from the fact that many ancient sources view them as the earlier equivalents of the Cleisthenic demes (AC 21.5; Pollux, Onomastikon 8.108; Hesychius s. v. nauklaros; Fhotius, Lexicon s. v. naukleros). In other words, the idea of distributing local territorial units among phylai, with the latter constituting the principal military and political units of the citizenry, had already existed prior to the reforms of Cleisthenes. Furthermore, it is highly likely that many of the new Cleisthenic demes were based on the former naukrariai, meaning that, at the local level, many Athenian citizens would not have noticed too many differences.
Furthermore, the old “Ionian” tribes retained, as we have seen, some ceremonial functions and the author of the Athenian Constitution (21.6) says that Cleisthenes did not reform “the ancestral priesthoods in each deme, the gene or the phratries.” The phratries are poorly understood even in the fourth century - the period for which we have the most evidence - and it is not entirely clear to what extent their later functions and competences were relics of the pre-Cleisthenic period. A fragment attributed to the Athenian Constitution (fr. 3) says that the pre-Cleisthenic phratries were the same as the trittyeis and that each of them was divided into thirty gene, but the testimony is of dubious value for two reasons. Firstly, it is difficult to reconcile this system of subdivision with that based on the naukrariai, for which the evidence is more plentiful. Secondly, while all Athenian citizens belonged to a phratry in the Classical period, membership of a genos was limited to aristocrats and this can hardly have been an innovation of the democratic period. The author of the fragment is perhaps confusing the Athenian situation with the sociopolitical organization of other poleis in which the phratry does seem to be a formal subdivision of the phyle (see pp. 131-2). Conversely, at Athens the phratry - both before and after Cleisthenes’ reforms - appears to belong to a system that is parallel to, but independent from, the phyle-trittys-deme/naukraria system. If the pre-Cleisthenic phratries were subject to the same processes of fusion and fission as their Classical successors then it is clear that, far from being subdivisions of larger units, they must have been more akin to the homonymous units that we find in Homer (p. 131) - that is, aggregations of smaller, territorially-based bands (phyla) that orbited around the most powerful families (gene). By the fourth century, the phratries seem to act as microcosms of the democratic polis but there is no reason to believe that Cleisthenes himself did much, if anything, to overturn the informal relations of dependency that subordinated members of a phratry to the dominant genos.
The real innovation of the reforms was an entirely new reconfiguration of the relationships between the various components that constituted the polis. According to the Athenian Constitution (21.2), Cleisthenes’ goal was “to mix up [the phylai] so that more should have a share in citizenship”; the author adds (21.4) that “he made the residents in each of the demes demesmen of one another so that they should not be able to mark out the new citizens by addressing them according to their parentage but should recognize them by their deme, as a result of which the Athenians call themselves by their deme name.” When read alongside Aristotle’s comment (Pol. 3.1.10) that, after the expulsion of the tyrants, Cleisthenes “enrolled in the phylai many resident foreigners (xenoi) and slaves (douloi),” it seems clear that the author of the Athenian Constitution attributed the Cleisthenic tribal reforms to an earnest desire to protect the identity of those who had been newly enrolled in the citizen body - often understood as former citizens who had been disfranchised under the tyranny (see AC 13.5). Yet, if that was Cleisthenes’ primary aim, it was manifestly unsuccessful: there is some evidence for the use of demotics (deme names) prior to Cleisthenes and epigraphical evidence offers no substantial confirmation of a wholesale shift from patronymics to demotics in the post-Cleisthenic period. Furthermore, if Cleisthenes had wanted to protect the neopolitai (“new citizens”) from social stigma, he surely could have achieved it in a far simpler fashion. There is, then, some reason to suppose that the precise motivation imputed here is a conjecture on the part of the author of the Athenian Constitution. That is not, however, to rule out that it was the “mixing up” of the population that was central to Cleisthenes’ programme.
In establishing a new order it was crucial to tackle the stranglehold that powerful elite families had exerted over the old order. Again, we have to remember that our detailed evidence of deme distribution postdates Cleisthenes’ reforms by more than a century, but it is at least suspicious that areas where we know the Pisistratids exerted influence seem to have been particular targets of his attention. Marathon, for example, had long formed part of a cultic - and, perhaps, originally political - union called the Tetrapolis, which also included the villages of Oinoe, Trikorythos, and Probalinthos. Indeed, the Tetrapolis continued to send its own embassies to Delphi and Delos as late as the first century. But while Marathon, Oinoe, and Trikorythos were assigned to the coastal trittys of the Aiantis phyle, Probalinthos was detached to form part of the non-contiguous coastal trittys of the Pandionis phyle much further south. Brauron, said to be the ancestral home of the Pisistratids (Plato, Hipp. 228b; Plutarch, Sol. 10.3), was instead renamed Philaidai, perhaps in an attempt to detach the famous cult of Artemis Brauronia from its Pisistratid patrons. At the same time, however, the bestowal of the name Philaidai on the residents of the Brauron area could be construed as an affront to another aristocratic genos - the Philaidai, to which Miltiades, one of the generals at Marathon, and his son Cimon belonged. The deme names Boutadai, immediately to the northwest of the city, and Paionidai, in the foothills of Mount Parnes, were also almost certainly taken from the names of gent in the former case, at least, the gennetai responded by renaming themselves Eteoboutadai (“the true Boutadai”).
Nevertheless, there is some reason to believe that certain elite families were targeted more than others. Particularly suspicious is the case of the Antiokhis phylt. in the fourth century, the coastal trittys, which included the settlements of Anaphlystos, Besa, Amphitrope, and Atene, to the far south of Attica, contributed seventeen bouleutai. With the addition of the ten appointed for the city deme of Alopeke, these twenty-seven councilors would have dominated the prytany of the Antiokhis phylt. Is it mere coincidence that the Alcmaeonidae’s base in the city was at Alopeke and that they owned rural estates and, it seems, a family cemetery at Anaphlystos (p. 181)?
The cynical view presented here is not accepted by all. For some, Cleisthenes was an altruistic idealist with “a conscious democratic aim” and if his intention had been to bestow advantage on himself and the Alcmaeonidae, then “his failure was complete” (Murray 1993. 280). But this is to infer intention from outcome. What is most surprising, perhaps, is that Cleisthenes disappears from the scene almost immediately after the reforms associated with his name. He could, of course, simply have died but, intriguingly enough, Herodotus (5.73) makes a particular point of saying that, after the recall of Cleisthenes to Athens, envoys were sent to the Persian satrap at Sardis requesting an alliance against future Spartan aggression. The alliance was granted on the condition that the envoys give the symbolic gifts of earth and water to the Persian king Darius - an act of submission for which the envoys were prosecuted on their return to Athens. This is likely to have happened before 506 when Cleomenes launched a further unsuccessful assault on Athens (Herodotus 5.74-75) and it is tempting to wonder whether Cleisthenes had been involved in the embassy and discredited on account of it.
There is one very clear effect of Cleisthenes’ tribal reforms. The “reshuffling” of the Athenian citizen body promoted a new sense of unity. Although the residents of a former city naukraria might still find themselves demesmen of one another under the new regime, when they came to participate in political decision-making or train or fight in the tribal regiment they would now find themselves shoulder to shoulder with citizens from other parts of Attica, many of whom they are unlikely to have known previously. But, as we shall see shortly, this really only represents the continuation and extension of a policy that had been pursued by the tyranny prior to Cleisthenes’ reforms and it is not entirely clear to what extent it should be labeled “democratic” in any modern sense of the term. If Cleisthenes was the “father of democracy,” it was only unwittingly.
There is, however, an unsung hero of the events of 508/7 - namely, the Athenian dtmos. As we have seen (p. 204), the term dtmokratia, while eventually connoting concepts such as equality and free speech, literally draws attention to the fact that the demos, the non-elite members of Athenian society, has wrested power away from the formerly governing aristocracy. One can speak of a democratic revolution so long as one does not envisage that such a revolution was instantaneous. Although the demos was not truly sovereign until the wide-ranging powers of the aristocratic Areopagus council were curtailed in the later 460s, it had already been vocal at the beginning of the sixth century when it had called for Solon’s appointment as archon and arbitrator (Aristotle, AC 5.2; Plutarch, Sol. 14.2). But the events of 508/7 mark a crucial intervention by the demos in Athenian politics. Prior to this, battling elite factions had exercised power by their ability to exile their political opponents: the Pisistratidae, Alc-maeonidae, and Philaidai had all been on the receiving end of such practices. In the archonship of Isagoras, however, while Cleisthenes and 700 allied families were out of the country, the boule refused Cleomenes’ orders for its dissolution and the demos united in resistance against the imposition of a new regime. The exile of the Alcmaeonids and their supporters, ordered by the elite faction of Isagoras, was now annulled by the intervention and decision of the people - an action that represented an important moment of political self-definition on the part of the demos.
It is tempting to see the material reflection of this new popular consciousness in the burial record of Attica. At the end of the sixth century, the number of known burials increases sharply with an almost equal representation of infant to adult burials. For those who believe that the archaeological visibility of burials is determined by social selectivity (p. 80), this could be taken to indicate the (re)admission of a broader segment of the population to formal burial. Furthermore, the practice of erecting elite funerary monuments such as relief stelai, kouroi, and korai (pp. 179-80, 222-3) goes out of fashion ca. 500. Cicero (On the Laws 2.64) says that “some time after” Solon, expensive funerary monuments requiring more than three days’ labor from ten men were banned, along with frescoes and statues, and some have viewed this as sumptuary legislation passed by Cleisthenes, though this pattern of austerity at the end of the sixth century is not limited to Attica. Certainly, elites found other channels to communicate their status: some of the most sumptuous dedicatory korai probably belong to the early fifth century while symposiastic scenes (pp. 203-4) become more common on Red Figure pottery. On the other hand, it is striking that Cleisthenes’ own nephew, Megacles, commissioned Pindar to write an ode celebrating his victory in the four-horse chariot-race at the Pythian Games of 486 only after his ostracism and exile from Athens (Pindar, Pyth. 7).
According to one view, the institution of ostracism needs to be viewed within the context of a popular usurpation of the aristocracy’s prerogative to exile its opponents. As far as we can reconstruct the process, the Athenian assembly was asked once a year whether it wished to hold an ostracism. If so (and there are only ten known instances of the practice), citizens were invited to inscribe the name of an individual of their choice on an ostrakon or potsherd (Figure 9.1). Subject to a quorum of 6,000 ostraka, the individual who received the most
Figure 9.1 “Ballots” used in ostracism. Source: American School of Classical Studies at Athens: Agora Excavations
Votes was required to go into exile for ten years without losing his property or revenues derived from that property. In its infrequent application, the practice was largely symbolic - signifying the potential authority that the demos had over errant aristocrats - and its relative clemency, especially when compared with the harsher sentences of exile that had been imposed by Archaic aristocrats on one another, articulated a concept of democratic moderation in opposition to the extreme excesses of autocratic and aristocratic regimes. Interestingly, although the first known ostracism only occurred in 487 (see p. 309), the institution of the practice is credited by most of our sources to Cleisthenes (Aristotle, AC 22.1; Philochorus fr. 30; Aelian, HM 13, 24; Diodorus 11.55.1). If the assignment is correct, ostracism could well have been one of the most democratic of the measures proposed by Cleisthenes though once again, if the author of the Athenian Constitution (22.4) can be trusted, his motivations may not have been entirely altruistic.
World History
