Cleisthenes, who was in power by 510 B. C.E., continued the progression toward true democracy in Athens. He wanted to break up the old tribal system, which was based on family ties within certain geographic regions (see the box on page 61). His new system split Attica into three regions, called
The city, the shore, and the inland. Within each region were 10 areas called trittys (Greek for “thirds"). Each trittys included the existing towns and villages of the region, called demes. The number of demes in each trittys varied. Cleisthenes then created 10 new tribes, combining one trittys from each region to form a tribe. Citizens were now allied by their political participation in one of the new tribes, rather than by family ties. The old oli-
Garchs could no longer count on family influence and regional power to control political events.
Cleisthenes also created a new council, called the boule in Greek and commonly known today as the Council of 500. Each tribe annually selected 50 male citizens by lot to sit on the council. The new council proposed issues for the Assembly to debate, met foreign diplomats, and oversaw the appointment of tax collectors.
In general, Cleisthenes’s reforms expanded government involvement for Athenians. The members of the boule changed often, since they were selected by lot (using a kleroterion, see page 52), and each of the 10 tribes also elected different officials for the military. All of the reforms were approved by the Assembly, reflecting a wide level of support among the population as a whole. Herodotus, in Book Five of The Histories, notes that Cleisthenes was deliberately trying to win popular support, to thwart the political aspirations of his aristocratic rivals. The plan worked, because “once he had won the ordinary people over, he was far more powerful than his political opponents.”
Cleisthenes’s changes also set Athens on a stronger path to democracy, though government by the demos still faced threats, as some aristocrats considered uneducated citizens incapable of correctly using the decision-making power they were given. In the first half of the fifth century B. C.E., the Athenian general and politician Ephialtes (d. c. 460 b. c.e.), weakened the Aeropagus. The details of his reforms are unclear, but he seems to have convinced the Assembly to give some of the Aeropagus’s powers to the boule, the courts, and the Assembly itself. Anti-democratic aristocrats then had Ephialtes assassinated, a sign of their displeasure with him and his democratic reforms. Despite this, the trend toward giving more decisionmaking power to the citizens of the polis continued, powered in part by the demos-the common men whose labor was needed to drive the scores of triremes that by now patrolled the Aegean Sea and the other coasts of Greece.
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