CLEISTHENES, the name of two Greek statesmen, (1) of Athens, (2) of Sicyon, of whom the first is far the more important.
Cleisthenes, on his return, realized that Athens would not tol erate a new tyranny, nor were the other nobles willing to accept him as leader of an oligarchy. It was left for him to "take the people into partnership" as Peisistratus had in a different way done before him. Solon's reforms had failed, primarily because they left unimpaired the power of the great landed nobles. This evil of local influence Peisistratus had concealed by satisfying the nom inally sovereign people that in him they had a sufficient representa tive. It was left to Cleisthenes to adopt the remedy of giving sub stance to the form of the Solonian constitution. His first attempts roused the aristocrats to a last effort ; Isagoras appealed to the Spartans to come to his aid. Cleisthenes retired on the arrival of a herald from Cleomenes, reviving the old question of the curse. The democrats, however, rose, and of ter besieging Cleomenes and Isagoras in the Acropolis, let them go under a safe-conduct, and brought back the exiles. We are not told when and how the ascend ancy of Cleisthenes came to an end. It is stated that Cleisthenes, hard pressed in the war with Boeotia, Euboea and Sparta (Herod. v. 73), sent ambassadors to ask the help of Persia. Associated as he was with the democrats, the Peisistratid party, this is not improbable. The existence of a strong philo-medic party is clear from the story of the shield after the battle of Marathon, for which the Alcmaeonidae were blamed. (See G. B. Grundy, Great Persian War, ch. iv.) The gift and withdrawal of Athenian help in the Ionian War (498) is another indication of division of opinion in Athens. Aelian says that he was a victim to his own device of ostracism (q.v.) ; this may perhaps indicate that his political career ended in disgrace, a hypothesis which is explicable on the ground of this attempted Persian alliance.
Cleisthenes realized that the dead-weight which held the democ racy down was the influence on politics of the clan unit with its religious associations. Therefore his prime object was to dissociate the clans and the phratries from politics, and to give the democracy a new electoral basis in which old associations and vested interests would become ineffective. His first step was to abolish the four Solonian tribes and create ten new ones. Each of the new tribes was subdivided into "demes" (roughly "townships") ; this organi zation did not, except politically, supersede the system of clans and phratries whose old religious signification remained untouched. The new tribes, however, did not represent local interests. Fur ther, the tribe names were taken from legendary heroes, and, there fore, contributed to the idea of a national unity; even Ajax, the eponym of the tribe Aeantis, though not really Attic, was famous as an ally (Herod. v. 66) and had been adopted as a national hero. Each tribe had its shrine and its particular hero-cult, which, how ever, was free from local association and the dominance of par ticular families. This national idea Cleisthenes further emphasized by setting up in the market-place at Athens a statue of each tribal hero.
The next step was the organization of the deme. Within each tribe he grouped demes (see below), each of which had its census list kept by the demarch (local governor), who was elected popu larly and held office for one year and presided over meetings affect ing local administration and the provision of crews for the state navy. According to the Aristotelian Constitution of Athens, Cleisthenes further divided Attica into three districts, Urban and Suburban, Inland (Mesogaios) and Maritime (Parana), each of which was subdivided into ten trittyes; each tribe was composed of three trittyes, one in each of the three districts. The demes were arranged in ten groups but the number of demes in a tribe was not uniform. The trittyes might consist of one or several demes and the number of members of a deme varied greatly, though, at first, the division was local, i.e., a deme consisted of its residents, the qualification became hereditary, a man belonging to his father's deme wherever he lived. Hence the distinction between resident demesmen and residents belonging to another deme (E yKeKTfµfvoc). The main purpose of the reform was to do away with the religious qualification of connection with clan or phratry and so facilitate the enfranchisement of new citizens. The artificial arrangement of the trittyes was intended to weaken the authority of the Eupatrid families in the tribes whose widely separated trit tyes could not easily be brought under influence.
It has been asked whether we are to believe that Cleisthenes in vented the demes. To this the answer is in the negative. The demes were undoubtedly primitive divisions of Attica. The most logical conclusion perhaps is that Cleisthenes, while he did create the demes which Athens itself comprised, did not create the country demes, but merely gave them definition as political divi sions. Thus the city itself had six demes in five different tribes, and the other five tribes were represented in the suburbs and the Peir aeus. In the Cleisthenean system there was one great source of danger, namely that the residents in and about Athens must always have had more weight in elections than those in distant demes.
Moreover a special class, the new commercial element in the citi zenship devised by Solon and fostered by Cleisthenes, soon came to have a preponderating influence in the city and suburbs.
A second problem is the franchise reform of Cleisthenes. Aris totle in the Politics (iii. 2.3 = 1 275 b) says that Cleisthenes created new citizens by enrolling in the tribes "many resident aliens and emancipated slaves." But the Aristotelian Constitution of Athens asserts that he gave "citizenship to the masses." METOCKOL had been encouraged to settle in Athens by Solon and the grant of citizen ship had been made to many skilled in trades and handicrafts. The Peisistratids, like the Etruscan dynasty at Rome, naturally fa voured this commercial "plebs" as a support against the aristocrats. After their expulsion a revision of the citizen-roll had removed many or all of these as yfvecµfi Kaz9apoL. Cleisthenes restored these and opened the way to citizenship to all satisfactory resident aliens, so strengthening the position of the democracy.
The Boule (q.v.) was reorganized to suit the new tribal arrange ment, and was known henceforward as the Council of the Five Hundred, fifty from each tribe, each fifty acting as an executive committee (irpvrovecs [q.v.]) for one month. The system of ten tribes led in course of time to the construction of boards of ten to deal with military and civil affairs, e.g. the Strategi (see STRAT EGUS), the Apodektai, and others. Of these the former cannot be attributed to Cleisthenes, but on the evidence of Androtion it was Cleisthenes who replaced the Kolakretai, by the Apodektai ("re ceivers"), who were controllers and auditors of the finance depart ment. Kolakretai were very ancient Athenian magistrates ; they were again important in the time of Aristophanes (Wasps, 693, 724 ; Birds, 1541), and presided over the payment of the dicasts instituted by Pericles. The Kolakretai remained in authority over the internal expenses of the Prytaneum. A further change which followed from the new tribal system was the reconstitution of the army; this, however, probably took place about 501 B.C., and can not be attributed directly to Cleisthenes. It has been said that the deme became the local political unit, replacing the naucrary (q.v.). But the naucraries still supplied the fleet, and were increased in number from forty-eight to fifty.
The device of ostracism is the final stone in the Cleisthenean structure. An admirable scheme in theory, and, at first, in practice, it deteriorated in the 5th century into a mere party weapon.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Ancient: Aristotle, Constitution of Athens (ed. Bibliography. Ancient: Aristotle, Constitution of Athens (ed. J. E. Sandys), cc. 2o-22, 41 ; Herodotus v. 63-73, vi. 131 ; Aristotle, Politics, iii. 2, 3 (=1275 b. for franchise reforms). Modern: Histories of Greece in general, especially J. B. Bury. A. H. J. Greenidge, Hand book of Greek Constitutional History (1896) ; Gilbert, Greek Consti tutional Antiquities (Engl. trans. 1895) ; R. W. Macan, Herodotus iv—vi., vol. ii. (1895) , pp. 12 7-148 ; E. M. Walker, in Camb. Anc. Hist. vol. iv. ch. vi. The Reform of Cleisthenes. See also BOULE; ECCLESIA; OSTRACISM ; NAUCRARY ; SOLON.
(2) CLEISTHENES OF SICYON (c. 600-570), grandfather of the above, became tyrant of Sicyon as the representative of the con quered Ionian section of the inhabitants. He emphasized the de struction of Dorian predominance by giving ridiculous epithets to their tribal units, which from Hylleis, Dymanes and Pamphyli become Hyatae ("Swine-men"), Choireatae ("Pig-men") and Oneatae ("Ass-men"). He also attacked Dorian Argos, and sup pressed the Homeric "rhapsodists" who sang the exploits of Dorian heroes. He championed the cause of the Delphic oracle against the town of Crisa in the Sacred War (c. 590). Crisa was destroyed, and Delphi became one of the meeting-places of the Delphic amphictyony (see AMPHICTYONY). The Pythian games were re established with new magnificence, and Cleisthenes won the first chariot race in 582. He founded Pythian games at Sicyon, and built a new Sicyonian treasury at Delphi. His power was so great that when he offered his daughter Agariste in marriage, some of the most prominent Greeks sought the honour, which fell upon Meg acles, the Alcmaeonid. The story of the rival wooers with the famous retort, "Hippocleides don't care," is told in Herod. vi. I 2 5 ; see also Herod. v. 67 and Thuc. i. 18.