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Updated: May 24, 2025
The tyrants of Athens were mild and just in their dealings with the people, and so proved to be those of Sicyon. Cleisthenes, who became the most eminent of the tyrants of Sicyon, had a beautiful daughter, named Agaristé, whom he thought worthy of the noblest of husbands, and decided that she should be married to the worthiest youth who could be found in all the land of Greece.
But even earlier than the attempts of the Alcmeonidae, one Cedon made an attack on the tyrants; when there came another popular drinking song, addressed to him: Pour a health yet again, boy, to Cedon; forget not this duty to do, If a health is an honour befitting the name of a good man and true. Part 21 The people, therefore, had good reason to place confidence in Cleisthenes.
If space permitted I should like to tell of Joel's first debate in the Senior Debating Society, in which he proved conclusively and to the satisfaction of all present that the Political Privileges of a Citizen of Athens under the Constitution of Cleisthenes were far superior to those of a Citizen of Rome at the Time of the Second Punic War.
Hippoclides, however, in a mood to show all his accomplishments, now bade an attendant to bring in a table. This being brought, he leaped upon it, and danced some Laconian steps, which he followed by certain Attic ones. Finally, to show his utmost powers of performance, he stood on his head on the table, and began to dance with his legs in empty air. This was too much for Cleisthenes.
This revolution which Cleisthenes effected was purely democratic, to which the aristocrats did not submit without a struggle. The aristocrats called to their aid the Spartans, but without other effect than creating that long rivalry which existed between democracy and oligarchy in Greece, in which Sparta and Athens were the representatives.
The fourth was the tyranny of Pisistratus; the fifth the constitution of Cleisthenes, after the overthrow of the tyrants, of a more democratic character than that of Solon. The sixth was that which followed on the Persian wars, when the Council of Areopagus had the direction of the state.
This had originally been passed as a precaution against men in high office, because Pisistratus took advantage of his position as a popular leader and general to make himself tyrant; and the first person ostracized was one of his relatives, Hipparchus son of Charmus, of the deme of Collytus, the very person on whose account especially Cleisthenes had enacted the law, as he wished to get rid of him.
The clash between the old tribal traditions that have lost their meaning, though not their sanctity, and the new duties imposed by the actual needs of the Polis, leads to many strange and interesting compromises. The famous constitution of Cleisthenes shows several. An old proverb expresses well the ordinary feeling on the subject: ὥς κε πόλις ῥέξειε, νόμος δ' ἀρχαῖος ἅριστος.
On this Cleisthenes retired from the country, and Cleomenes, entering Attica with a small force, expelled, as polluted, seven hundred Athenian families. Having effected this, he next attempted to dissolve the Council, and to set up Isagoras and three hundred of his partisans as the supreme power in the state.
The son of Megacles and Agaristé was named Cleisthenes, and it is he who comes first in the list of famous men whom we have here to describe. It was Cleisthenes who made Attica a democratic state; and thus it came about. The laws of Solon which favored the aristocracy were set aside by despots before Solon died.
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