Hello, Χαίρετε, and welcome to Epic Greek History Episode 26, “You Say You Want a Revolution: Cleisthenes and Athenian Democracy.” I’m Scott Emmons.

 With this episode, we’re entering what to me is one of the most exciting periods in Greek history. We’re going to see power struggles within Athens, conflicts with other states, and a radical overhaul of the Athenian political system. This is the watershed moment when Athens becomes a true democracy — in the ancient Greek sense. Now, of course, when we look at it from a modern perspective, there are some elements that fall short of what we would call democracy. Most notably, women, even those who are considered citizens, have no direct participation in any of the political institutions. Slaves and resident foreigners are also excluded. But from the ancient Greek point of view, this is when the demos — the whole citizen body including the poorest — begins to be the real power center in the Athenian state. From this point, Athens becomes more and more democratic until it reaches its peak in the 5th century BCE.

 Now, there’s an old, popular idea that Athens quote-unquote “invented democracy” at this time. As usual with big statements like that, it’s an oversimplification. None of this happens in a vacuum. We’ve seen that even in the early period, when the aristocracy held most of the cards, the seeds of egalitarianism were there. We’ve seen it in the Homeric assemblies and in Hesiod’s boldness in speaking truth to power. A historian by the name of Eric Robinson has recently compiled evidence for democracy in one form or another emerging in various cities around the Greek world even earlier than in Athens. Democratic movements seem to be more of a widespread trend than an Athenian invention. On the other hand, Athens is the democracy we know the most about, for the simple reason that it became the most powerful and therefore the most influential in the course of Greek history.

 So let’s pick up where we left off. The Spartan army under the king Cleomenes has just aided the anti-tyranny forces in Athens by besieging the tyrant Hippias and his supporters on the Acropolis. Hippias is allowed to live and goes into exile over in Asia, where he comes under the protection of the Persian king. After the Spartans withdraw, you can imagine that Athens is in a politically fragile condition. The immediate aftermath looks something like a return to the old pattern of aristocrats competing to gain as much power as possible for themselves. And that power struggle is playing out between two main contenders. One of them is Cleisthenes, who belongs to the distinguished Alcmaeonid clan. If his name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s the grandson of the tyrant Cleisthenes of Sicyon, who famously held the contest to find the best husband for his daughter Agariste. The winner was the Alcmaeonid Megacles, and Cleisthenes is his son. The other big power player is a man named Isagoras from another prominent family, although our sources don’t say which one.

 The year is now 508/7 BCE — which is a clumsy notation we use because our calendar doesn’t match up very well with the ancient Athenian calendar. Of the two rivals I’ve just mentioned, Isagoras has the upper hand. For one thing, he’s the chief archon for the year. Cleisthenes has already held the archonship at one point during Hippias’ tyranny, so he’s technically ineligible to hold it again. Isagoras’ political program favors a narrow oligarchy with relatively few privileged men in power, so he naturally has the backing of the more conservative upper-class types. What recourse does Cleisthenes have? As Herodotus puts it, he brings the demos, the people, into his political faction. 

 That’s a dramatic moment in Herodotus’ history, and the phrase he uses is striking. It’s worth looking at closely, so bear with me while I try to unravel a little Greek. In Herodotus’ words, τòν δῆμον προσεταιρíζεται. The first part, “τòν δῆμον,” is just the direct object form of the demos, the people. The verb προσεταιρίζεται is based the word hetairos, meaning “companion,” or hetaireia, which can refer to an association of friends or like-minded people. “Hetairieia” has political overtones. A bit later in Athenian history, it comes to mean a well-defined political club. Those haven’t yet developed in Cleisthenes’ time, but Herodotus uses the word προσεταιρíζεται to mean he started to treat the people as a political force. By promising them more of a voice in government, he made them his base. 

 What people are we talking about? “Demos” technically means the entire citizen body, but it very commonly means the lower classes — just the way “the people” can have that connotation in English. The clear sense here is that Cleisthenes is reaching out to people who haven’t had political influence before. They would include the thetes, the poorest Athenian citizens. There’s also some evidence that Isagoras was moving to take citizenship away from people who’d acquired it under Solon and Pisistratus. You may remember that Solon had offered citizenship to skilled craftsmen who would set up shop in Athens and improve the economy. Their citizenship is now in question, so they would naturally be inclined to get behind Cleisthenes. 

 The big question now is, how can Cleisthenes pull this off? He’s not an archon, he doesn’t hold public office, so what political machinery can he use? Well, as a former archon, he has lifetime membership in the highly prestigious council of the Areopagus, which means he’s one of the elite few who have the privilege of addressing the general assembly. And that must be his main base of operation. Technically, the assembly has the final say on any question that’s put to it. When only the elites can address it, that’s a serious limitation on its decision-making power. But now Cleisthenes is making radical proposals to give the demos more of a voice in government. And the people are listening.

 Well, as Cleisthenes’ support grows, Isagoras is feeling more and more threatened. Lucky for him, he has a friend who can help — namely, king Cleomenes of Sparta. Herodotus tells us they’ve been guest-friends since the expulsion of the tyrants. So Cleomenes leads a small force into Athens and makes a demand on behalf of Isagoras. The Athenians have to drive out the Alcmaeonid curse. As you may recall, over a century earlier, when Cylon tried to make himself tyrant, the Alcmaeonids had his supporters put to death even though they’d taken sanctuary with the goddess Athena. That gave their enemies ammunition. They could claim that the Alcmaeonids were cursed, that they were a pollution in the city. So now, when Cleomenes marches in with a Spartan force and makes his demand, Cleisthenes voluntarily leaves Athens. But that’s not enough for Isagoras and his Spartan allies. They expel 700 families who’ve been friendly to the Alcmaeonids. To be honest, I have a hard time getting my head around that number. It’s hard for me to see how there were that many families who were politically important enough to be caught up in it. But 700 is the number Herodotus gives us, and Aristotle backs him up. 

 With Cleomenes in his corner, Isagoras now makes a bold, autocratic move. He decides to abolish the existing council and put power in the hands of 300 specially selected men loyal to him. But the council refuses to stand down. Of course, that would be an empty gesture if they didn’t have some muscle to back them up. And they have that muscle in the form of a lot of angry Athenians. Isagoras and Cleomenes respond by seizing the Acropolis. It’s not really clear whether this was an act of aggression or if they fled to the Acropolis fearing mob violence. In any case, the Athenians now pour in from all over Attica and surround the Acropolis for two days. On the third day, the besieged leaders negotiate a truce. Cleomenes and his army are allowed to leave and go back to Sparta. Isagoras can even go with them. But a good number of his supporters are put to death.

 Our main sources for these events are Herodotus and Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens, which agree on most points. Herodotus includes an interesting anecdote that I can’t resist mentioning as a side note. He says when Cleomenes had taken the Acropolis, he went up to the temple of Athena and tried to enter the inner chamber and address the goddess. The priestess stood up and said, “Don’t come any farther. It’s unlawful for Dorians to enter.” And Cleomenes answered, “I’m not a Dorian. I’m an Achaean.” Every now and then, this issue rears its head — the Spartans being Dorians but always wanting to claim Achaean ancestry.

 Well, the Athenians have now expelled Isagoras and the Spartans. Historians have grappled with the question of what kind of leadership the mass of Athenians had when they besieged the Acropolis. In fact, I even have a new sound effect for this, courtesy of Mr. Matt Hobbs. [SFX: It’s debated!] It’s debated. Some have argued that it can’t have happened the way Herodotus and Aristotle tell it, on the assumption that a leaderless mass uprising like this was impossible within the power structure of archaic Greece. On the other hand, one of the leading Greek historians, Josiah Ober, has argued convincingly, I think, that the sources essentially have it right — the mass of Athenians rose up without a prominent leader and brought about a revolution. There are a lot of unknowns here. So bear in mind that what I’m about to say is pure speculation. I’m inclined to think that Cleisthenes didn’t just sit and twiddle his thumbs while he was in exile. He may have been in communication with what supporters he had left in the city. If not, I’m sure he was at least an inspiring figurehead for the Athenians to rally around. Also, the fact that Cleomenes and Isagoras could negotiate a truce suggest that there was some organization among the besiegers, that it wasn’t just a rioting mob. But all in all, I like Ober’s conclusion that this was a true popular uprising.

 Well, once the Athenians have gotten rid of the Spartans, Cleisthenes can return to Athens along with those 700 families who were driven out. And now he has his chance to carry out the reforms that will change the whole political system. We’ll look at those reforms and their long-term effects right after a short break. If you’re a regular listener, you know that Epic Greek History is free and always will be. My goal is to share my passion for ancient Greece with anyone who’s interested. I’m happy to do it at my own expense, while at the same time, I’m very grateful to those who support the podcast with paid subscriptions. If you’d like to help with the production costs, the one way to do that is to go to the website, www.epicgreekhistory.com, hit that “Support” button, and choose a contribution level starting at three dollars a month. With that out of the way, let’s break for…

 [SFX: A Moment of Greek!]

 When I started working on this episode, I thought this moment of Greek would be the perfect opportunity to talk about the word “democracy” and its Greek roots. But then I remembered I’d already covered that in episode 16, the one on the tyrants. So instead, I’d like to unpack another word that’s important for democracy and for all of Greek politics really — the word “agora.” That’s usually translated as “marketplace,” which tells only half the story. It certainly was a marketplace, a central location in the city where you’d go to buy and sell goods. But it was also the civic center, where most government business was done. The word “agora” is etymologically connected with the verb “ageiro,” which means “to gather together.” So at its core, the agora is a gathering place — for both commercial and state activities. That dual purpose is reflected in a couple of other related verbs. “Agorazo” means to do business or just “to buy,” which is its meaning in modern Greek. The verb “agoreuo,” on the other hand, means to speak in the assembly or the council — to make a public oration. So the agora is the marketplace for both goods and political activity. And just so we don’t idealize the ancients too much, that verb “agorazo” could also mean “to hang out in the marketplace,” or more bluntly, “to loiter.” Which means ancient Athens had its equivalent of mall rats. And that’s today’s moment of Greek.

 [SFX]

 Once the Spartans were gone and Cleisthenes had returned to Athens, he could get down to the business of implementing the reforms he’d been promising. Our sources don’t give us a lot of detail about the process. It must have taken a long time and required a lot of debate and negotiation. But the outcome was a transformation of the Athenian constitution on much more democratic principles. In this part of the episode, we’ll be looking at the nuts and bolts of that reformed constitution. It won’t be as action-packed as the first part, and it’ll get a little wonky in spots, but these political developments are so bold and far-reaching, I think they’re fascinating in their own right.

 The first big change was a complete reorganization of the tribes in Athens. The Athenians identified as Ionians, and as such, they were traditionally sorted into four tribes, each with its own heroic ancestor. So if you were an Athenian, for your whole life, you’d been a member of a specific tribe. It was a part of your identity. Cleisthenes introduced an entirely new, artificial tribal system. Instead of the four traditional Ionian tribes dating back from time immemorial, there would now be ten new Athenian tribes. And every citizen would belong to one of those.

 Why would Cleisthenes want to reorganize the tribes? Herodotus offers an answer, but it’s a strangely superficial one. His explanation is that Cleisthenes was copying his grandfather and namesake, the tyrant of Sicyon. In the episode on tyrants, we saw how the tyrant Cleisthenes had an anti-Dorian propaganda scheme, and as a part of that, he renamed the Dorian tribes as pig-men, donkey-men, and so on. So Herodotus says the Athenian Cleisthenes did a similar thing out of contempt for the Ionian tribes. 

 Now, I’m sure Cleisthenes knew his family lore, and he may have looked at his grandfather’s policy and seen potential in changing up the tribal structure. But his reasons for doing so were very different. His objective was to break up some of the local and regional loyalties that had caused so much conflict in the past. Remember the old factions of the plain, the coast, and the hills before Pisistratus took power. Cleisthenes addressed that with a radical move. He divided Attica into three broad regions of the coast, the city, and the inland area. Then he subdivided each of those areas into ten units called trittyes. Each trittys was made up of the local towns and villages called demes. So all told, Attica is now divided into 30 of these trittyes. And each of Cleisthenes’ new tribes is composed of three trittyes, one from each of those three broad regions. Apologies if I’m making your brain hurt, but fortunately there won’t be a quiz at the end of the podcast. The big takeaway is that if you’re an Athenian, the tribe you now belong to includes about the same number of people from different parts of Attica. If you’re a member of the tribe Kekropis, for example, your fellow tribesmen include some from the coast, some from the interior, and some from the city. So those old regional allegiances are broken down, and Attica becomes a more cohesive whole.

 Of course, you couldn’t just go in and monkey with the tribes as a purely secular move. You had to have some kind of buy-in from the gods. Each new tribe had to have an ancient hero as its protector, and the tribe would be named after him. Final approval would have to come from Delphi. So Cleisthenes had a list of 100 heroes drawn up, and then it was up to Apollo to decide which ten would be the eponymous heroes of the Athenian tribes. 

 I mentioned earlier that each tribe was made up of three trittyes, which were made up of demes. And those demes were the smallest administrative units within the state. Part of Cleisthenes’ reform was that registration of citizens would now be done through the demes, as opposed to the brotherhoods that were part of the traditional tribal organization. There was even a slogan, “No investigation by tribes.” In other words, if there’s a question about someone’s citizenship, you’re not supposed to look into his membership in an Ionian tribe, you’re supposed to look at the deme records. This part of Cleisthenes’ program was only partly successful. You couldn’t just wipe out hundreds of years of tradition and clan ties in one stroke. Yes, citizens were now registered in the demes, but the brotherhood was still where you’d often go if you needed someone to vouch for your status as a citizen.

 A related policy was that every male citizen should now identify himself by his deme, not by his patronymic. In other words, I’m no longer supposed to say I’m Theodorus the son of Clearchus. I’m now Theodorus of Acharnae. That’s my deme. The purpose is evidently to put the newer citizens, the ones Isagoras had wanted to disenfranchise, on a more equal footing. If you say you’re the son of Megacles, I know right away, “This guy’s an Alcmaeonid, from one of the old Athenian families.” If your father’s name sounds non-Athenian, you can avoid giving away your ancestry by just stating the deme you come from. So that may have been the goal, but again, it doesn’t really seem to have taken root. In the classical period it was standard to include your patronymic as well as your deme. For example, Socrates the son of Sophroniscus of Alopeke. 

 Besides reorganizing the tribes, Cleisthenes introduced a new council of 500. A lot of modern authors use the Greek word for that, the boule, so you’re likely to see that if you do further reading. Information about an earlier council of 400 under Solon is very thin. But this new Cleisthenic council would play a central role in Athenian government. As so often happens, most of what we know about it comes from the classical period when it was fully developed. It must have taken some time to evolve. But in its prime, it took on a wide range of administrative duties, often in coordination with city magistrates. It was the body that received embassies from other states. And crucially, it debated issues and prepared the agenda for the popular assembly, which had the final say. 

 Now, 500 is a big number. Even the U.S. House of Representatives doesn’t have quite that many members. A council of that size would be too big to have the kind of in-depth discussions and debates needed to prepare legislation. The solution was that each tribe selected 50 men from its demes to serve on the council for one-tenth of the year. Those 50 would be on active duty for that whole period, which was called a prytany. A striking feature of this system is that each tribe selected its 50 representatives by lot — at first, evidently, from a pool of elected candidates, but that soon evolved into a purely random selection. What’s more, during the prytany, a new presiding officer was chosen by lot every day. Obviously, that would be an effective safeguard against any one man amassing too much power. But it also had the democratizing effect of giving more citizens direct participation in a governing body.

 Well, selection by lot could work for assembling a group of councilmen. But one office that required special skills was that of strategos, a general. There was one general from each tribe, and those were chosen by popular vote. The term was one year, but there was no limit to the number of terms a general could serve. So someone who showed himself to be exceptionally capable could be elected year after year. Compare that with the archonship, which no one could hold more than once. For those reasons, the office of strategos gradually came to be the most influential in the Athenian democracy. As its importance rose, the archonship diminished, and after a certain point, the archons were chosen by lot. But outside of commanding armies in the field, the generals couldn’t just issue executive orders. Anything they did to direct policy had to be approved by the assembly.

There’s one more element of the Cleisthenic system to mention, and that is a strange institution called ostracism. The word has come down to us in English to mean treating someone as a social outcast. If we ostracize someone, we’re going to unfriend them on social media and we won’t invite them the next time the gang goes out for happy hour. In ancient Athens, ostracism has more teeth. It’s a form of temporary banishment. The word comes from the Greek ostracon, which means a potsherd, a piece of broken pottery that was used for voting. Pottery was everywhere, and of course it was always breaking, so potsherds have often been called the “scrap paper of the ancient world.”

 So how did ostracism work? Once a year, the assembly would take up the question of whether there should be an ostracism that year. If the vote was no, that was the end of it. If yes, a special assembly meeting was then held in the agora to decide that one issue. Each voter would scratch the name of the person they wanted to get rid of on an ostracon. Or if they couldn’t write, they could have someone do it for them. And then they’d drop their ostracon into an urn to be counted. At least 6000 votes had to be cast in order for the ostracism to be valid. If the total number of votes cast was under 6000, nobody was ostracized.  But if that quota of 6000 was met, the guy who received the most votes had to leave Athens within ten days and stay away for ten years. He kept his property, and after his ten years were up, he could come back and return to life as a full citizen. He might even hold office. As far as the law of ostracism was concerned, he’d paid his debt and the slate was clean.

 What was the point of all this? The original purpose seems to have been to guard against one man getting too much power and establishing another tyranny. Keep in mind that this was only about four years after the tyrant Hippias was expelled. And in fact, Aristotle tells us that Cleisthenes had one of the tyrant’s relatives, a man named Hipparchus, in his sights when he introduced ostracism. But strangely, there was no ostracism that year or for the next fifteen. In any case, it was probably devised as guardrail against tyranny. But you can easily see how an unscrupulous politician or an interest group could weaponize it to target an enemy. And there’s an interesting archaeological find that shows how people could work the system. In 1937, archaeologists discovered a cache of a hundred and ninety ostraca that had been thrown down a well, and each one had the name of the statesman Themistocles scratched on it. Close inspection of the handwriting showed that just fourteen people had done the writing. So someone was mass producing ostraca targeting one man. That doesn’t necessarily mean they were committing fraud or stuffing the ballot box. A likely scenario is that a group had prepared them beforehand and then distributed them on the day of the ostracism. “Hey, buddy, you want to throw that bum Themistocles out? Here’s I’ll make it easy for you. Take one of these.”

 So those are the basics of the new Athenian democracy. And I’ll end this section with one last observation about Cleisthenes himself. Obviously, he was extremely important as the architect of the institutions that made the Athenian democracy work. And yet, we know next to nothing about him. For Solon, we have his own writings plus a full biography by Plutarch. Even for Pisistratus, I think we can get some sense of his personality from the anecdotes in various authors. But Plutarch never wrote a life of Cleisthenes, or if he did, it hasn’t survived. Even Herodotus doesn’t give us any kind of character sketch. So if we’re going to say anything about his character, all we can do is speculate. But it seems to me that he must have been a brilliant negotiator to have effected such profound changes in the political institutions and made them stick. After the upheaval that drove out Isagoras and his Spartan supporters, he managed it with little or no political violence, as far as we can tell. Of course, none of this would have happened if the demos hadn’t reached a point where it was ready to demand more of a voice in government. And it probably didn’t hurt that after three and a half decades of autocratic rule, many of the nobles had less grandiose expectations for themselves. Cleisthenes was the right leader to come along just at this time. But after his reforms, he disappears from history. We never hear anything more about him.

 And that’ll take us to our second break. In the next section, the action picks up again. But first…

 [SFX: Random Facts!]

 Ostracism is a curious feature of the Athenian democracy, and thanks to Plutarch, we have a classic story about it. In the fifth century there was a prominent statesman by the name of Aristides, who had a reputation for being a very upright citizen. So much so that he came to be known as “Aristides the Just.” Well, as just as he was, he had political enemies, and they organized a push to ostracize him. So on the day of the ostracism, a rustic type from somewhere out in the country demes came up to him and said, “I want to vote, but I don’t know how to write. Can you help me out?” Aristides said, “Sure. What name would you like me to write?” And the guy said, “Aristides.” “All right,” Aristides said. “May I ask, what’s your beef with him?” The guy said, “Nothing. I don’t even know him. I’m just so sick of hearing him called ‘the just’ all the time!” So, being Aristides the Just, he wrote his own name on the ostracon. Of course, that story is intended to illustrate what an honest man Aristides was, along the same lines as George Washington owning up to chopping down the cherry tree. It may also show some anti-democratic bias on the part of Plutarch’s source. Here’s a system where an illiterate guy from the lowest class can contribute to the ouster of one of the most honorable citizens. From the perspective of the U.S., where we’ve traditionally admired ancient Athens as the cradle of democracy, it’s helpful to remember that many of the ancient authors were upper-class types who didn’t think democracy was such a great thing. And that’s today’s random fact.

 [SFX]

 The way I’ve structured this episode, it might give the impression that after the Athenians drove out the Spartans, there was a nice, calm period when they could work on reorganizing the state. But the truth is, there was trouble brewing all along. Isagoras was not only still alive, he was still tight with the Spartan king Cleomenes. And for his part, Cleomenes was smarting from the insult of having to cut a deal with a mob of angry Athenians. Those two weren’t just going to cut their losses and move on.

 So this is a tense time for the Athenians. They know they’re in for a fight sooner or later. And they actually take a step that would seem unthinkable a few decades later. They send envoys over to Sardis in Lydia to ask the Persian satrap for an alliance. Persia is a world power by this point, so if the Athenians can get military help from there, they’ll be in a much stronger position. The hitch is that Persia doesn’t make alliances on equal terms. If the Athenians want its protection, they’ll have to give earth and water to the Great King — which is the standard ritual of submission when you become a subject of the Persian Empire. Well, these envoys are far away from Athens, and they can’t just send a text to ask if it’s okay, so they make the decision to offer earth and water. Technically, at least from the Persian point of view, that means Athens is now a subject state. But we don’t hear of the Persians sending any forces. And the way the story has come down to us, the envoys are severely punished for betraying their city when they come home. That may very well be a whitewashed version passed down by the Alcmaeonid family to clear Cleisthenes of any blame for trying to collude with Persia.

 Meanwhile, in Sparta… Isagoras and Cleomenes are making arrangements to invade Athens yet again and install Isagoras as a full-on tyrant. And this time, Cleomenes is not just going in with a few hundred Spartans. He’s going to bring the whole Peloponnesian League. He also reaches out to other friendly states to coordinate attacks from other directions. Up north of Attica is the region of Boeotia, with Thebes as its most powerful state. Cleomenes gets the Boeotians to plan attacks on Athenian border territory. And just across the narrow strait is Chalcis on the island of Euboea, and the Chalcidians are going to join up with those Boeotian troops to invade Attica. So the Athenians will be facing attacks on at least two fronts.

 How are they going to deal with this? They decide that their best option is to keep their forces unified and face the Spartan threat first, then deal with the invaders up north. Cleomenes leads his army of Spartans and allies as far as Eleusis, on the edge of Attic territory. The forces are all mustered there, ready for the assault, when the Corinthians ask themselves, “What are we doing here? Why are we spending our blood and treasure to set up a tyranny in Athens?” They decide it’s not in their interest, so they split off and go home. Next comes a huge rift in the Spartan ranks. Remember, Sparta has not one, but two kings. Cleomenes’ colleague is the king Demaratus, and he now decides he wants no part of this fight. At that point, the other allies fall away, and the whole invasion is a bust. I have to think Cleomenes’ head was exploding. In any case, the Spartans learned from the incident and passed a law that only one king at a time could lead an expedition.

 So the Spartan threat has been neutralized, but the Athenians still have to deal with the invasions to the north. Fortunately for them, they get there before the Chalcidians can unite with the Boeotians. They trounce the Boeotians in battle and take hundreds of hostages, whom they can ransom after the dust settles. Then they cross over to Euboea — on the same day, according to Herodotus — and whip the Chalcidians. Their victory there is so decisive, they take over some of the good farmland in the area and settle 4000 Athenians there as “cleruchs.” What does that mean? In a much earlier episode I talked about the word “kleros,” which means an allotment of land. So a cleruch is literally a “lot holder,” who now owns this plot of land outside Attica but still keeps his Athenian citizenship. This isn’t an entirely new thing. Athens has earlier established cleruchies on the island of Salamis. And later on, in the period of the Athenian empire, cleruchies will become one way of extending the Athenian presence much farther away.

 Herodotus observes that Athens had already been a great city, but it became even greater after getting rid of its tyrants. And after narrating the events I’ve just described, the Spartan invasion and the victories over Boeotia and Chalcis, he has this to say. As translated by Andrea Purvis, quote:

 So the Athenians had increased in strength, which demonstrates that an equal voice in government has beneficial impact not merely in one way, but in every way; the Athenians, while ruled by tyrants, were no better in war than any of the peoples living around them, but once they were rid of tyrants, they became by far the best of all. Thus it is clear that they were deliberately slack while repressed, since they were working for a master, but that after they were freed, they became ardently devoted to working hard so as to win achievements for themselves as individuals. Unquote.

 Now, I mentioned only minutes ago that some of the most prominent Greek authors took a dim view of democracy. But at least in this passage, Herodotus sounds like a fan. In other parts of his work, he can be more critical of democracy. But here he focuses on the invigorating effects of what he calls “isegoria,” the equal right to speak. To have a voice in public affairs. In “isegoria,” you can hear that root word “agora” again. The importance of speech in Greek culture should never be underestimated. 

 Herodotus’ analysis may come across as simplistic, but there’s no denying that morale counts in politics and warfare. The Athenians’ confidence must have been soaring after they’d ousted the tyrants and fought off a Spartan army. I would imagine that more of the poorer citizens, with a heightened sense of their place in the polis, were inspired to turn out for military service, either by acquiring a basic hoplite panoply or by joining in as light infantry. As Josiah Ober puts it in the article I referred to earlier, quote:

 Given that there was little time to train a new army, we may guess that the Athenian victories were largely due to the great size and high morale of their field armies: I imagine something like the levée en masse of revolutionary France, the hastily assembled but massive armed force that scored dramatic victories over regional rivals in the years after 1789. The postrevolutionary Athenian land army was clearly an artifact of the postrevolutionary political order. The victories of 506 immediately changed Athens’ status within the Greek world. Unquote.

 That would seem like a nice, clean place to end this episode. But history often doesn’t organize itself as cleanly as we’d like. Athens had won some important victories, but its enemies weren’t ready to give up just yet. The Thebans were unhappy with the rough treatment they’d received in the war, so they started colluding with the island of Aegina, which had long been hostile to Athens, to launch attacks on the Attic coast.  Sparta — which almost certainly means Cleomenes — was still intent on setting up a pro-Spartan regime in Athens. We’re told that they were especially intent on this because they’d gotten ahold of some oracles predicting that Athens would soon become as powerful as Sparta. So they wanted someone of their choosing to be the head honcho in Athens. But it wasn’t going to be Isagoras this time. They actually brought the exiled tyrant Hippias over from Asia with a plan to march against Athens yet again and restore him as tyrant. But in the end, there was no invasion. The Spartans proposed the plan at a meeting of the Peloponnesian League — which happens to be the first recorded meeting of the League in history. Hippias himself addressed the ambassadors. But the Corinthians gave a long, impassioned speech about the evils of tyranny. They convinced all the other allies, so the project fizzled.

 Well… What we’re left with at the end of the sixth century BCE is a newly minted Athenian democracy that’s proven its strength against challengers on all sides. Athens will continue to become more democratic, but the initial transformation is complete. And this is the state of affairs as we move into the era of the great conflicts between Greece and Persia. 

 That concludes episode 26. We’ve covered a lot of ground, and as usual, I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface. If you have something you’d like to add in the way of comments, questions, corrections, or anything else, I’ll be happy to hear from you. My email is scott@epicgreekhistory.com. And you can always comment on Facebook or Instagram. I’m Scott Emmons. The music for my theme song was composed and recorded by Parry Gripp. Additional music was produced by Matt Hobbs. My logo and other artwork are by Chris Harding. Until next time, εὐτυχεῖτε! Be well.