507 BC

Cleisthenes

Athenian resistance restores Cleisthenes and enables his constitutional reforms

A Spartan king tried to dissolve Athens's Council, and the Council simply refused to go — while Cleisthenes, the man the listing credits, was out of the city.

He did not take power; he was recalled

The crisis conventionally dated to 507 BCE began when Isagoras prompted the Spartan king Cleomenes I to demand Cleisthenes's removal as one of the allegedly accursed Alcmaeonids. Both Herodotus and Aristotle say Cleisthenes withdrew secretly before Cleomenes arrived — he was not expelled in person.

Cleomenes then expelled 700 Athenian households and tried to dissolve the Council, placing power with Isagoras and 300 supporters.

The Council resisted, the populace united behind it, and Cleomenes, Isagoras and their partisans were driven onto the Acropolis and besieged.

Three days, then a recall

On the third day the Spartans and their associates left under truce. Isagoras's remaining supporters were arrested and executed.

The Athenians then recalled Cleisthenes and the banished households. The attempted oligarchic settlement had been defeated by the Council and the citizens, not by any military move of his.

Shortly afterwards it was the Athenians collectively — not Cleisthenes personally — who sent envoys to Artaphernes, where the offer of earth and water caused bitter recrimination at home.

What the reorganisation actually did

Cleisthenes replaced four tribes with ten, created thirty regional trittyes — ten urban, ten coastal, ten inland — and gave each tribe one trittys from each zone. The Council grew from 400 members to 500, fifty per tribe.

Official identification by deme was adopted, Aristotle says, to avoid exposing newly enfranchised citizens; patronymics were not abolished and kinship groups and ancestral priesthoods remained.

The wider use of allotment for offices came after 487 BCE, and the developed jury system later still; ostracism is attributed to this settlement by Aristotle, but its date and original form are debated and it was not used for nearly two decades.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 6 sources not yet audited Traditional date

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

Traditional date. Conventionally dated here; the research places it at ~-0507.

What the sources leave uncertain

There is no securely dated single 'day' when Cleisthenes took power. The struggle and reforms belong to the Athenian archon year 508/507 BCE and probably continued into following years.
Herodotus's ordering can suggest that Cleisthenes had proposed or begun tribal changes before Isagoras called in Cleomenes; Aristotle presents their establishment after the popular victory. The event is therefore a sequence, not a one-day transfer of office.
The attribution and precise date of the first ostracism law remain debated, although Aristotle associates it with Cleisthenes; the first actual ostracism occurred much later.