18. The Birth of Athenian Democracy
With the oligarchs decisively taken care of, Cleisthenes set out to establish democracy. Key to that was the reorganization of the citizen body (demos) of Athens. Before, Athenians had been grouped into four tribes, based on kin groups. Cleisthenes argued that lent itself too readily to factionalism. Instead, Cleisthenes instituted an artificial classification system that divided the citizen body into ten at-large tribes, with membership drawn at random from all classes and all parts of Attica. Each new electoral tribe thus contained a representative sample of the entire population, including all classes and regions. Thereafter, no tribe had cause to act out of geographical or familial loyalties at the expense of Athens as a whole. A new council, the boule, was created, in which all citizens had the right to speak.
At a stroke, Cleisthenes thus eliminated the parochialism that had plagued Athens for generations. He granted the entire male citizen population access to institutions and powers previously reserved for the aristocracy. Another of Cleisthenes’ reforms was ostracism. An annual vote would be held in which each citizen could name any person he thought was too dangerous or getting too powerful for the good of the city. The citizen who received the most votes would be exiled for ten years, without prejudice to his property while he was gone, or to his citizenship rights upon his return. Cleisthenes’ reforms established basic democracy in Athens, and created the constitutional structure by which further incremental reforms would be made to transform Athens into a direct democracy. All of that was set in motion by a scandal of gigantic proportions.
