Cleisthenes

The two principal holders of power were Cleisthenes an Alcmaeonid, who was reputed to have bribed the Pythian priestess, and Isagoras son of Tisandrus, a man of a notable house but his lineage I cannot say.

After that, the Athenians sent to bring back Cleisthenes and the seven hundred households banished by Cleomenes.

Then Cleomenes first sent a herald to Athens demanding the banishment of Cleisthenes and many other Athenians with him, the Accursed, as he called them.

But when the Council resisted and the multitude gathered, Cleomenes and Isagoras and all their party fled for refuge to the Acropolis, and the people, sitting before it for two days, besieged them, and on the third let Cleomenes and all with him go under truce, and sent for Cleisthenes and the other exiles.

When the tyranny had been overthrown, Isagoras son of Tisander, a friend of the tyrants, and Cleisthenes, of the family of the Alcmeonidae, were at strife with one another.

When these things had been done, the constitution became much more democratic than that of Solon.

because in those others there had generally been single men, each of whom had established his own commonwealth by his laws and institutions—as Minos among the Cretans, Lycurgus among the Lacedaemonians, and among the Athenians, whose constitution had very often been changed, now Theseus, now Draco, now Solon, now Cleisthenes, now many others;

One might find many other things—indeed, simply all that have to do with some work or action—common to philosophers and to orators, that is, to such orators as are not vulgar mongers nor hirelings looking only to money and to private disputes about contracts or such matters, but are deemed worthy to give counsel and make laws in public—just as, I suppose, Pericles and Thucydides did at Athens, and …

Next, Cleisthenes, after he had been driven from Athens by the tyrants, succeeded by his eloquence in persuading the Amphictyons to lend him money from the treasury of Apollo, and thus restored the people to power, expelled the tyrants, and established that democracy to which the world of Hellas owes its greatest blessings.

For I find that the one way—the only possible way—which can avert future perils from us and deliver us from our present ills is that we should be willing to restore that earlier democracy which was instituted by Solon, who proved himself above all others the friend of the people, and which was re-established by Cleisthenes, who drove out the tyrants and brought the people back into power— a govern …

But in order that you may make a choice and come to a decision between the two constitutions, not from the summary statement you just heard, but from exact knowledge, it behoves you, for your part, to render yourselves attentive to what I say, while I, for my part, shall try to explain them both to you as briefly as I can.

At last, Alcibiades and Cleisthenes —the former my great-grandfather on my father’s side, the latter my father’s maternal great-grandfather—assuming the leadership of those in exile, restored the people to their country, and drove out the tyrants.