Which athenian ruler established democracy

Read about the evidence Aristotle Aristot. Plot on a Map Athens. During the 8th and 7th centuries BCE the s and s , Athens moved from being ruled by a king to being ruled by a small number of wealthy, land-owning aristocrats. These Nine Archons ruled the Athenians, along with the Council of the Areopagus , which consisted of all former Archons , serving on this board for life See Aristot. Read about the evidence Pausanias Paus. Herodotus Hdt. In the latter part of the 7th century , perhaps in the s , an Athenian named Cylon won the double foot-race at the Olympic Games and became a celebrity.

He used his earned fame to gather a group of supporters, seized the Acropolis , and attempted to make himself tyrant of Athens. The attempt was a complete failure and ended with Cylon and his party hiding by the statue of Athene , surrounded by an angry mob.

Lured out by promises of their own safety, Cylon and his men were killed by members of the aristocratic family called the Alcmeonidae see Paus. Whether this crisis brought about subsequent political changes we cannot tell, but it certainly left its mark on Athenian politics.

You cannot download interactives. Ancient Greek politics, philosophy, art and scientific achievements greatly influenced Western civilizations today. One example of their legacy is the Olympic Games. Use the videos, media, reference materials, and other resources in this collection to teach about ancient Greece, its role in modern-day democracy, and civic engagement. Macedonia, a small kingdom in northern Greece, established a growing empire from B. With Alexander the Great, Macedonia would come to conquer many lands and usher in the Hellenistic age in the region.

Ruled by Hammurabi, restored by Nebuchadrezzar, conquered by Cyrus—this city in the heart of Mesopotamia was both desired and despised, placing it at the center stage of the dawn of history. Due to the limited nature of the information we have about ancient Egypt, the historical figures that we call key is a more limited group than it would be in contemporary times.

The article explores three groups of key figures: those involved in developing the form of the pyramid, famous Egyptian rulers, and important non-Egyptian rulers. Join our community of educators and receive the latest information on National Geographic's resources for you and your students.

Skip to content. Image Pericles This depiction of Pericles appears in a fresco painted by Perugina c. Twitter Facebook Pinterest Google Classroom. To prevent regionalism from creeping back into the system as people changed their address, Cleisthenes decreed that a citizen, once assigned to a deme, must retain that deme-affiliation even if he moved to another part of Attica Aristot.

Evidence from the 5th and 4th centuries show many people living in the city of Athens, but identifying themselves with rural demes. In fact, even the rural demes often held their meetings in Athens itself Dem.

So, there was a tendency for deme-level politics to be dominated by people who had not moved into the city, but for national politics—service on juries , in the Council , and the magistracies—to be dominated by Athenians who, although members of demes located all over the peninsula, were full-time residents of the city and its immediate environs. Plot on a Map Delphi. To help legitimize this new division, to give it the aura of antiquity, Cleisthenes named each tribe after a legendary hero of Athens ; the selection of heroes was handled by the Oracle at Delphi , that is, by the god Apollo himself.

Their statues stood in downtown Athens , watching over the place where important public documents were published on billboards. All of these reforms constituted a remarkable re-shaping of Athenian society along new lines. Old associations, by region or according to families, were broken. Citizenship and the ability to enjoy the rights of citizens were in the hands of immediate neighbors, but the governing of Athens was in the hands of the Athenian Demos as a whole, organized across boundaries of territory and clan.

The new order was sealed as citizens adopted their deme-names into their own names, and as the god Apollo , speaking from Delphi , endorsed the new tribes.

But, with the Demos newly unified and the authority of the older, more arisocratic system undermined, the danger of tyranny remained. Some relatives of Pisistratus survived, wealthy and still influential, in Athens , and a new threat the Great King of Persia was increasingly interested in bringing the Greek world into his empire. What was to stop a prominent citizen from gaining support with promises of power, and then either assuming tyrannical rule or inviting Persia to set him up as a client king?

Cleisthenes sought to avert this danger by means of his most famous innovation: ostracism. Every year the Assembly of Athenian citizens voted, by show of hands, on whether or not to hold an ostracism. If the Demos voted to hold one, the ostracism took place a few months later, at another meeting of the Assembly.

He did not lose his property or his rights as an Athenian citizens, but he had to go see Aristot. Andocides Andoc. The earliest subjects of ostracism were associates of Pisistratus and his sons Aristot. The most famous ostracism was that of Aristides , an aristocrat known for being fair-minded. For the full story, which contains even more ironies that I have given here, see Plut. To be the subject of an ostracism was actually something of an honor, if an inconvenient one. It meant that a man was deemed too influential, too capable of persuading his fellow citizens, to be allowed to participate in the democratic processes of governing Athens.

The law of ostracism seems never to have been repealed, but it was never used again. Pausanias Paus. Cleisthenes reformed Athens at the very end of the 6th century. The reforms were radical and, it seems, thoughtful. That this new social order and political system took hold may have been largely due to what happened in the first decades of the 5th century. In , an expeditionary army from Persia landed in Attica , intending to repay the Athenians for helping the Greeks of Asia resist Persian rule.

The Athenians, led by Miltiades , defeated the Persians against steep numerical odds for the battle of Marathon , see Hdt. The victory for the newly democratized state was doubly significant, since the Persian expedition had brought Hippias , the son of Pisistratus , intending to install him as tyrant over the Athenians Hdt. This victory, and the even more unlikely victory against a larger Persian expedition ten years later, established democratic Athens as a leading power in the Greek world.

One final major reform to the Athenian constitution remained before the government of Athens took the shape it would hold, more or less, for the next years.

In , an Athenian named Ephialtes led a movement to limit the power of the Council of the Areopagus. Read about the evidence Aeschylus Aesch. Isocrates Isoc. The Areopagus was an aristocratic institution, composed of men who were of noble birth Isoc.

It was composed of men who had held the office of archon Plut. According to Aristotle , before the time of the lawgiver Solon —the middle of the 6th century BCE —the Areopagus itself chose the men who would be archons , and thus future members of the Areopagus Aristot. Selection of archons was by wealth and birth Aristot. Solon changed the method by which Athenians became archons —forty candidates were elected, and from these forty, nine archons were picked by lot Aristot.

Under the laws of Solon , the Court of the Areopagus retained its role as overseer of the constitution; it could punish citizens, fine them, and spend money itself without answering to any other governing body; and it oversaw cases of impeachment Aristot.

Aristotle describes the government of Athens under Solon as a blend of elements—the courts were democratic, the elected archons were aristocratic, and the Court of the Areopagus was oligarchic Aristot.

The first was the ekklesia, or Assembly, the sovereign governing body of Athens. Any member of the demos—any one of those 40, adult male citizens—was welcome to attend the meetings of the ekklesia, which were held 40 times per year in a hillside auditorium west of the Acropolis called the Pnyx. Only about 5, men attended each session of the Assembly; the rest were serving in the army or navy or working to support their families. At the meetings, the ekklesia made decisions about war and foreign policy, wrote and revised laws and approved or condemned the conduct of public officials.

Ostracism, in which a citizen could be expelled from the Athenian city-state for 10 years, was among the powers of the ekklesia. The group made decisions by simple majority vote. The second important institution was the boule, or Council of Five Hundred. The boule was a group of men, 50 from each of ten Athenian tribes, who served on the Council for one year. Unlike the ekklesia, the boule met every day and did most of the hands-on work of governance. It supervised government workers and was in charge of things like navy ships triremes and army horses.

It dealt with ambassadors and representatives from other city-states. Its main function was to decide what matters would come before the ekklesia. In this way, the members of the boule dictated how the entire democracy would work.

Positions on the boule were chosen by lot and not by election. This was because, in theory, a random lottery was more democratic than an election: pure chance, after all, could not be influenced by things like money or popularity. The lottery system also prevented the establishment of a permanent class of civil servants who might be tempted to use the government to advance or enrich themselves. However, historians argue that selection to the boule was not always just a matter of chance.