A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

138 Athens
with a few persons secretly withdrew from the country,
while Cleomenes proceeded to expel as polluted seven
hundred Athenian families. Having accomplished this
object, he attempted to dissolve the council and to make
Isagoras and three hundred of his partisans masters of the
state. But as the council opposed and the multitude
gathered, Cleomenes and Isagoras with their party took
refuge in the Acropolis. The commons thereupon encamped
and besieged them two days; on the third day
they permitted Cleomenes and all with him to depart
under a truce, but recalled Cleisthenes and the rest of
the exiles. Now that the commons had become masters
of the state,
Cleisthenes was their leader and champion:
for the Alcmeonidae were perhaps the chief cause of
the
tyrants' expulsion and were almost always at sedition
Constitutional
reforms,
208
B.C.
Arist. Const.
Ath. 21.
Greece, 81-4;
Ancient
World,
138-41.
The demes
and the
tribes.
lb. 21.
with them. . . .
For these reasons the people trusted Cleisthenes. On
that occasion, as he was leader of the people in the fourth
year after the overthrow of the tyrants, in the archonship
of Isagoras, in the first place he distributed all the people
among ten tribes in place of four, with the object of intermixing
them in order that more might have a share in the
franchise. Hence arose the saying, "Do not discriminate
between the tribes" with reference to those who wished
to scrutinize the gentes. Then he constituted the council
of five hundred in place of four hundred, fifty from each
tribe instead of a hundred as formerly. The reason for
his not distributing the people among twelve tribes was his
desire to avoid the division into the existing trittyes. . . .
The country he divided by demes into thirty parts,
ten about the city, ten in the paralia, ten in the midland;
and calling these parts trittyes, he assigned three by lot
to each tribe in such a way that every tribe might have