By Janet Kira Lessin, CEO, Aquarian Media and Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. (Anthropology, U.C.L.A.)
Cleisthenes of Athens built on Solon’s reforms to establish the world’s first literate democracy in Athens around 508 BCE. Read the details of the political drama of the time in ancient Greece–including power struggles with Hippias, Peisistratus, Isagoras, and the intervention of Sparta, historical roots of reform tracing back to the Alcmaeonid curse and the Oracle of Delphi and how Cleisthenes restructured Athenian society by locality (demes) instead of kinship.
Peruse more on Cleisthenes and the history of ancient Greece at https://wp.me/s1TVCy-greece.
Athenian noble Cleisthenes of Athens (570-508 BCE) founded Athenian Democracy. He held the Office of Chief Archon (Highest Magistrate) of Athens (525–524)
He allied with the People’s Assembly against the nobles in 508 BCE and imposed democratic reforms on Athens. He organized people into individual citizens of the locale, rather than by family and clan membership.
His ALCMAEONID FAMILY bore a public curse on his great-grandfather MEGACLES, Chief Archon, when the Athenian noble CYLON tried but failed to seize the Acropolis [Civic Center] and make himself Tyrant [Dictator] (c. 632), as Trump has recently.
Some of Cylon’s followers took refuge at an altar and did not abandon it until Megacles’ forces promised them to spare their lives, but their captors killed them anyway. Megacles was held responsible.
The oracle of Apollo, son of Zeus or Marduk, at Delphi in central Greece, cursed Megacles and the Alcmaeonid clan.
They exiled themselves, but Athens’ lawgiver Solon let them return in 594 BCE.
In return, allied with Solon, Megacles’ son Alcmaeon led an Athenian contingent that fought with Thessaly and the Tyrant of Sicyon (also named Cleisthenes), in the “SACRED WAR” for the protection of the augury establishment at Delphi.
The old nobility thought that Solon had gone too far and were anxious to reverse the trend; the common people felt that he had not gone far enough. The Alcmaeonids, whom the curse had alienated from the nobility, championed a middle way based on Solon’s reforms.
When Cleisthenes was 25 years old, PEISISTRATUS, a noble who roused the poor, took power in 560 and again exiled the Alcmaeonids from Attica in 546. Cleisthenes was then 25 years old and could not return for 20 years, until 521.
The Alcmaeonids’ part in the Sacred War ensured the favor of the Delphi establishment, and the Alcmaeonids helped rebuild APOLLO’S TEMPLE, which had burned down in 548.
Back in Athens, the Assembly elected Cleisthenes Chief Archon in 525–524.
When Peisistratus died in 527, his son and successor, HIPPIAS, tried to win back the aristocrats, while the Alcmaeonids attempted to regain their position. In 512, Hippias, paranoid after enemies murdered him in 514, repressed the Athenians.
Isagoras, leader of the reactionary nobles, conspired secretly with Sparta.
In 508 BCE, the Athenian Council elected Isagoras as Chief Archon over Cleisthenes.
Cleisthenes then brought the Athenian common people into partnership, and the People’s Assembly elected a relative of the Alcmaeonids as Chief Archon for the following year.
Isagoras left Athens to get the Spartans to intervene on his behalf.
The Royalist SPARTANS TRIED TO STOP ATHENS FROM BECOMING DEMOCRATIC, and Sparta’s King demanded the expulsion of “those under the curse,” and the Athenian Assembly again expelled Cleisthenes and his relatives. The Athenians, however, resisted, and the Spartans withdrew.
The Athenians recalled the exiles and carried out the decision that the Assembly had taken in 508.
The Dictatorship had improved the economic condition of the common people and broken the political power of the nobles who were still resisting Solon’s reforms. The reforms wouldn’t work unless they ended hereditary privilege.
Cleisthenes got Athens to change its political organization from a system based on family, clan, and phratry (kinship groups) to one based on locality. Public rights and duties then depended on membership in a DEME (township).
Each town kept a register of its citizens and elected its officials. Citizens were no longer known only by their father’s name, but also by the name of their town.
He included the towns within each of the three areas, which he divided into 10 counties (trittyes) for each tribe.
He made the mixed local tribe the basis of representation in public office.
SOLON expanded the Council of Four Hundred members to 500 (50 from each tribe, with members selected from demes according to their numbers and taught EQUALITY OF RIGHTS FOR ALL (Isonomia) but excluded immigrants, women and slaves.
GREEK CHRONOLOGY
c. 6000 BCE – 2900 BCE Neolithic Age settlements in Greece marked the beginning of agriculture.
c. 3200 BCE – 1100 BCE The Cycladic Civilization in Greece.
2300 BCE Bronze is used in the Aegean.
2200 BCE – 1500 BCE The Minoan Civilization flourished on the island of Crete, Greece. King Minos establishes the first navy in the region.
2000 BCE – 1450 BCE Minoan civilization in Crete and the Aegean.
2000 BCE Early Greeks settled in the Peloponnese.
1900 BCE – 1100 BCE Mycenaean civilization in Greece and the Aegean.
1650 BCE – 1550 BCE Eruption of Thera and consequent tidal waves, destruction of Akrotiri and other Aegean centres.
1100 BCE The Dorians occupied Greece.
c. 1100 BCE Greeks implemented the use of individual tombs and graves.
c. 900 BCE Sparta is founded.
c. 800 BCE – c. 700 BCE Homer of Greece wrote his Iliad and Odyssey.
800 BCE – 500 BCE Greek colonization of the Mediterranean and Black Sea.
c. 800 BCE – 500 BCE Archaic period of Greece.
c. 740 BCE – c. 433 BCE Greek poleis or city-states establish colonies in Magna Graecia.
733 BCE Corinth founded the colony of Syracuse in Sicily.
683 BCE – 682 BCE The list of annual archons at Athens begins.
c. 660 BCE Pheidon is a tyrant in Argos.
c. 657 BCE – 585 BCE The Kypselidai are tyrants of Corinth.
c. 650 BCE Sparta crushes the Messenian revolt.
650 BCE – 600 BCE Age of law-givers in Greece.
650 BCE Earliest large-scale Greek marble sculpture.
594 BCE – 593 BCE In Athens, the archon Solon laid the foundations for democracy.
580 BCE – 376 BCE Carthage and Greece fight for dominance in Sicily.
c. 560 BCE Pisistratos becomes the Tyrant in Athens for the first time.
c. 550 BCE – c. 366 BCE The Peloponnesian League, an alliance between Sparta, Corinth, Elis, and Tegea, establishes Spartan hegemony over the Peloponnese.
546 BCE – 545 BCE Persian conquest of the Ionian Greek city-states.
539 BCE The Etruscan & Carthaginian alliance expels the Greeks from Corsica.
535 BCE – 522 BCE Polycrates ruled as tyrant of Samos.
c. 525 BCE – c. 456 BCE Life of the Greek tragedy poet Aeschylus.
522 BCE Darius I (Darius the Great) succeeded to the throne of Persia after the death of Cambyses II.
514 BCE Fall of the Peisistratid tyranny in Athens.
514 BCE The tyrant of Athens, Hipparchos, is killed by Harmodios and Aristogeiton – the ‘tyrannicides’.
c. 508 BCE Reforms by Cleisthenes established democracy in Athens.
499 BCE – 493 BCE Ionian cities rebel against Persian rule.
c. 498 BCE Ionians and Greek allies invade and burn Sardis (the capital of Lydia).
c. 497 BCE – c. 454 BCE Alexander I reigned as King of Macedon.
c. 495 BCE Birth of Pericles.
492 BCE Darius I of Persia invades Greece.
11 Sep 490 BCE A combined force of Greek hoplites defeated the Persians at Marathon.
487 BCE – 486 BCE Archons begin to be appointed by lot in Athens.
486 BCE Xerxes succeeds to the throne of Persia after the death of Darius I.
c. 483 BCE Themistocles persuades the Athenians to significantly expand their fleet, which ultimately saves them at Salamis and becomes a source of their power.
480 BCE – 323 BCE The Classical Period in Greece.
Jul 480 BCE Xerxes I made extensive preparations to invade mainland Greece by building depots, canals, and a boat bridge across the Hellespont.
Aug 480 BCE The indecisive battle of Artemision between the Greek and Persian fleets of Xerxes I. The Greeks withdraw to Salamis.
Aug 480 BCE Battle of Thermopylae. Three hundred Spartans under King Leonidas and other Greek allies hold back the Persians led by Xerxes I for three days, but ultimately are defeated.
Sep 480 BCE The Battle of Salamis, where the Greek naval fleet led by Themistocles defeated the invading armada of Xerxes I of Persia.
479 BCE Xerxes’ Persian forces are defeated by Greek forces at Plataea, effectively ending Persia’s imperial ambitions in Greece.
478 BCE – 404 BCE Athens led the Delian League in Greece.
478 BCE Sparta withdraws from the alliance against Persia.
c. 469 BCE – 399 BCE Life of Socrates.
c. 462 BCE – 458 BCE Pericles introduced democratic institutions in Athens.
c. 460 BCE – c. 320 CE Period of full and direct citizen democracy in Athens.
460 BCE – 445 BCE First Peloponnesian War.
457 BCE The hegemony of Athens over central Greece.
451 BCE Thirty years of peace between Argos and Sparta.
c. 451 BCE – c. 403 CE Life of Athenian statesman and general Alcibiades.
449 BCE – 448 BCE Peace between Greece and Persia.
c. 449 BCE Athens and Persia agreed to a peace treaty in the Peace of Callias.
c. 449 BCE The Ionian cities became independent from Persia under Callias.
447 BCE – 432 BCE The construction of the Parthenon in Athens was undertaken by the architects Iktinos and Kallikrates under the direction of Phidias.
446 BCE – 445 BCE Thirty years of peace between Athens and the Peloponnesians.
431 BCE – 404 BCE The Second Peloponnesian War, between Athens and Sparta (represented by the Delian League and the Peloponnesian League), involved all of Greece.
421 BCE Peace of Nicias, a truce between the Delian and Peloponnesian Leagues.
420 BCE Democritus developed an atomic theory of matter.
412 BCE Sparta allies with Persia.
404 BCE At the end of the Peloponnesian War, Athens was defeated by Sparta at the Battle of Aigospotamoi. The Rule of the Thirty Tyrants in Athens followed.
400 BCE Pepper is known in Greece.
400 BCE – 330 BCE The Late Classical Period in Greece.
399 BCE The trial and death of the philosopher Socrates, who taught in the court of the Agora.
c. 398 BCE – c. 380 BCE Plato traveled in Egypt, Cyrene, Italy, Syracuse, and Sicily.
395 BCE – 386 BCE The Corinthian Wars were between Sparta and an alliance of Athens, Corinth, Argos, Boeotia, and Thebes.
384 BCE – 322 BCE Life of Aristotle.
c. 384 BCE – 322 CE Life of Athenian statesman Demosthenes.
380 BCE Plato founded his Academy outside of Athens.
371 BCE Thebes, led by Epaminondas, defeats Sparta in the Battle of Leuctra.
371 BCE – 362 BCE Thebes is the dominant city-state in Greece.
359 BCE – 336 BCE Reign of Philip II of Macedon.
356 BCE Third Social War in Greece.
343 BCE King Philip II of Macedon summons Aristotle to tutor his young son, Alexander (later ‘The Great’).
336 BCE – 323 BCE Reign of Alexander the Great.
May 334 BCE Alexander invades the Persian Empire.
331 BCE
Egypt was conquered by Alexander the Great without resistance.
323 BCE – 31 BCE
Hellenistic civilization in Greece, the Mediterranean, and Asia.
323 BCE – 31 BCE
The Hellenistic Age. Greek thought and culture are deeply rooted in the indigenous people.
310 BCE The assassination of Roxanne and Alexander IV, wife and son of Alexander the Great.
c. 280 BCE Founding of the Achaean League in the Peloponnese of Greece.
c. 270 BCE Aristarchus of Samos proposed a heliocentric model of the universe.
168 BCE Rome defeats Macedonia at the Battle of Pydna.
146 BCE Rome sacks Corinth and dissolves the Achaean league. Rome rules Greece.
88 BCE – 63 BCE Mithridates of Pontus fought three wars to liberate Greece from Roman rule.
86 BCE The Roman general Sulla sacks Athens and the port of Piraeus.
31 BCE Greece was absorbed into the Roman Empire.
ANUNNAKI & ANCIENT ANTHROPOLOGY EVIDENCE, REFERENCES, TIMELINE & WHO’S WHO
WHO’S WHO: http://wp.me/p1TVCy-1PE
Evidence https://wp.me/p1TVCy-1zg
References http://wp.me/p1TVCy-2cq
Timeline http://wp.me/p1TVCy-1Km
New Stuff www.enkispeaks.com
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