WE THE PEOPLE: WHAT DEMOCRACY IS ALL ABOUT.

Historical records describe the rise to power of Cleisthenes, an Athenian statesman, but there are slightly blurred accounts of how he actually came to power. It’s clear that in his ascension to the leadership position he had a rival, Isagoras, who had to be deposed after he briefly became the most powerful man in Athens following the fall of the tyrant Hippias. Isagoras undermined Cleisthenes legitimacy by claiming his family carried an ancient curse. The skimpy records of the conflict between Cleisthenes and Isagoras indicate that Isagoras managed to send his rival into exile and began do remove from their homes hundreds of families who had expressed sympathy with Cleisthenes. The people of Athens rebelled against Isagoras and recalled Cleisthenes to Athens along with others who had been exiled with him.

Somewhere along the way Cleisthenes developed a great respect for the power of common folk who could band together. Perhaps it was their rebellion against Isagoras that tilted Cleisthenes toward support for the ordinary citizens. It’s unclear how he accomplished his reforms. It seems likely that, as a respected leader, he won over the Assembly. He revived the old constitution of Solon, but with several important differences; and those differences are the reason he is considered by historians as “the Father of Democracy.” Instead of having Athenians register as citizens by clan, he had them register on the basis of where they lived. Registration was based on geography rather than genealogy. The power of the clans was broken. Cleisthenes managed to shift a citizen’s loyalty from his tribe to his community. Citizens in a community were therefore on equal footing with each other regardless of their tribal affiliation. In order to balance the interests of the various classes and regions of people, Cleisthenes divided Attica into ten electoral districts. Each of the districts contained a balance of citizens from the various classes and tribes. Of course, rivalries and disagreements caused by economic inequalities of people within a district were a problem, but the poorest citizen had one vote the same as the citizen from a wealthy family. Soon citizens developed loyalties to their district by backing their own athletes in games, which had long been very important in Greek life. They cheered on their district’s poets at playwriting contests. They marched to battle in their district’s regiments.

Under Cleisthenes all male citizens were required to attend the Assembly, the main legislative body. Sessions held regularly on a rocky hillside near the Acropolis required a quorum of 6,000 citizens. Anyone was allowed to state his views. Each year the Assembly elected new chief administrators and whatever proposals it passed became law. Under Cleisthenes’ guidance checks and balances were installed to monitor the performance of officials, and if any officeholder proved to be tyrannical or corrupt, the penalties were severe. If the offense was extreme, the penalty could be ostracism decided by a vote of the assembly. The intent of the system was to serve all citizens equally and fairly.

Between the time of Cleisthenes and the next great Greek Statesman, Pericles, mainland Greece had to deal with the very real threat of Persia on the march to conquer the world. In the sixty century the seemingly invincible Persian armies had swept westward across much of the Middle East and Egypt, and in subduing Lydia (now Turkey and sections of other Middle Eastern countries) they brought under their control the Greek cities of the Ionian coast. By the turn of the century the Persian threat to Athens, Sparta and other major mainland and Peloponnesian Greek cities was critical. They were threatened with siege because they refused to pay tribute to the Persian king Darius. In the summer of 490 BCE all hell broke loose. Darius led an army of 20,000 to subdue the hold-out city-states. A quick and decisive victory was expected. The Persian army brought with them Athen’s one-time ruler, Hippias, whom they intended to reinstate as tyrant. I’m resisting the impulse to tell the story of how the much smaller Greek army outsmarted (with some dumb luck) the massive concentration of 20,000 Persian troops. It’s the kind of story that I remember hearing for the first time when I was a seventh grader in Miss Nonnie Bowman’s class. Her enthusiasm for the stories that make up human history infused me with some of her passion to know how and why things happened the way they did in the past and what it meant for the time we were living in then (that would have been the year after World War 1 ended) and how the stories may help us know how to address the problems of the future. The future is now, which amazes me all over again when I recognize in the problems of the world today the same problems the citizens of the world faced long ago... problems they had to try to solve without iPhones.