The Athenian Constitution   

Acropolis to the Athenians, five days being first allowed them to
remove their effects. This took place in the archonship of
Harpactides, after they had held the tyranny for about
seventeen years
since their father's death, or in all, including the period of their
father's rule, for nine-and-forty years.

Part 20

After the overthrow of the tyranny, the rival leaders in the state
were Isagoras son of Tisander, a partisan of the tyrants, and
Cleisthenes, who belonged to the family of the Alcmeonidae.
Cleisthenes, being beaten in the political clubs, called in
the people
by giving the franchise to the masses. Thereupon Isagoras, finding
himself left inferior in power, invited Cleomenes, who was united to
him by ties of hospitality, to return to Athens, and persuaded him
to 'drive out the pollution', a plea derived from the fact that the
Alcmeonidae were suppposed to be under the curse of
pollution. On this
Cleisthenes retired from the country, and Cleomenes, entering Attica
with a small force, expelled, as polluted, seven hundred Athenian
families. Having effected this, he next attempted to dissolve the
Council, and to set up Isagoras and three hundred of his partisans
as the supreme power in the state. The Council, however,
resisted, the
populace flocked together, and Cleomenes and Isagoras, with their
adherents, took refuge in the Acropolis. Here the people sat down
and besieged them for two days; and on the third they agreed to let
Cleomenes and all his followers de art, while they summoned
Cleisthenes and the other exiles back to Athens. When the people had
thus obtained the command of affairs, Cleisthenes was their chief
and popular leader. And this was natural; for the Alcmeonidae were
perhaps the chief cause of the expulsion of the tyrants, and for the
greater part of their rule were at perpetual war with them. But even
earlier than the attempts of the Alcmeonidae, one Cedon made
an attack
on the tyrants; when there came another popular drinking song,
addressed to him:

Pour a health yet again, boy, to Cedon; forget not this duty to do,
If a health is an honour befitting the name of a good man and true.

Part 21

The people, therefore, had good reason to place confidence in
Cleisthenes. Accordingly, now that he was the popular leader, three
years after the expulsion of the tyrants, in the archonship of
Isagoras, his first step was to distribute the whole population into
ten tribes in place of the existing four, with the object of
intermixing the members of the different tribes, and so securing
that more persons might have a share in the franchise. From
this arose
the saying 'Do not look at the tribes', addressed to those who
wished to scrutinize the lists of the old families. Next he made the
Council to consist of five hundred members instead of four hundred,
each tribe now contributing fifty, whereas formerly each had sent a
hundred. The reason why he did not organize the people into twelve
tribes was that he might not have to use the existing division into
trittyes; for the four tribes had twelve trittyes, so that he would
not have achieved his object of redistributing the
population in fresh
combinations. Further, he divided the country into thirty groups of
demes, ten from the districts about the city, ten from the coast,