Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/100

72 Hipparchus and other members of the family. The banished Alcmaeonidae seized the opportunity. They had secured the support of the oracle at Delphi by their liberality in rebuilding the temple, which they had faced with marble, though they had only contracted to use the cheaper stone of the neighbourhood. This helped them to obtain aid from Sparta, always closely connected with Delphi and opposed to tyrannies. The Alcmaeonidae, with their Spartan allies, entered Athens and besieged Hippias, who had taken refuge on the Acropolis, and after a time compelled him to consent to go into exile with all his family (B.C. 510).

The Athenians were thus left at peace to reconstitute their government. Cleisthenes, one of the Alcmaeonidae, became head of the reforming party, and having at length overcome his opponent Isagoras—who had obtained help from Cleomenes, of Sparta, and for a time held the chief power—he at length succeeded in carrying his measures. They went a long way towards securing an absolute democracy. The assembly, or ecclesia, in which every citizen of eighteen years of age could vote, had always been nominally supreme, but under the tyrants had no doubt been seldom summoned, and had exercised little practical control. It was henceforth called at stated times and business of all kinds, having first been prepared by the Boulè, was brought before it. The cardinal point of Solon's constitution had been the division of the citizens into classes, according to the amount of their rateable property. The Archons and Strategi could only be selected from the first or