But one of Sparta’s allies had second thoughts about the justice of the expedition and marched back to its city. Cleomenes and his fellow-king, Demaratus, quarreled. There was nothing for it but for the Spartans to swallow their pride and slink home. The Athenians then heavily defeated the Boeotians and the Chalcidians in two different battles on the same day, and were even able to annex some of the latter’s territory. Altogether it was quite a result for the demos. Cleisthenes and his revolutionary constitution were safe.
—
What is so astonishing about the reforms of Cleisthenes and the introduction of democracy to Athens is the purity of their logic, their blithe radicalism, and their artificiality. They made no concessions and in that sense were deeply unpolitical. There seem to have been no negotiations. They embody what a contemporary scholar has called “archaic rationality”—that is, a capacity to confront and fundamentally rethink a problem from scratch, and to agree on a logical solution no matter how far-fetched.
As remarkable as the achievement of Cleisthenes was, it was matched by the enthusiasm of the Athenians for change. His constitution lasted with few interruptions for two centuries.
Its operation required the positive commitment of every citizen. A key principle, as Aristotle noted with unspoken disapproval, was that “everyone is governed and governs in turn.” This may not have been too troublesome for the rich, who had time on their hands, but it demanded a great deal from those in employment and, for that matter, the un- or underemployed poor, who might appear to have plenty of unwanted leisure, but in fact spent most of their waking hours trying to scrape together a living.
Some decades later, the state began to pay stipends to juries and members of the boulē. This enabled those with limited resources to play the full part in the life of the polis that Cleisthenes envisaged.
Direct democracy in its fullest and most elaborate form brought with it an unforeseen consequence. One might have thought that the effort required from everyone to make the system work would have been exhausting and dispiriting. Counterintuitively, it seems to have energized the Athenians. There were many causes, to be sure, for the flowering of civilization that was to ensue, but one of them was the injection of constitutional adrenaline that Cleisthenes administered to his native city.
In war too, the Athenian hoplites seem to have been galvanized. Herodotus remarked that equality had a beneficial impact on every aspect of civic life. “Now Athens grew more powerful. And there is not only one but there are proofs everywhere that equality before the law is an excellent thing. Under the tyranny the army was no better in war than their neighbors, but once it was freed of it it became far and away the best of all.” Spartans would say, correctly, that that was to overstate the case, but there can be little doubt that morale in the military was boosted.
—
Despite their best calculations, the Alcmaeonids profited little from the new dispensation they had brought about. Cleisthenes himself disappears immediately, altogether and without explanation. Perhaps he just died, perhaps he was obliged for some reason to quit the scene. We will never know.
Within a generation the clan was reported to be in deep disfavor. In 486 yet another relative called Megacles and two years later Xanthippus, an Alcmaeonid by marriage, were ostracized. An ostracon has survived inscribed with a verse couplet, recalling the family’s guilt over the Cylon affair.
This potsherd says that Xanthippus, son of Arrhiphron,
Is the worst of all the Accursed Family of leaders.
Athenians refused to acknowledge Cleisthenes’ contribution to the expulsion of the tyrants. This was among the reasons for the absurd over-promotion of the charming but incompetent Harmodius and Aristogeiton. Everyone seemed to be singing about them whenever Athenians came together to eat, drink, and celebrate. No wonder if Cleisthenes made his excuses and stepped out of the historical record.
However, it is hard keep a good clan down, and it was not long before the Alcmaeonids were back. As we have already observed and as Cleisthenes must have hoped, the Athenian democracy tended to confide its trust in the very aristocrats whose rule it had supplanted. This may have been due to their adaptability and also perhaps to an unspoken lack of self-confidence on the part of the demos. At any rate, on his return from banishment, Xanthippus was appointed an admiral of the fleet; and, as we shall see, two leading Athenians in the next century, one of them his son Pericles, were Alcmaeonids.
8
Eastern Raiders
The young man was tired out. A professional herald and long-distance runner, his name was Pheidippides. He had been running alone through the night with urgent news from Athens to Sparta, a distance of 140 miles over bad roads, and no roads. He brought terrible news. A Persian army had landed in Attica in force. Spartan help was urgently required, if the invaders were to be repelled and his native city saved from destruction.
It was August 5, 490, and in the hot darkness Pheidippides padded westwards past Eleusis, then Megara, and onwards to the isthmus that divided northern Greece from the Peloponnese. He had to take care not to trip and fall on the uneven shadowed ground. He skirted the great trading city of Corinth and wheeled south towards the city of Argos. He then turned right along a path that led over Mount Parthenium, or the Mountain of the Virgin, into the ancient, wooded highlands of Arcadia.
The hint of chastity was not altogether appropriate, for the place was sacred to the great god Pan, perhaps the randiest of Greek divinities (there was competition). Protector of fields, groves, and glens, he represented wilderness. He had a human torso and arms, but the legs, ears, and horns of a goat. Tortoises whose shells were suitable for making good quality harps lived on the mountain, but locals were careful to leave them alone, believing them under Pan’s protection.
By now the sun was rising high in the sky and Pheidippides paused at a sanctuary dedicated to the god. And there he experienced an epiphany. Pan showed himself to the exhausted runner, whom he filled with holy terror. A modern scholar suggests that this may well have been a hallucination caused by exhaustion and lack of sleep, but that was not how Greeks regarded such events. In their eyes nature mingled with super-nature on easy terms.
The shaggy apparition spoke. “Pheidippides, kindly ask the Athenians why they pay no attention to me, in spite of my affection towards them. Not to mention the fact that I have been helpful to them in the past and will be so again.”
The youth promised himself that he would pass on the message to the authorities at Athens when he returned home, and went on his way, arriving at Sparta in the evening. He had been running for two days. To complete the journey in so short a time was a remarkable athletic feat.
He found the city en fête. The Spartans were staging the Carneia, a festival in honor of Apollo Carneus (the epithet seems to refer to an ancient deity that looked after flocks and herds whom Apollo had subsumed into his own identity). It took place from the seventh to the fifteenth of the month of Carneus (August, roughly). During these days all military operations were forbidden.
At the heart of the celebrations was a ceremony supervised by four young bachelors, selected by lot every four years from Sparta’s tribes. It began with a man wearing garlands running away. He was chased by a band of teenagers with bunches of grapes in their hands. If they caught him it was an omen of good fortune for the state.