-508

This page relates to the year -508 Gregorian Calendrier.

Events

Clisthène, wire of Mégaclès of the family of the Alcméonides, and grandson of Clisthène, Tyrant of Sicyone, is elected Archonte Athens. Shortly after the king of Sparte, Cléomène Ier, seizes Athens with the assistance of Isagoras and the oligarchical party and probably with the support of the former partisans of the Pisistratides. Isagoras makes exile Clisthène and 700 families which were dependant for him and tries to impose the restricted Oligarchie of the 300. A little later (end of the year 508 or beginning 507) a popular rising drives out the Spartiates and brings back Clisthène to the capacity. It then will undertake the reforms which involve the creation of the democracy in Athens .

Reforms of Clisthène (- 508/-507): restoration of the laws of Solon (Democracy). Institution of ten tribes instead of four. The Boulê becomes a democratic council of five hundred members, composed of 50 advised by tribes, drawn with the fate among the candidates from the dèmes (one year mandates and two mandates maximum by citizen). The supreme authority is in the hands of the Ecclésia. The Ostracisme (10 years banishment) makes it possible to fight against tyranny. The Council of the Aréopage guard his aristocratic character, since it is consisted of old the Archonte S indicated by election until in -487 and that its members are appointed for lives.

the creation of new tribes allows the integration of new citizens, wogs or freed. The reform later on succeeds in unifying the Attique (2500 km ²). Indeed, each tribe is made up of three trittyes resulting from the three parts of the Attic: the city (astu), the coast (paralie) and interior (mésogée).
a hundred dèmes, which indicated already the village communities, are institutionalized. They constitute the basic cell of the city, with an assembly and magistrates (the démotique one makes it possible to designate the citizen, in the place of the patronym).

Athens requests Persian alliance, but the envoys who had agreed to give “the ground and water” are repudiated on their return.
the island of Samothrace, famous in the Antiquity for its worship with mysteries of the Cabires, worship undoubtedly of origin phenician or Préhellénique, is conquered by the Perses.

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