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H. clearly places the constitution of Cleisthenes before the second visit of Cleomenes, Aristotle (Ath. Pol. 20) dates it to the archonship of Isagoras (508-7 B. C.), after Cleomenes' second intervention. The new constitution could only take definite form after the final defeat of Isagoras, yet the reformer must have previously won over the people to his side, and the βουλή which Cleomenes and Isagoras wish to dissolve, to whose aid the people rally, would seem probably to be the new democratic council of 500. Aristotle is dependent on H. for purely historical matter, but may have taken his date for the reforms (Isagoras' archonship) from an Atthis. Cf. Busolt, ii. 403.


ἐπιλέγων, ‘describing them more exactly as the accursed.’ Cf. the similar demand of Sparta just before the Peloponnesian war for the banishment of Pericles, an Alcmaeonid by maternal descent (Thuc. i. 126).

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  • Commentary references from this page (2):
    • Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians, 20
    • Thucydides, Histories, 1.126
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