The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

out; upon which the tyrants
capitulated on condition of the safety of their children, and
surrendered the 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.
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:
<
    div class="quote">
    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.
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, and ten from the interior. These he called
trittyes; and he assigned three of them by lot to each tribe, in
such a way that each should have one portion in each of these three
localities. All who lived in any given deme he declared
fellow-demesmen, to the end that the new citizens might not be
exposed by the habitual use of family names, but that men might be
officially described by the names of their demes; and accordingly
it is by the names of their demes that the Athenians speak of one
another. He also instituted Demarchs, who had the same duties as
the previously existing Naucrari,-the demes being made to take the
place of the naucraries. He gave names to the demes, some from the
localities to which they belonged, some from the persons who
founded them, since some of the areas no longer corresponded to
localities possessing names. On the other hand he allowed every one
to retain his family and clan and religious rites according to
ancestral custom. The names given to the tribes were the ten which
the Pythia appointed out of the hundred selected