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“Cleisthenes tried to create another notion, the notion of belonging to your polis and not to the aristocratic family of your neighbor. And what he did was very, very interesting.”

Cleisthenes’ idea was to break up the established centers of power, the ones that had coalesced around wealth.

Speaking near the ancient agora in Athens, Perdikouri describes Cleisthenes’ reforms in the sixth century B.C.

It’s instructive to see the concept of oligarchy enshrined in a 14th-century fresco in Siena, Italy, or to learn how the Athenian reformer Cleisthenes’s ideas for the organization of civic space facilitated mingling that would foster a sense of the common good.

Without ever indulging in sentimentality, he pays due respect to Cleisthenes, who in 507 BC served as midwife to the revolution that brought the demos to power in Athens, and to the ideals that then sustained it for almost 200 years.