ABSTRACT
The social and political development of sixth-century Athens not only shaped its major social groups, or communities, but also transformed their relationship with each other. This chapter examines the ways in which Cleisthenes organized the Athenian political community and formed its relations with the kinship community of the astoi and the legal community of the politai. The possession of political rights in ancient Greece has been associated with enrollment in social organizations, such as demes, phratries, tribes, and/or gene. The modern perception of the political importance of these organizations has been derived from the identification of individual kinship and political status. Similar to Solon's rearrangement, Cleisthenes's reforms concerned not only the overhaul of Attica's political system, but also the relationship among individuals' kinship, social, and political status. A transition from kinship-based tribes to territorial tribes has been regarded as characteristic of the development of ancient Greek cities, in spite of the acknowledged scarcity of the available relevant evidence.
