ABSTRACT
The citizens of Athens took to democracy very quickly and with great enthusiasm. Kleisthenes’ new tribal system, together with the Boule, the Assembly, the magistracies, the courts, and the whole military structure, remained essentially unchanged (except for the oligarchic revolution in 411) until the end of the Peloponnesian War, and then with relatively minor changes on to the latter years of the fourth century. The democracy which Demosthenes knew in the latter half of the fourth century was in most essentials very like the one Themistocles knew in the early fifth century.
