The rise of the Athenian democracy was a sordid tale of murder, betrayal and foreign military intervention.

The Athenian merchants first had one of the two Athenian tyrants murdered, which made the surviving tyrant, Hippias, understandably paranoid; the merchants later bribed the Delphic Oracle with funds from the prominent Alcmaeonid merchant family so that it advised the Spartans – always eager to listen to the oracle, especially when it asked for the removal of tyrants – that they should liberate Athens.

In 510 BC, the Spartans marched to Athens, also incentivized by suspicions that Hippias might be looking for Persian support to shore up his position, and slanderous accusations that his men were behind arson in Delphi. They defeated a force supportive of Hippias, and besieged him at the Acropolis. Displaying the dubious manners typical of this democratic revolution, the Spartans kidnapped a group of children of Hippias’ family, and forced him to exile himself in exchange for the children’s safe passage.

Cleisthenes, head of the Alcmaeonids, immediately came into conflict with other aristocratic families interested in the tyranny’s spoils. In 508 BC, rival aristocrat Isagoras – who had been friendlier with the tyrants – was elected to the city’s top magistracy and garnered support from the Spartans to get rid of Cleisthenes.

In response, the Alcmaeonids announced that the system was rotten and enlisted the lower Athenian classes to fight back and expel Isagoras, not before they murdered 300 of his supporters. Having killed, conspired and broken the law before, the democrats who balked at the tyrants’ alleged blood-thirst had no qualms to add a blood-bath to their new project.