When Hippias was driven out of the city in 510 BC, Athens celebrated its liberation from tyranny. Now in his 60s, Cleisthenes, the man who more than anyone had brought that liberation about, could sense power was within his grasp. He had at last lived up to the heroic myths he'd been brought up with since childhood.

But almost immediately another nobleman, Isagoras, emerged to challenge his power.

Cleisthenes responded by appealing for supporters far beyond the normal factions of the aristocracy, proposing a series of sweeping reforms that would appeal to the ordinary people of Athens. It was a bold move that forced his opponent Isagoras to dramatically up the stakes.

An old friend of the Spartan King, Cleomenes, with whom he was rumoured to have shared his wife, Isagoras turned to the king for help. Cleomenes duly dispatched a contingent of Spartan troops to aid Isagoras and his aristocratic conspirators.

For Cleisthenes, the intervention of the Spartans spelt defeat. In the year 508, before Spartan troops had even reached the city, he was forced to flee, probably in the vain hope that with him gone the Spartans would not need to occupy Athens.