Unless otherwise specified, dates on this page are all assumed to be BC.
In the sixth century BC. J.-C. the cities of the Greek world were confronted with a serious political crisis, resulting from two concomitant phenomena:on the one hand slavery for debt, affecting mainly the peasants not landowners, made increase between the citizens the inequality political, linking it to social inequality; and on the other hand the development of the currency and commercial exchanges brought out craftsmen and shipowners who formed a new wealthy social class, claiming the end of the monopoly of the nobles on the political sphere. To respond to this double crisis, many cities radically changed their political organization. In Athens a set of reforms were taken, which began a process leading in the 5th century to the appearance of a new political regime:democracy.