Mescolanza o purezza? Il diapsephismos tra i Pisistratidi e la riforma di Clistene

This paper analyzes the purpose and the outcome of the civic scrutiny or diapsephismos conducted in Athens after the tyrants’ expulsion and referred to by the author of the Athenian Constitution ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 13. 5). A long standing traditional view associated the diapsephismos with the purpose of «the aristocrats» to purge the citizen rolls and to exclude as «impurely born» the newly enfranchised citizens who had come to share in the life of the polis under the tyranny. This paper aims to reject this communis opinio arguing that the diapsepshismos was instead the instrument adopted in Cleisthenes’ reform in order to formally include those «who were not of pure descent» into the group of citizens and to enroll them into the ten territorial tribes. In this context I also stress that the traditional view of the diapsephismos as a purging of the citizen-registers is affected by the reconstruction preserved in the Constitution of Athens, a reconstruction suitable to the ideology of the Athenian democracy on citizenship in fifth and fourh centuries B.C when the idea of the Athenians «pure by birth» was invented.