Alcmaeonidae

A government controlled by wealthy people and run for their benefit would be a plutocracy, which is somewhat different than an oligarchy.

Most oligarchies in history, such as Greece before it became a democracy or the Roman Republic before the Empire, were run by powerful family groups, like the Eupatridae or the Alcmaeonids in ancient Greece, or the Gens Cornelia , and The gens Claudia, Appius Claudius, builder of the Appian Way, was a member during the Roman Republic.

The Medici's were a famous or infamous oligarchic family in medieval Florence.

Most of these families were very wealthy, but were they powerful because they were wealthy or wealthy because they were powerful? Most large organizations are run by a relatively small group of elite leaders.

The idea of punishing someone or restricting them politically as in this example due to the actions of their ancestors can be seen elsewhere in Greece.

The famous Athenian Pericles belonged to the Alcmaeonidae family or clan.

and in the late 7th century BC they had been involved in the act of killing suppliants, that is to say people who'd sought sanctuary at an altar.

This was a fundamental no-no in the Greek world and though it occurred generations before him, Thucydides noted how the Spartans used this as leverage against Pericles in negotiations prior to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War.

Now I must go further and return to the story which I began to tell, namely how the Athenians were freed from their tyrants.

Hippias, their tyrant, was growing ever more bitter in enmity against the Athenians because of Hipparchus' death, and the Alcmaeonidae, a family of Athenian stock banished by the sons of Pisistratus, attempted with the rest of the exiled Athenians to make their way back by force and free Athens.

They were not successful in their return and suffered instead a great reverse.

After fortifying Lipsydrium, north of Paeonia, they, in their desire to use all devices against the sons of Pisistratus, hired themselves to the Amphictyons for the building of the temple at Delphi, which exists now but was not there yet then.

It was even said of Cleomenes that he regularly went to see Isagoras' wife.

Then Cleomenes first sent a herald to Athens demanding the banishment of Cleisthenes and many other Athenians with him, the accursed, as he called them.

This he said in his message by Isagoras' instruction; for the Alcmaeonidae and their faction were held to be guilty of that bloody deed, while Isagoras and his friends had no part in it.

How the accursed at Athens had received their name I will now relate.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by John Burlinson Volume 4 of Plutarch's Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans Translated by Bernadotte Perrin Alcibiades, Part 1 The family of Alcibiades, it is thought, may be traced back to Eurysichus, the son of Aias, as its founder.

And on his mother's side he was an Alcmaeonid, being the son of Dianomichi, the daughter of Megaclus.

His father, Clynius, fitted out a trireme at his own cost, and fought it gloriously at Artemisium.

He was afterwards slain at Corinea, fighting the Boeotians, and Alcibiades was therefore reared as the ward of Pericles and Araphrion, the sons of Xanthippus, his near kinsmen.