The significance of mass actions in the political life of ancient Greece has been repeatedly discussed by historians. However, attention was paid primarily to the Hellenistic period, or it was about organized actions. In this paper, I will attempt to analyze the significance of the crowd in the political life of archaic and classical Greece. First, you should decide on the question of what a "crowd" is. For sociologists, a crowd is a random gathering of people (aggregation), united on the basis of relatively extraneous and temporary connections; for psychologists, it is a group, cooperation within which is relatively random and temporary .1 The point of view of this phenomenon of historians in general and historians of antiquity in particular has some differences. Historians usually confuse the concepts of "crowd" and "(popular) masses " 2 . For historical research, in our opinion, the definition of the German scientist D. Herder is more suitable, who defines crowds as "groups of people with common traditions who intentionally act together outside the existing framework in order to achieve one or more specially defined goals" 3 . I will make a reservation right away that I am primarily interested in the "political crowd", i.e. human gatherings that influenced the political life of ancient Greek poleis. For example, Plato in the dialogue" Charmides " (154a) describes beautiful young men and a crowd of admirers following them. However, this case can only interest me if it has caused any political consequences. The same applies to religious processions. The role of the crowd in the socio-political life of ancient Greece of the Archaic and classical periods is practically not studied. Only a few scientists have noticed this phenomenon .4 For example, Virginia Hunter tried to demonstrate Thucydides '"psychological" view of the crowd problem , 5 and Josh Ober, emphasizing the role of the masses in historical events, considered the Cleisthenes revolution as a result of 1 D ... Read more