Bacchiadae

The Bacchiadae ( Bakkhiadai), a tightly knit Doric clan, were the ruling family of ancient Corinth in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE, a period of Corinthian cultural power.

== History == Corinth had been a backwater in eighth-century Greece. In 747 BCE (a traditional date) an aristocratic revolution ousted the Bacchiad kings of Corinth, when the royal clan of Bacchiadae, numbering perhaps a couple of hundred adult males and claiming descent from the Dorian hero Heracles through the seven sons and three daughters of a legendary king Bacchis, took power from the last king, Telestes. Practising strict endogamy, which kept clan outlines within a distinct extended oikos, they dispensed with kingship and ruled as a group, governing the city by electing annually a prytanis who held the kingly position for his brief term, no doubt a council (though none is specifically documented in the scant literary materials) and a polemarchos to head the army.