Chapter X (1)

IONIC PORTION OF HELLAS. — ATHENS BEFORE SOLON.

Having traced in the preceding chapters the scanty stream of Peloponnesian history, from the first commencement of an authentic chronology in 776 B. C. to the maximum of Spartan territorial acquisition, and the general acknowledgment of Spartan primacy, prior to 547 B. C., I proceed to state as much as can be made out respecting the Ionic portion of Hellas during the same period. This portion comprehends Athens and Eubœa,—the Cyclades Islands,—and the Ionic cities on the coast of Asia Minor, with their different colonies.

In the case of Peloponnesus, we have been enabled to discern something like an order of real facts in the period alluded to,—Sparta makes great strides, while Argos falls. In the case of Athens, unfortunately, our materials are less instructive. The number of historical facts, anterior to the Solonian legislation, is very few indeed;—the interval between 776 B. C. and 624 B. C., the epoch of Drako’s legislation a short time prior to Kylôn’s attempted usurpation, gives us merely a list of archons, denuded of all incident.

In compliment to the heroism of Kodrus, who had sacrificed his life for the safety of his country, we are told that no person after him was permitted to bear the title of king:[71] his son Medôn, and twelve successors,—Akastus, Archippus, Thersippus, Phorbas, Megaklês, Diognêtus, Phereklês, Ariphrôn, Thespieus, Agamestôr, Æschylus, and Alkmæôn,—were all archons for life. In the second year of Alkmæôn (752 B. C.), the dignity of archon was restricted to a duration of ten years: and seven of these decennial archons are numbered,—Charops, Æsimidês, Kleidikus, Hippomenês, Leokratês, Apsandrus, Eryxias. With Kreôn, who succeeded Eryxias, the archonship was not only made annual, but put into commission and distributed among nine persons and these nine archons, annually changed, continue throughout all the historical period, interrupted only by the few intervals of political disturbance and foreign compression. Down to Kleidikus and Hippomenês (714 B. C.), the dignity of archon had continued to belong exclusively to the Medontidæ or descendants of Medôn and Kodrus:[72] at that period it was thrown open to all the Eupatrids, or order of nobility in the state.

[71] Justin. ii, 7.

[72] Pausan. i, 3, 2; Suidas, Ἱππομένης; Diogenian. Centur.
Proverb. iii, 1. Ἀσεβέστερον Ἱππομένους.

Such is the series of names by which we step down from the level of legend to that of history. All our historical knowledge of Athens is confined to the period of the annual archons; which series of eponymous archons, from Kreôn downwards, is perfectly trustworthy.[73] Above 683 B. C., the Attic antiquaries have provided us with a string of names, which we must take as we find them, without being able either to warrant the whole or to separate the false from the true. There is no reason to doubt the general fact, that Athens, like so many other communities of Greece, was in its primitive times governed by an hereditary line of kings, and that it passed from that form of government into a commonwealth, first oligarchical, afterwards democratical.

[73] See Boeckh on the Parian Marble, in Corp. Inscrip. Græc.
part 12, sect. 6, pp. 307, 310, 332.

From the beginning of the reign of Medôn son of Kodrus, to the
first annual archon Kreôn, the Parian Marble computes 407 years,
Eusebius 387.

We are in no condition to determine the civil classification and political constitution of Attica, even at the period of the archonship of Kreôn, 683 B. C., when authentic Athenian chronology first commences,—much less can we pretend to any knowledge of the anterior centuries. Great political changes were introduced first by Solon (about 594 B. C.), next by Kleisthenês (509 B. C.), afterwards by Aristeidês, Periklês, and Ephialtês, between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars: so that the old ante-Solonian,—nay, even the real Solonian,—polity was thus put more and more out of date and out of knowledge. But all the information which we possess respecting that old polity, is derived from authors who lived after all or most of these great changes,—and who, finding no records, nor anything better than current legends, explained the foretime as well as they could by guesses more or less ingenious, generally attached to the dominant legendary names. They were sometimes able to found their conclusions upon religious usages, periodical ceremonies, or common sacrifices, still subsisting in their own time; and these were doubtless the best evidences to be found respecting Athenian antiquity, since such practices often continued unaltered throughout all the political changes. It is in this way alone that we arrive at some partial knowledge of the ante-Solonian condition of Attica, though as a whole it still remains dark and unintelligible, even after the many illustrations of modern commentators.

Philochorus, writing in the third century before the Christian era, stated that Kekrops had originally distributed Attica into twelve districts,—Kekropia, Tetrapolis, Epakria, Dekeleia, Eleusis, Aphidnæ, Thorikus, Braurôn, Kythêrus, Sphêttus, Kêphisia, Phalêrus,—and that these twelve were consolidated into one political society by Theseus.[74] This partition does not comprise the Megarid, which, according to other statements, is represented as united with Attica, and as having formed part of the distribution made by king Pandiôn among his four sons, Nisus, Ægeus, Pallas, and Lykus,—a story as old as Sophoklês, at least.[75] In other accounts, again, a quadruple division is applied to the tribes, which are stated to have been four in number, beginning from Kekrops,—called in his time Kekrŏpis, Autochthon, Aktæa, and Paralia. Under king Kranaus, these tribes, we are told, received the names of Kranaïs, Atthis, Mesogæa, and Diakria,[76]—under Erichthonius, those of Dias, Athenaïs, Poseidonias, Hephæstias: at last, shortly after Erechtheus, they were denominated after the four sons of Iôn (son of Kreusa, daughter of Erechtheus, by Apollo), Geleontes, Hoplêtes, Ægikoreis, Argadeis. The four Attic or Ionic tribes, under these last-mentioned names, continued to form the classification of the citizens until the revolution of Kleisthenês in 509 B. C. by which the ten tribes were introduced, as we find them down to the period of Macedonian ascendency. It is affirmed, and with some etymological plausibility, that the denominations of these four tribes must originally have had reference to the occupations of those who bore them,—the Hoplêtes being the _warrior-class_, the Ægikoreis _goatherds_, the Argadeis _artisans_, and the Geleontes (Teleontes, or Gedeontes) _cultivators_: and hence some authors have ascribed to the ancient inhabitants of Attica[77] an actual primitive distribution into hereditary professions, or castes, similar to that which prevailed in India and Egypt. If we should even grant that such a division into castes might originally have prevailed, it must have grown obsolete long before the time of Solon: but there seem no sufficient grounds for believing that it ever did prevail. The names of the tribes may have been originally borrowed from certain professions, but it does not necessarily follow that the reality corresponded to this derivation, or that every individual who belonged to any tribe was a member of the profession from whence the name had originally been derived. From the etymology of the names, be it ever so clear, we cannot safely assume the historical reality of a classification according to professions. And this objection (which would be weighty, even if the etymology had been clear) becomes irresistible, when we add that even the etymology is not beyond dispute;[78] that the names themselves are written with a diversity which cannot be reconciled: and that the four professions named by Strabo omit the goatherds and include the priests; while those specified by Plutarch leave out the latter and include the former.[79]

[74] Philochorus ap. Strabo, ix, p. 396. See Schömann, Antiq. J.
P. Græc. b. v, sect. 2-5.

[75] Strabo, ix, p. 392. Philochorus and Andrôn extended the
kingdom of Nisus from the isthmus of Corinth as far as the
Pythium (near Œnoê) and Eleusis (Str. _ib._); but there were many
different tales.

[76] Pollux, viii, c. 9, 109-111.

[77] Iôn, the father of the four heroes after whom these tribes
were named, was affirmed by one story to be the primitive
civilizing legislator of Attica, like Lykurgus, Numa, or
Deukaliôn (Plutarch. adv. Kolôten, c. 31, p. 1125).

[78] Thus Euripides derives the Αἰγικορεῖς, not from αἲξ, a
goat, but from Αἰγὶς, the Ægis of Athênê (Ion. 1581): he also
gives _Teleontes_, derived from an eponymous _Teleôn_, son of
Iôn, while the inscriptions at Kyzikus concur with Herodotus and
others in giving Geleontes. Plutarch (Solon, 25) gives Gedeontes.
In an Athenian inscription recently published by Professor Ross
(dating, seemingly, in the first century after the Christian
era), the worship of Zeus Geleôn at Athens has been for the first
time verified,—Διὸς Γελέοντος ἱεροκήρυξ (Ross, _Die Attischen
Demen_, pp. vii-ix. Halle 1846).

[79] Plutarch (Solon, c. 25); Strabo, viii, p. 383. Compare
Plato, Kritias, p. 110.

All that seems certain is, that these were the four ancient Ionic tribes—analogous to the Hylleis, Pamphyli, and Dymanes among the Dorians—which prevailed not only at Athens, but among several of the Ionic cities derived from Athens. The Geleontes are mentioned in inscriptions now remaining belonging to Teôs in Ionia, and all the four are named in those of Kyzikus in the Propontis, which was a foundation from the Ionic Miletus.[80] The four tribes, and the four names (allowing for some variations of reading), are therefore historically verified; but neither the time of their introduction nor their primitive import are ascertainable matters, nor can any faith be put in the various constructions of the legends of Iôn, Erechtheus, and Kekrops, by modern commentators.

[80] Boeckh, Corp. Inscr. Nos. 3078, 3079, 3665. The elaborate
commentary on this last-mentioned inscription, in which Boeckh
vindicates the early historical reality of the classification by
professions, is noway satisfactory to my mind.

K. F. Hermann (Lehrbuch der Griechischen Staats Alterthümer,
sect. 91-96) gives a summary of all that can be known respecting
these old Athenian tribes. Compare Ilgen, De Tribubus Atticis,
p. 9, _seq._; Tittmann, Griechische Staats Verfassungen, pp.
570-582; Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde, sect. 43, 44.

These four tribes may be looked at either as religious and social aggregates, in which capacity each of them comprised three phratries and ninety gentes; or as political aggregates, in which point of view each included three trittyes and twelve naukraries. Each phratry contained thirty gentes; each trittys comprised four naukraries: the total numbers were thus three hundred and sixty gentes and forty-eight naukraries. Moreover, each gens is said to have contained thirty heads of families, of whom therefore there would be a total of ten thousand eight hundred.

Comparing these two distributions one with the other, we may remark that they are distinct in their nature and proceed in opposite directions. The trittys and the naukrary are essentially fractional subdivisions of the tribe, and resting upon the tribe as their higher unity; the naukrary is a local circumscription, composed of the naukrars, or principal householders (so the etymology seems to indicate), who levy in each respective district the quota of public contributions which belongs to it, and superintend the disbursement,—provide the military force incumbent upon the district, being for each naukrary two horsemen and one ship,—and furnish the chief district-officers, the prytanes of the naukrari.[81] A certain number of foot soldiers, varying according to the demand, must probably be understood as accompanying these horsemen, but the quota is not specified, as it was perhaps thought unnecessary to limit precisely the obligations of any except the wealthier men who served on horseback,—at a period when oligarchical ascendency was paramount, and when the bulk of the people was in a state of comparative subjection. The forty-eight naukraries are thus a systematic subdivision of the four tribes, embracing altogether the whole territory, population, contributions, and military force of Attica,—a subdivision framed exclusively for purposes connected with the entire state.

[81] About the naukraries, see Aristot. Fragment. Rerum Public.,
p. 89, ed. Neumann; Harpokration, vv. Δήμαρχος, Ναυκραρικὰ;
Photius, v. Ναυκραρία; Pollux, viii, 108; Schol. ad Aristoph.
Nubes, 37.

Οἱ πρυτάνεις τῶν Ναυκράρων, Herodot. v, 71: they conducted the
military proceedings in resistance to the usurpation of Kylôn.

The statement that each naukrary was obliged to furnish one ship
can hardly be true of the time before Solon: as Pollux states
it, we should be led to conceive that he only infers it from the
name ναύκραρος (Pollux, viii, 108), though the real etymology
seems rather to be from ναίω (Wachsmuth, Hellen. Alt. sect.
44, p. 240). There may be some ground for believing that the
old meaning, also, of the word ναύτης connected it with ναίω;
such a supposition would smooth the difficulty in regard to
the functions of the ναυτόδικαι as judges in cases of illicit
admission into the phratores. See Hesychius and Harpokration, v.
Ναυτόδικαι; and Baumstark, De Curatoribus Emporii, Friburg, 1828,
p. 67, _seq._: compare, also, the fragment of the Solonian law, ἢ
ἱερῶν ὀργίων ἢ ναῦται, which Niebuhr conjecturally corrects. Rom.
Gesch. v. i, p. 323, 2d ed.; Hesychius, Ναυστῆρες—οἱ οἰκέται. See
Pollux, Ναῦλον, and Lobeck, Ῥηματικὸν, sect. 3, p. 7; Ἀειναῦται
παρὰ Μιλησίοις? Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. c. 32, p. 298.

But the phratries and gentes are a distribution completely different from this. They seem aggregations of small primitive unities into larger; they are independent of, and do not presuppose, the tribe; they arise separately and spontaneously, without preconcerted uniformity, and without reference to a common political purpose; the legislator finds them preëxisting, and adapts or modifies them to answer some national scheme. We must distinguish the general fact of the classification, and the successive subordination in the scale, of the families to the gens, of the gentes to the phratry, and of the phratries to the tribe,—from the precise numerical symmetry with which this subordination is invested, as we read it,—thirty families to a gens, thirty gentes to a phratry, three phratries to each tribe. If such nice equality of numbers could ever have been procured, by legislative constraint[82] operating upon preëxistent natural elements, the proportions could not have been permanently maintained. But we may reasonably doubt whether it did ever so exist: it appears more like the fancy of an author who pleased himself by supposing an original systematic creation in times anterior to records, by multiplying together the number of days in the month and of months in the year. That every phratry contained an equal number of gentes, and every gens an equal number of families, is a supposition hardly admissible without better evidence than we possess. But apart from this questionable precision of numerical scale, the phratries and gentes themselves were real, ancient, and durable associations among the Athenian people, highly important to be understood.[83] The basis of the whole was the house, hearth, or family,—a number of which, greater or less, composed the gens, or genos. This gens was therefore a clan, sept, or enlarged, and partly factitious, brotherhood, bound together by,—1. Common religious ceremonies, and exclusive privilege of priesthood, in honor of the same god, supposed to be the primitive ancestor, and characterized by a special surname. 2. By a common burial-place. 3. By mutual rights of succession to property. 4. By reciprocal obligations of help, defence, and redress of injuries. 5. By mutual right and obligation to intermarry in certain determinate cases, especially where there was an orphan daughter or heiress. 6. By possession, in some cases at least, of common property, an archon and a treasurer of their own. Such were the rights and obligations characterizing the gentile union:[84] the phratric union, binding together several gentes, was less intimate, but still included some mutual rights and obligations of an analogous character, and especially a communion of particular sacred rites and mutual privileges of prosecution in the event of a phrator being slain. Each phratry was considered as belonging to one of the four tribes, and all the phratries of the same tribe enjoyed a certain periodical communion of sacred rites, under the presidency of a magistrate called the phylo-basileus, or tribe-king, selected from the Eupatrids; Zeus Geleôn was in this manner the patron-god of the tribe Geleontes. Lastly, all the four tribes were linked together by the common worship of Apollo Patrôus, as their divine father and guardian; for Apollo was the father of Iôn, and the eponyms of all the four tribes were reputed sons of Iôn.

[82] Meier, De Gentilitate Atticâ, pp. 22-24, conceives that this
numerical completeness was enacted by Solon; but of this there
is no proof, nor is it in harmony with the general tendencies of
Solon’s legislation.

[83] So in reference to the Anglo-Saxon _Tythings_ and
_Hundreds_, and to the still more widely-spread division of
the _Hundred_, which seems to pervade the whole of Teutonic
and Scandinavian antiquity, much more extensively than the
_tything_;—there is no ground for believing that these precise
numerical proportions were in general practice realized: the
systematic nomenclature served its purpose by marking the idea
of graduation and the type to which a certain approach was
actually made. Mr. Thorpe observes, respecting the Hundred, in
his Glossary to the “Ancient Laws and Institutes of England,”
v. _Hundred_, _Tything_, _Frid-Borg_, etc. “In the Dialogus
de Scaccario, it is said that a Hundred ‘ex hydarum aliquot
centenariis, sed non determinatis, constat: quidam enim ex
pluribus, quidam ex paucioribus constat.’ Some accounts make
it consist of precisely a hundred hydes, others of a hundred
tythings, others of a hundred free families. Certain it is, that
whatever may have been its original organization, the Hundred, at
the time when it becomes known to us, differed greatly in extent
in various parts of England.”

[84] See the instructive inscription in Professor Ross’s work
(Über die Demen von Attika, p. 26) of the γένος Ἀμυνανδριδῶν,
commemorating the archon of that gens, the priest of Kekrops, the
Ταμίας, or treasurer, and the names of the members, with the deme
and tribe of each individual. Compare Bossler, De Gent. Atticis,
p. 53. About the peculiar religious rites of the gens called
Gephyræi, see Herodot. v, 61.

Such was the primitive religious and social union of the population of Attica in its gradually ascending scale,—as distinguished from the political union, probably of later introduction, represented at first by the trittyes and naukraries, and in after times by the ten Kleisthenean tribes, subdivided into trittyes and demes. The religious and family bond of aggregation is the earlier of the two: but the political bond, though beginning later, will be found to acquire constantly increasing influence throughout the greater part of this history. In the former, personal relation is the essential and predominant characteristic,[85]—local relation being subordinate: in the latter, property and residence become the chief considerations, and the personal element counts only as measured by these accompaniments. All these phratric and gentile associations, the larger as well as the smaller, were founded upon the same principles and tendencies of the Grecian mind,[86]—a coalescence of the idea of worship with that of ancestry, or of communion in certain special religious rites with communion of blood, real or supposed. The god, or hero, to whom the assembled members offered their sacrifices, was conceived as the primitive ancestor, to whom they owed their origin; often through a long list of intermediate names, as in the case of the Milesian Hekatæus, so often before adverted to.[87] Each family had its own sacred rites and funereal commemoration of ancestors, celebrated by the master of the house, to which none but members of the family were admissible: the extinction of a family, carrying with it the suspension of these religious rites, was held by the Greeks to be a misfortune, not merely from the loss of the citizens composing it, but also because the family gods and the manes of deceased citizens were thus deprived of their honors,[88] and might visit the country with displeasure. The larger associations, called gens, phratry, tribe, were formed by an extension of the same principle,—of the family considered as a religious brotherhood, worshipping some common god or hero with an appropriate surname, and recognizing him as their joint ancestor; and the festivals Theoenia and Apaturia[89]—the first Attic, the second common to all the Ionic race,—annually brought together the members of these phratries and gentes for worship, festivity, and maintenance of special sympathies; thus strengthening the larger ties without effacing the smaller.

[85] Φυλαὶ γενικαὶ, opposed to φυλαὶ τοπικαί.—Dionys. Hal. Ant.
Rom. iv, 14.

[86] Plato, Euthydem. p. 302; Aristot. ap. Schol. in Platon.
Axioch. p. 465, ed. Bek. Ἀριστοτέλης φησί· τοῦ ὅλου πλήθους
διῃρημένου Ἀθήνῃσιν εἴς τε τοὺς γεωργοὺς καὶ τοὺς δημιουργοὺς,
φυλὰς αὐτῶν εἶναι τέσσαρας, τῶν δὲ φυλῶν ἑκάστις μοιρὰς
εἶναι τρεῖς, ἃς τριττύας τε καλοῦσι καὶ φρατρίας· ἑκάστης δὲ
τούτων τριάκοντα εἶναι γένη, τὸ δὲ γένος ἐκ τριάκοντα ἀνδρῶν
συνιστάναι· τούτους δὴ τοὺς εἰς τα γένη τεταγμένοις γεννήτας
καλοῦσι. Pollux, viii, 3. Οἱ μετέχοντες τοῦ γένους, γεννῆται καὶ
ὁμογάλακτες· γένει μὲν οὐ προσήκοντες, ἐκ δὲ τῆς συνόδου οὕτω
προσαγορευόμενοι: compare also iii, 52; Mœris. Atticist. p. 108.

Harpokrat. v. Ἀπόλλων Πατρῷος, Θεοίνιον, Γεννῆται, Ὀργεῶνες, etc.
Etymol. Magn. v. Γεννῆται; Suidas, v. Ὀργεῶνες; Pollux, viii, 85;
Demosthen. cont. Eubulid. p. 1319, εἶτα φράτορες, εἶτα Ἀπόλλωνος
πατρῴου καὶ Διὸς ἑκρίου γεννῆται; and cont. Neæram, p. 1365.
Isæus uses ὀργεῶνες as synonymous with γεννῆται (see Orat. ii,
pp. 19, 20-28, ed. Bek.). Schömann (Antiq. J. P. Græc. § xxvi)
considers the two as essentially distinct. Φρήτρη and φῦλον both
occur in the Iliad, ii, 362. See the Dissertation of Buttmann
Über den Begriff von φρατρία (Mythologus, c. 24, p. 305); and
that of Meier, De Gentilitate Atticâ, where the points of
knowledge attainable respecting the gentes are well put together
and discussed.

In the Theræan Inscription (No. 2448 ap. Boeckh. Corp. Inscr.,
see his comment, page 310) containing the testament of Epiktêta,
whereby a bequest is made to οἱ συγγενεῖς—ὁ ἀνδρεῖος τῶν
συγγενῶν,—this latter word does not mean kindred or blood
relations, but a variety of the gentile union—“thiasus,” or
“sodalitium.” Boeckh.

[87] Herodot. ii, 143. Ἑκαταίῳ—γενεηλογήσαντί τε ἑωυτὸν
καὶ ἀναδήσαντι τὴν πατριὴν ἐς ἑκκαιδέκατον θεόν. Again,
γενεηλογήσαντι ἑωυτὸν, καὶ ἀναδήσαντι ἐς ἑκκαιδέκατον θεόν. The
Attic expression,—ἀγχίστεια ἱερῶν καὶ ὁσίων,—illustrates the
intimate association between family relationship and common
religious privileges.—Isæus, Orat. vi, p. 89, ed. Bek.

[88] Isæus, Or. vi, p. 61; ii, p. 38; Demosth. adv. Makartatum,
pp. 1053-1075; adv. Leochar. p. 1093. Respecting this
perpetuation of the family sacred rites, the feeling prevalent
among the Athenians is much the same as what is now seen in China.

Mr. Davis observes: “Sons are considered in this country, where
the power over them is so absolute through life, as a sure
support, as well as a probable source of wealth and dignities,
should they succeed in learning. But the grand object is, the
perpetuation of the race, to sacrifice at the family tombs.
Without sons, a man lives without honor or satisfaction, and dies
unhappy; and as the only remedy, he is permitted to adopt the
sons of his younger brothers.

“It is not during life only, that a man looks for the service
of his sons. It is his consolation in declining years, to think
that they will continue the performance of the prescribed rites
in the hall of ancestors, and at the family tombs, when he is
no more: and it is the absence of this prospect which makes the
childless doubly miserable. The superstition derives influence
from the importance attached by the government to this species
of posthumous duty: a neglect of which is punishable, as we have
seen, by the laws. Indeed, of all the subjects of their care,
there are none which the Chinese so religiously attend to as the
tombs of their ancestors, conceiving that any neglect is sure to
be followed by worldly misfortune.”—(The Chinese, by John Francis
Davis, chap. ix, pp. 131-134. ed. Knight, 1840.)

Mr. Mill notices the same state of feeling among the
Hindoos.—(History of British India, book ii, chap. vii. p. 381,
ed. 8vo.)

[89] Xenoph. Hellen. i, 5, 8; Herodot. i, 147; Suidas,
Ἀπατουρία—Ζεὺς Φράτριος—Ἀθηναία φρατρία, the presiding god of the
phratric union.—Plato, Euthydem. c. 28, p. 302; Demosth. adv.
Makart. p. 1054. See Meier, De Gentilitate Atticâ, pp. 11-14.

The πάτριαι at Byzantium, which were different from θίασοι,
and which possessed corporate property (τά τε θιασωτικὰ καὶ τὰ
πατριωτικὰ, Aristot. Œconomic. ii, 4), are doubtless the parallel
of the Athenian phratries.

Such were the manifestations of Grecian sociality, as we read them in the early constitution, not merely of Attica, but of other Grecian states besides. To Aristotle and Dikæarchus, it was an interesting inquiry to trace back all political society into certain assumed elementary atoms, and to show by what motives and means the original families, each having its separate meal-bin and fireplace,[90] had been brought together into larger aggregates. But the historian must accept as an ultimate fact the earliest state of things which his witnesses make known to him; and in the case now before us, the gentile and phratric unions are matters into the beginning of which we cannot pretend to penetrate.

[90] Dikæarchus ap. Stephan. Byz. v. Πατρὰ; Aristot. Polit. i, 1,
6: Ὁμοσιπύος and ὁμοκάπνους are the old words cited by the latter
from Charondas and Epimenidês.

Pollux—probably from Aristotle’s lost work on the Constitutions of Greece—informs us, distinctly, that the members of the same gens at Athens were not commonly related by blood,—and even without any express testimony we might have concluded such to be fact: to what extent the gens, at the unknown epoch of its first formation, was based upon actual relationship, we have no means of determining, either with regard to the Athenian or the Roman gentes, which were in all main points analogous. Gentilism is a tie by itself; distinct from the family ties, but presupposing their existence and extending them by an artificial analogy, partly founded on religious belief and partly on positive compact, so as to comprehend strangers in blood. All the members of one gens, or even of one phratry, believed themselves to be sprung, not, indeed, from the same grandfather or greatgrandfather, but from the same divine or heroic ancestor: all the contemporary members of the phratry of Hekatæus had a common god for their ancestor in the sixteenth degree; and this fundamental belief, into which the Greek mind passed with so much facility, was adopted and converted by positive compact into the gentile and phratric principle of union. It is because such a transfusion, not recognized by Christianity, is at variance with modern habits of thought, and because we do not readily understand how such a legal and religious fiction can have sunk deep into the Greek feelings, that the phratries and gentes appear to us mysterious: but they are in harmony with all the legendary genealogies which have been set forth in the preceding volume. Doubtless Niebuhr, in his valuable discussion of the ancient Roman gentes, is right in supposing that they were not real families, procreated from any common historical ancestor: but it is not the less true, though he seems to suppose otherwise, that the idea of the gens involved _the belief_ in a common first father, divine or heroic,—a genealogy which we may properly call fabulous, but which was consecrated and accredited among the members of the gens itself, and served as one important bond of union between them.[91] And though an analytical mind like Aristotle might discern the difference between the gens and the family, so as to distinguish the former as the offspring of some special compact, still, this is no fair test of the feelings usual among early Greeks; nor is it certain that Aristotle himself, son of the physician Nikomachus, who belonged to the gens of the Asklepiads,[92] would have consented to disallow the procreative origin of _all_ these religious families without any exception. The natural families of course changed from generation to generation, some extending themselves while others diminished or died out; but the gens received no alterations, except through the procreation, extinction, or subdivision of these component families; accordingly, the relations of the families with the gens were in perpetual course of fluctuation, and the gentile ancestorial genealogy, adapted as it doubtless was to the early condition of the gens, became in process of time partially obsolete and unsuitable. We hear of this genealogy but rarely, because it is only brought before the public in certain cases preëminent and venerable. But the humbler gentes had their common rites, and common superhuman ancestor and genealogy, as well as the more celebrated: the scheme and ideal basis was the same in all.

[91] Niebuhr, Römische Geschichte, vol. i, pp. 317-337. Varro’s
language on that point is clear: “Ut in hominibus quædam
sunt cognationes et gentilitates, sic in verbis. Ut enim ab
Æmilio homines orti Æmilii et gentiles, sic ab Æmilii nomine
declinatæ voces in gentilitate nominali.” Paul. Diacon. p. 94.
“Gentilis dicitur ex eodem genere ortus, et is qui simili nomine
appellatur,” etc. See Becker, Handbuch der Römischen Alterthümer,
part 2, abth. 2, p. 36.

The last part of the definition ought to be struck out for
the Grecian gentes. The passage of Varro does not prove the
historical reality of the primitive father, or genarch, Æmilius,
but it proves that the members of the gens believed in him.

Dr. Wilda, in his learned work, “Das Deutsche Strafrecht,”
(Halle, 1842,) dissents from Niebuhr in the opposite direction,
and seems to maintain that the Grecian and Roman gentes were
really distant blood relations (p. 123). How this can be proved,
I do not know: and it is inconsistent with the opinion which he
advances in the preceding page (p. 122), very justly,—that these
quasi families are primordial facts in early human society,
beyond which we cannot carry our researches. “The farther we go
back in history, the more does the community exhibit the form of
a family, though in reality it is not a mere family. This is the
limit of historical research, which no man can transgress with
impunity,” (p. 122).

[92] Diogen. Laërt. v, 1.

Analogies, borrowed from very different people and parts of the world, prove how readily these enlarged and factitious family unions assort with the ideas of an early stage of society. The Highland clan, the Irish sept,[93] the ancient legally constituted families in Friesland and Dithmarsch, the phis, or phara, among the Albanians, are examples of a similar practice:[94] and the adoption of prisoners by the North American Indians, as well as the universal prevalence and efficacy of the ceremony of adoption in the Grecian and Roman world, exhibit to us a solemn formality under certain circumstances, originating an union and affections similar to those of kindred. Of this same nature were the phratries and gentes at Athens, the curiæ and gentes at Rome, but they were peculiarly modified by the religious imagination of the ancient world, which always traced back the past time to gods and heroes: and religion thus supplied both the common genealogy as their basis, and the privileged communion of special sacred rites as means of commemoration and perpetuity. The gentes, both at Athens and in other parts of Greece, bore a patronymic name, the stamp of their believed common paternity: we find the Asklepiadæ in many parts of Greece,—the Aleuadæ in Thessaly,—the Midylidæ, Psalychidæ, Blepsiadæ, Euxenidæ, at Ægina,—the Branchidæ at Miletus,—the Nebridæ at Kôs,—the Iamidæ and Klytiadæ at Olympia,—the Akestoridæ at Argos,—the Kinyradæ in Cyprus,—the Penthilidæ at Mitylene,[95]—the Talthybiadæ at Sparta,—not less than the Kodridæ, Eumolpidæ, Phytalidæ, Lykomêdæ, Butadæ, Euneidæ, Hesychidæ, Brytiadæ, &c., in Attica.[96] To each of these corresponded a mythical ancestor more or less known, and passing for the first father as well as the eponymous hero of the gens,—Kodrus, Eumolpus, Butes, Phytalus, Hesychus, &c.

[93] See Colonel Leake’s Travels in Northern Greece, ch. 2, p. 85
(the Greek word φράτριαι seems to be adopted in Albania); Boué,
La Turquie en Europe, vol. ii, ch. 1, pp. 15-17; chap. 4, p. 530;
Spenser’s View of the State of Ireland (vol. vi, pp. 1542-1543,
of Tonson’s edition of Spenser’s Works, 1715); Cyprien Robert,
Die Slaven in Turkey, b. 1, chs. 1 and 2.

So, too, in the laws of king Alfred in England, on the subject
of murder, the guild-brethren, or members of the same guild,
are made to rank in the position of distant relatives, if there
happen to be no blood relatives:—

“If a man, kinless of paternal relatives, fight and slay a man,
then, if he have maternal relatives, let them pay a third of
the wēr: his guild-brethren a third part: for a third let him
flee. If he have no maternal relatives, let his guild-brethren
pay half: for half let him flee.... If a man kill a man thus
circumstanced, if he have no relatives, let half be paid to the
king, half to his guild-brethren.” (Thorpe, Ancient Laws and
Institutes of England, vol. i, pp. 79-81.) Again, in the same
work, Leges Henrici Primi, vol. i, p. 596, the ideas of the
kindred and the guild run together in the most intimate manner:
“Si quis hominem occidat,—Si eum tunc _cognatio sua_ deserat, et
pro eo _gildare_ nolit,” etc. In the Salic law, the members of a
_contubernium_ were invested with the same rights and obligations
one towards the other (Rogge, Gerichtswesen der Germanen, ch.
iii, p. 62). Compare Wilda, Deutsches Strafrecht, p. 389, and the
valuable special treatise of the same author (Das Gildenwesen
im Mittelalter. Berlin, 1831), where the origin and progress
of the guilds from the primitive times of German heathenism is
unfolded. He shows that these associations have their basis
in the earliest feelings and habits of the Teutonic race,—the
family was, as it were, a natural guild,—the guild, a factitious
family. Common religious sacrifices and festivals,—mutual defence
and help, as well as mutual responsibility,—were the recognized
bonds among the _congildones_: they were _sororitates_ as well as
_fraternitates_, comprehending both men and women (deren Genosser
wie die Glieder einer Familie enge unter einander verbunden
waren, p. 145). Wilda explains how this primitive social and
religious _phratry_ (sometimes this very expression _fratria_ is
used, see p. 109) passed into something like the more political
tribe, or _phylê_ (see pp. 43, 57, 60, 116, 126, 129, 344). The
sworn _commune_, which spread so much throughout Europe in the
beginning of the twelfth century, partakes both of the one and of
the other,—_conjuratio_,—_amicitia jurata_ (pp. 148, 169).

The members of an Albanian _phara_ are all jointly bound to
exact, and each severally exposed to suffer, the vengeance of
blood, in the event of homicide committed upon, or by, any one of
them (Boué, _ut supra_).

[94] See the valuable chapter of Niebuhr, Röm. Gesch. vol. i, pp.
317, 350, 2d edit.

The _Alberghi_ of Genoa in the Middle Ages were enlarged families
created by voluntary compact: “De tout temps (observes Sismondi)
les familles puissantes avaient été dans l’usage, à Gênes,
d’augmenter encore leur puissance en adoptant d’autres familles
moins riches, moins illustres, ou moins nombreuses,—auxquelles
elles communiquoient leur nom et leurs armes, qu’elles prenoient
ainsi l’engagement de protéger,—et qui en retour s’associoient à
toutes leurs quérelles. Les maisons dans lesquelles on entroit
ainsi par adoption, étoient nommées des alberghi (auberges),
et il y avoit peu de maisons illustres qui ne se fussent ainsi
récrutées a l’aide de quelque famille étrangère.” (Républiques
Italiennes, t. xv, ch. 120, p. 366.)

Eichhorn (Deutsche Staats und Rechts-Geschichte, sect. 18, vol.
i, p. 84, 5th edit.) remarks in regard to the ancient Germans,
that the German “familiæ et propinquitates,” mentioned by Tacitus
(Germ. c. 7), and the “gentibus cognationibusque hominum” of
Cæsar (B. G. vi. 22), bore more analogy to the Roman gens than to
relationship of blood or wedlock. According to the idea of some
of the German tribes, even blood-relationship might be formally
renounced and broken off, with all its connected rights and
obligations, at the pleasure of the individual: he might declare
himself ἐκποιητὸς, to use the Greek expression. See the Titul. 63
of the Salic law, as quoted by Eichhorn, _l. c._

Professor Koutorga of St. Petersburg (in his Essai sur
l’Organisation de la Tribu dans l’Antiquité, translated from
Russian into French by M. Chopin, Paris, 1839) has traced out
and illustrated the fundamental analogy between the social
classification, in early times, of Greeks, Romans, Germans, and
Russians (see especially, pp. 47, 213). Respecting the early
history of Attica, however, many of his positions are advanced
upon very untrustworthy evidence (see p. 123, _seq._).

[95] Pindar, Pyth. viii, 53; Isthm. vi, 92; Nem. vii, 103;
Strabo, ix, p. 421; Stephan. Byz. v. Κῶς; Herodot. v, 44; vii,
134; ix, 37; Pausan. x, 1, 4; Kallimachus, Lavacr. Pallad. 33;
Schol. Pindar. Pyth. ii. 27; Aristot. Pol. v, 8, 13: Ἀλευάδων
τοὺς πρώτους, Plato, Menon. 1, which marks them as a numerous
gens. See Buttmann, Dissert. on the Aleuadæ in the Mythologus,
vol. ii, p. 246. Bacchiadæ at Corinth, ἐδίδοσαν καὶ ἤγοντο ἐξ
ἀλλήλων (Herod. v, 92).

[96] Harpokration, v. Ἐτεοβουτάδαι, Βουτάδαι; Thucyd. viii, 53;
Plutarch, Theseus, 12; Themistoklês, 1; Demosth. cont. Neær. p.
1365: Polemo ap. Schol. ad Soph. Œdip. Kol. 489; Plutarch, Vit.
x, Orator. pp. 841-844. See the Dissertation of O. Müller, De
Minervâ Poliade, c. 2.

The revolution of Kleisthenês in 509 B. C. abolished the old tribes for civil purposes, and created ten new tribes,—leaving the phratries and gentes unaltered, but introducing the local distribution according to demes, or cantons, as the foundation of his new political tribes. A certain number of demes belonged to each of the ten Kleisthenean tribes (the demes in the same tribes were not usually contiguous, so that the tribe was not coincident with a definite circumscription), and the deme, in which every individual was then registered, continued to be that in which his descendants were also registered. But the gentes had no connection, as such, with these new tribes, and the members of the same gens might belong to different demes.[97] It deserves to be remarked, however, that to a certain extent, in the old arrangement of Attica, the division into gentes coincided with the division into demes; that is, it happened not unfrequently that the gennêtes or members of the same gens lived in the same canton, so that the name of the gens and the name of the deme was the same: moreover, it seems that Kleisthenês recognized a certain number of new demes, to which he gave names derived from some important gens resident near the spot. It is thus that we are to explain the large number of the Kleisthenean demes which bear patronymic names.[98]

[97] Demosth. cont. Neær. p. 1365. Tittmann (Griechische
Staatsverfass, p. 277) thinks that every citizen, after the
Kleisthenean revolution, was of necessity a member of some
phratry, as well as of some deme: but the evidence which he
produces is, in my judgment, insufficient. The ideas of the
phratry and the tribe are often confounded together; thus the
Ægeidæ of Sparta, whom Herodotus (iv, 149) calls a tribe, are
by Aristotle called a phratry of Thebans (ap. Schol. ad Pindar.
Isthm. vii, 18). Compare Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde,
sect. 83, p. 17.

A great many of the demes seem to have derived their names from
the shrubs or plants which grew in their neighborhood (Schol. ad
Aristophan. Plutus, 586, Μυρρινοῦς, Ῥαμνοῦς, etc.).

[98] For example, Æthalidæ, Butadæ, Kothôkidæ, Dædalidæ,
Eiresidæ, Epieikidæ, Erœadæ, Eupyridæ, Echelidæ, Keiriadæ,
Kydantidæ, Lakiadæ, Pambôtadæ, Peritheidæ, Persidæ, Semachidæ,
Skambônidæ, Sybridæ, Titakidæ, Thyrgonidæ, Hybadæ, Thymœtadæ,
Pæonidæ, Philaidæ, Chollidæ: all these names of demes, bearing
the patronymic form, are found in Harpokration and Stephanus Byz.
alone.

We do not know that the Κεραμεῖς ever constituted a γένος, but
the name of the deme Κεραμεῖς is evidently given, upon the same
principle, to a place chiefly occupied by potters. The gens
Κοιρώνιδαι are said to have been called Φιλιεῖς (? Φλυεῖς) and
Περιθοῖδαι as well as Κοιρώνιδαι: the names of gentes and those
of demes seem not always distinguishable.

The Butadæ, though a highly venerable gens, also ranked as a deme
(see the Psephism about Lykurgus in Plutarch, Vit. x. Orator,
p. 852): yet we do not know that there was any locality called
Butadæ. Perhaps some of the names above noticed may be simply
names of gentes, enrolled as demes, but without meaning to imply
any community of abode among the members.

The members of the Roman gens occupied adjoining residences,
on some occasions,—to what extent we do not know (Heiberg, De
Familiari Patriciorum Nexu, ch. 24, 25. Sleswic, 1829).

We find the same patronymic names of demes and villages
elsewhere: in Kôs and Rhodes (Ross, Inscr. Gr. ined., Nos. 15-26.
Halle, 1846); _Lêstadæ_ in Naxos (Aristotle ap. Athenæ. viii,
p. 348); _Botachidæ_ at Tegea (Steph. Byz. in v); _Branchidæ_,
near Miletus, etc.; and an interesting illustration is afforded,
in other times and other places, by the frequency of the ending
ikon in villages near Zurich in Switzerland,—Mezikon, Nennikon,
Wezikon, etc. Blüntschli, in his history of Zurich, shows that
these terminations are abridgments of _inghoven_, including an
original patronymic element,—indicating the primary settlement
of members of a family, or of a band bearing the name of its
captain, on the same spot (Blüntschli, Staats und Rechts
Geschichte der Stadt Zurich, vol. i, p. 26).

In other Inscriptions from the island of Kôs, published by
Professor Ross, we have a deme mentioned (without name), composed
of three coalescing gentes, “In hoc et sequente titulo alium
jam deprehendimus _demum Coum_, e tribus gentibus appellatione
patronymicâ conflatum, Antimachidarum, Ægiliensium, Archidarum.”
(Ross, Inscript. Græc. Ined. Fascic. iii, No. 307, p. 44.
Berlin, 1845.) This is a specimen of the process systematically
introduced by Kleisthenês in Attica.

There is one remarkable difference between the Roman and the Grecian gens, arising from the different practice in regard to naming. A Roman patrician bore habitually three names,—the gentile name, with one name following it to denote his family, and another preceding it peculiar to himself in that family. But in Athens, at least after the revolution of Kleisthenês, the gentile name was not employed: a man was described by his own single name, followed first by the name of his father, and next by that of the deme to which he belonged,—as _Æschinês, son of Atromêtus, a Kothôkid_. Such a difference in the habitual system of naming, tended to make the gentile tie more present to every one’s mind at Rome than in the Greek cities.

Before the pecuniary classification of the Atticans introduced by Solon, the phratries and gentes, and the trittyes and naukraries, were the only recognized bonds among them, and the only basis of legal rights and obligations, over and above the natural family. The gens constituted a close incorporation, both as to property and as to persons. Until the time of Solon, no man had any power of testamentary disposition: if he died without children, his gennêtes succeeded to his property,[99] and so they continued to do even after Solon, if he died intestate. An orphan girl might be claimed in marriage of right by any member of the gens, the nearest agnates being preferred;[100] if she was poor, and he did not choose to marry her himself, the law of Solon compelled him to provide her with a dowry proportional to his enrolled scale of property, and to give her out in marriage to another; and the magnitude of the dowry required to be given,—large, even as fixed by Solon, and afterwards doubled,—seems a proof that the lawgiver intended indirectly to enforce actual marriage.[101] If a man was murdered, first his near relations, next his gennêtes and phrators, were both allowed and required to prosecute the crime at law;[102] his fellow demots, or inhabitants of the same deme, did not possess the like right of prosecuting. All that we hear of the most ancient Athenian laws is based upon the gentile and phratric divisions, which are treated throughout as extensions of the family. It is to be observed that this division is completely independent of any property qualification,—rich men as well as poor being comprehended in the same gens.[103] Moreover, the different gentes were very unequal in dignity, arising chiefly from the religious ceremonies of which each possessed the hereditary and exclusive administration, and which, being in some cases considered as of preëminent sanctity in reference to the whole city, were therefore nationalized. Thus the Eumolpidæ and Kêrȳkes, who supplied the Hierophant, and superintended the mysteries of the Eleusinian Dêmêtêr,—and the Butadæ, who furnished the priestess of Athênê Polias as well as the priest of Poseidôn Erechtheus in the acropolis,—seem to have been reverenced above all the other gentes.[104] When the name Butadæ was adopted in the Kleisthenean arrangement as the name of a deme, the holy gens so called adopted the distinctive denomination of Eteobutadæ, or “The True Butadæ.”[105]

[99] Plutarch, Solon. 21. We find a common cemetery exclusively
belonging to the gens, and tenaciously preserved (Demosth. cont.
Eubulid. p. 1307; Cicero, Legg. ii, 26).

[100] Demosth. cont. Makartat. p. 1068. See the singular
additional proviso in Plutarch, Solon, c. 20.

[101] See Meursius, Themis Attica, i, 13.

[102] That this was the primitive custom, and that the limitation
μέχρις ἀνεψιαδῶν (Meier, De Bonis Damnat. p. 23, cites ἀνεψιαδῶν
καὶ φρατόρων) was subsequently introduced (Demosth. cont. Euerg.
et Mnesib. p. 1161), we may gather from the law as it stands in
Demosth. cont. Makartat. p. 1069, which includes the phrators,
and therefore, _à fortiori_, the gennêtes, or gentiles.

The same word γένος is used to designate both the circle of
nameable relatives, brothers, first cousins (ἀγχιστεῖς, Demosth.
cont. Makartat. c. 9, p. 1058), etc., going beyond the οἶκος,—and
the quasi-family, or gens. As the gentile tie tended to become
weaker, so the former sense of the word became more and more
current, to the extinction of the latter. Οἱ ἐν γένει, or οἱ
προσήκοντες, would have borne a wider sense in the days of Drako
than in those of Demosthenes: Συγγενὴς usually belongs to γένος
in the narrower sense, γεννήτης to γένος in the wider sense; but
Isæus sometimes uses the former word as an exact equivalent of
the latter (Orat. vii, pp. 95, 99, 102, 103, Bekker). Τριακὰς
appears to be noted in Pollux as the equivalent of γένος, or
gens (viii, 111), but the word does not occur in the Attic
orators, and we cannot make out its meaning with certainty: the
Inscription of the Deme of Peiræeus given in Boeckh (Corp. Insc.
No. 101, p. 140,) rather adds to the confusion by revealing the
existence of a τριακὰς constituting the fractional part of a
deme, and not connected with a gens: compare Boeckh’s Comment.
_ad loc._ and his Addenda and Corrigenda, p. 900.

Dr. Thirlwall translates γένος, _house_; which I cannot but think
inconvenient, because that word is the natural equivalent of
οἶκος,—a very important word in reference to Attic feelings, and
quite different from γένος (Hist. of Greece, vol. ii, p. 14, ch.
11). It will be found impossible to translate it by any known
English word which does not at the same time suggest erroneous
ideas: which I trust will be accepted as my excuse for adopting
it untranslated into this History.

[103] Demosthen. cont. Makartat _l. c._

[104] See Æschines de Falsâ Legat. p. 292, c. 46; Lysias cont.
Andokid. p. 108; Andokid. de Mysteriis, p. 63, Reiske; Deinarchus
and Hellanikus ap. Harpokration. v. Ἱεροφάντης.

In case of crimes of impiety, particularly in offences against
the sanctity of the Mysteries, the Eumolpidæ had a peculiar
tribunal of their own number, before which offenders were brought
by the king archon. Whether it was often used, seems doubtful;
they had also certain unwritten customs of great antiquity,
according to which they pronounced (Demosthen. cont. Androtion.
p. 601; Schol. ad Demosth. vol. ii, p. 137, Reiske: compare Meier
and Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, p. 117). The Butadæ, also,
had certain old unwritten maxims (Androtion ap. Athenæ. ix, p.
374).

Compare Bossler, De Gentibus et Familiis Atticæ, p. 20, and
Ostermann, De Præconibus Græcor. sect. 2 and 3 (Marburg, 1845).

[105] Lykurgus the orator is described as τὸν δῆμον Βουτάδης,
γένους τοῦ τῶν Ἐτεοβουταδῶν (Plutarch, Vit. x. Orator. p. 841).

A great many of the ancient gentes of Attica are known to us by name; but there is only one phratry (the Achniadæ) whose title has come down to us.[106] These phratries and gentes probably never at any time included the whole population of the country,—and the proportion not included in them tended to become larger and larger, in the times anterior to Kleisthenês,[107] as well as afterwards. They remained, under his constitution, and throughout the subsequent history, as religious quasi-families, or corporations, conferring rights and imposing liabilities which were enforced in the regular dikasteries, but not directly connected with the citizenship or with political functions: a man might be a citizen without being enrolled in any gens. The forty-eight naukraries ceased to exist, for any important purposes, under his constitution: the deme, instead of the naukrary, became the elementary political division, for military and financial objects, and the demarch became the working local president, in place of the chief of the naukrars. The deme, however, was not coincident with a naukrary, nor the demarch with the previous chief of the naukrary, though they were analogous and constituted for the like purpose.[108] While the naukraries had been only forty-eight in number, the demes formed smaller subdivisions, and, in later times at least, amounted to a hundred and seventy-four.[109]

[106] In an inscription (apud Boeckh. Corpus Inscrip. No. 465).

Four names of the phratries at the Greek city of Neapolis, and
six names out of the thirty Roman curiæ, have been preserved
(Becker, Handbuch der Römischen Alterthümer, p. 32; Boeckh, Corp.
Inscript. ii, p. 650).

Each Attic phratry seems to have had its own separate laws
and customs, distinct from the rest, τοῖς φράτορσι, κατὰ τοὺς
~ἐκείνων~ νόμους (Isæus, Or. viii, p. 115, ed. Bek.; vii, p. 99;
iii, p. 49).

Bossler (De Gentibus et Familiis Atticæ, Darmstadt, 1833), and
Meier (De Gentilitate Atticâ, pp. 41-54) have given the names of
those Attic gentes that are known: the list of Meier comprises
seventy-nine in number (see Koutorga, Organis. Trib. p. 122).

[107] Tittmann (Griech. Staats Alterthümer, p. 271) is of
opinion that Kleisthenês augmented the number of phratries, but
the passage of Aristotle brought to support this opinion is
insufficient proof (Polit. vi, 2, 11). Still less can we agree
with Platner (Beyträge zur Kenntniss des Attischen Rechts, pp.
74-77), that three new phratries were assigned to each of the new
Kleisthenean tribes.

Allusion is made in Hesychius, Ἀτριάκαστοι, Ἔξω τριακάδος,
to persons not included in any gens, but this can hardly be
understood to refer to times anterior to Kleisthenês, as
Wachsmuth would argue (p. 238).

[108] The language of Photius on this matter (v. Ναυκραρία μὲν
~ὁποῖόν τι~ ἡ συμμορία καὶ ὁ δῆμος· ναύκραρος δὲ ὁποῖόν τι ὁ
δήμαρχος) is more exact than that of Harpokration, who identifies
the two completely,—v. Δήμαρχος. If it be true that the
naukraries were continued under the Kleisthenean constitution,
with the alteration that they were augmented to fifty in number,
five to every Kleisthenean tribe, they must probably have been
continued in name alone without any real efficiency or function.
Kleidêmus makes this statement, and Boeckh follows it (Public
Economy of Athens, l. ii, ch. 21, p. 256): yet I cannot but doubt
its correctness. For the τριττὺς (one-third of a Kleisthenean
tribe) was certainly retained and was a working and available
division (see Dêmosthenês de Symmoriis, c. 7, p. 184), and
it seems hardly probable that there should be two coexistent
divisions, one representing the third part, the other the fifth
part, of the same tribes.

[109] Strabo, ix, p. 396.

But though this early quadruple division into tribes is tolerably intelligible in itself, there is much difficulty in reconciling it with that severalty of government which we learn to have originally prevailed among the inhabitants of Attica. From Kekrops down to Theseus, says Thucydidês, there were many different cities in Attica, each of them autonomous and self-governing, with its own prytaneium and its own archons; and it was only on occasions of some common danger that these distinct communities took counsel together under the authority of the Athenian kings, whose city at that time comprised merely the holy rock of Athênê on the plain,[110]—afterwards so conspicuous as the acropolis of the enlarged Athens,—together with a narrow area under it on the southern side. It was Theseus, he states, who effected that great revolution whereby the whole of Attica was consolidated into one government, all the local magistracies and councils being made to centre in the prytaneium and senate of Athens: his combined sagacity and power enforced upon all the inhabitants of Attica the necessity of recognizing Athens as the one city in the country, and of occupying their own abodes simply as constituent portions of Athenian territory. This important move, which naturally produced a great extension of the central city, was commemorated throughout the historical times by the Athenians in the periodical festival called Synœkia, in honor of the goddess Athênê.[111]

[110] Strabo, ix, p. 396, πετρὰ ἐν πεδίῳ περιοικουμένη κύκλῳ.
Euripid. Ion, 1578, σκόπελον οἳ ναίουσ᾽ ἐμόν (Athênê).

[111] Thucyd. ii, 15; Theophrast. Charact. 29, 4. Plutarch
(Theseus, 24) gives the proceedings of Theseus in greater detail,
and with a stronger tinge of democracy.