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]
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]
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]
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]
Such is the account which Thucydidês gives of the original severalty and subsequent consolidation of the different portions of Attica. Of the general fact there is no reason to doubt, though the operative cause assigned by the historian,—the power and sagacity of Theseus,—belongs to legend and not to history. Nor can we pretend to determine either the real steps by which such a change was brought about, or its date, or the number of portions which went to constitute the full-grown Athens,—farther enlarged at some early period, though we do not know when, by voluntary junction of the Bœotian, or semi-Bœotian, town Eleutheræ, situated among the valleys of Kithærôn between Eleusis and Platæa. It was the standing habit of the population of Attica, even down to the Peloponnesian war,[112] to reside in their several cantons, where their ancient festivals and temples yet continued as relics of a state of previous autonomy: their visits to the city were made only at special times, for purposes religious or political, and they yet looked upon the country residence as their real home. How deep-seated this cantonal feeling was among them, we may see by the fact that it survived the temporary exile forced upon them by the Persian invasion, and was resumed when the expulsion of that destroying host enabled them to rebuild their ruined dwellings in Attica.[113]
How many of the demes recognized by Kleisthenês had originally separate governments, or in what local aggregates they stood combined, we cannot now make out; it will be recollected that the city of Athens itself contained several demes, and Peiræeus also formed a deme apart. Some of the twelve divisions, which Philochorus ascribes to Kekrops, present probable marks of an ancient substantive existence,—Kekropia, or the region surrounding and including the city and acropolis; the tetrapolis, composed of Œnoê, Trikorythus, Probalinthus, and Marathon;[114] Eleusis; Aphidnæ and Dekeleia,[115] both distinguished by their peculiar mythical connection with Sparta and the Dioskuri. But it is difficult to imagine that Phalêrum, which is one of the separate divisions named by Philochorus, can ever have enjoyed an autonomy apart from Athens. Moreover, we find among some of the demes which Philochorus does not notice, evidences of standing antipathies, and prohibitions of intermarriage, which might seem to indicate that these had once been separate little states.[116] Though in most cases we can infer little from the legends and religious ceremonies which nearly every deme[117] had peculiar to itself, yet those of Eleusis are so remarkable, as to establish the probable autonomy of that township down to a comparatively late period. The Homeric Hymn to Dêmêtêr, recounting the visit of that goddess to Eleusis after the abduction of her daughter, and the first establishment of the Eleusinian ceremonies, specifies the eponymous prince Eleusis, and the various chiefs of the place,—Keleos, Triptolemus, Dioklês, and Eumolpus; it also notices the Rharian plain in the neighborhood of Eleusis, but not the least allusion is made to Athens or to any concern of the Athenians in the presence or worship of the goddess. There is reason to believe that at the time when this Hymn was composed, Eleusis was an independent town: what that time was we have no means of settling, though Voss puts it as low as the 30th Olympiad.[118] And the proof hence derived is so much the more valuable, because the Hymn to Dêmêtêr presents a coloring strictly special and local; moreover, the story told by Solon to Crœsus, respecting Tellus the Athenian, who perished in battle against the neighboring townsmen of Eleusis,[119] assumes, in like manner, the independence of the latter in earlier times. Nor is it unimportant to notice that, even so low as 300 B. C., the observant visitor Dikæarchus professes to detect a difference between the native Athenians and the Atticans, as well in physiognomy as in character and taste.[120]
In the history set forth to us of the proceedings of Theseus, no mention is made of these four Ionic tribes; but another and a totally different distribution of the people into eupatridæ, geômori, and demiurgi, which he is said to have first introduced, is brought to our notice; Dionysius of Halikarnassus gives only a double division,—eupatridæ and dependent cultivators; corresponding to his idea of the patricians and clients in early Rome.[121] As far as we can understand this triple distinction, it seems to be disparate and unconnected with the four tribes above mentioned. The eupatridæ are the wealthy and powerful men, belonging to the most distinguished families in all the various gentes, and principally living in the city of Athens, after the consolidation of Attica: from them are distinguished the middling and lower people, roughly classified into husbandmen and artisans. To the eupatridæ, is ascribed a religious as well as a political and social ascendency; they are represented as the source of all authority on matters both sacred and profane;[122] they doubtless comprised those gentes, such as the Butadæ, whose sacred ceremonies were looked upon with the greatest reverence by the people: and we may conceive Eumolpus, Keleos, Dioklês, etc., as they are described in the Homeric Hymn to Dêmêtêr, in the character of eupatridæ of Eleusis. The humbler gentes, and the humbler members of each gens, would appear in this classification confounded with that portion of the people who belonged to no gens at all.
From these eupatridæ exclusively, and doubtless by their selection, the nine annual archons—probably also the prytanes of the naukrari—were taken. That the senate of areopagus was formed of members of the same order, we may naturally presume: the nine archons all passed into it at the expiration of their year of office, subject only to the condition of having duly passed the test of accountability; and they remained members for life. These are the only political authorities of whom we hear in the earliest imperfectly known period of the Athenian government, after the discontinuance of the king, and the adoption of the annual change of archons. The senate of areopagus seems to represent the Homeric council of old men;[123] and there were doubtless, on particular occasions, general assemblies of the people, with the same formal and passive character as the Homeric agora,—at least, we shall observe traces of such assemblies anterior to the Solonian legislation. Some of the writers of antiquity ascribed the first establishment of the senate of areopagus to Solon, just as there were also some who considered Lykurgus as having first brought together the Spartan gerusia. But there can be little doubt that this is a mistake, and that the senate of areopagus is a primordial institution, of immemorial antiquity, though its constitution as well as its functions underwent many changes. It stood at first alone as a permanent and collegiate authority, originally by the side of the kings and afterwards by the side of the archons: it would then of course be known by the title of The Boulê,—The Senate, or council; its distinctive title, “Senate of Areopagus,” borrowed from the place where its sittings were held, would not be bestowed until the formation by Solon of the second senate, or council, from which there was need to discriminate it.
This seems to explain the reason why it was never mentioned in the ordinances of Drako, whose silence supplied one argument in favor of the opinion that it did not exist in his time, and that it was first constituted by Solon.[124] We hear of the senate of areopagus chiefly as a judicial tribunal, because it acted in this character constantly throughout Athenian history, and because the orators have most frequent occasion to allude to its decisions on matters of trial. But its functions were originally of the widest senatorial character, directive generally as well as judicial. And although the gradual increase of democracy at Athens, as will be hereafter explained, both abridged its powers and contributed still farther comparatively to lower it, by enlarging the direct working of the people in assembly and judicature, as well as that of the senate of Five Hundred, which was a permanent adjunct and adminicle of the public assembly,—yet it seems to have been, even down to the time of Periklês, the most important body in the state. And after it had been cast into the background by the political reforms of that great man, we still find it on particular occasions stepping forward to reassert its ancient powers, and to assume for the moment that undefined interference which it had enjoyed without dispute in antiquity. The attachment of the Athenians to their ancient institutions gave to the senate of areopagus a constant and powerful hold on their minds, and this feeling was rather strengthened than weakened when it ceased to be an object of popular jealousy,—when it could no longer be employed as an auxiliary of oligarchical pretensions.