CHAPTER X.

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.

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]

[112] Pausan. i, 2, 4; 38, 2; Diodor. Sicul. iv, 2; Schol. ad

Aristophan. Acharn. 242.

The Athenians transferred from Eleutheræ to Athens both a

venerable statue of Dionysus and a religious ceremony in honor

of that god. The junction of the town with Athens is stated by

Pausanias to have taken place in consequence of the hatred of

its citizens for Thebes, and must have occurred before 509 B.

C., about which period we find Hysiæ to be the frontier deme of

Attica (Herodot. v, 72; vi, 108).

[113] Thucyd. ii, 15, 16. οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢ πόλιν τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ἀπολείπων

ἕκαστος,—respecting the Athenians from the country who were

driven into Athens at the first invasion during the Peloponnesian

war.

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]

[114] Etymologicon Magn. v. Ἐπακρία χωρά; Strabo, viii, p. 383;

Stephan. Byz. v. Τετράπολις.

The τετράκωμοι comprised the four demes, Πειραῖεις, Φαληρεῖς,

Ξυπετεῶνες, Θυμοίταδαι (Pollux, iv, 105): whether this is an

old division, however, has been doubted (see Ilgen, De Tribubus

Atticis, p. 51).

The Ἐπακρέων τριττὺς is mentioned in an inscription apud Ross

(Die Demen von Attika, p. vi). Compare Boeckh ad Corp. Inscr. No.

82: among other demes, it comprised the deme Plôtheia. Mesogæa

also (or rather the Mesogei, οἱ Μεσόγειοι) appears as a communion

for sacrifice and religious purposes, and as containing the deme

Batê. See Inscriptiones Atticæ nuper repertæ duodecim, by Ern.

Curtius; Berlin, 1843; Inscript. i, p. 3. The exact site of the

deme Batê in Attica is unknown (Ross, Die Demen von Attica, p.

64); and respecting the question, what portion of Attica was

called Mesogæa, very different conjectures have been started,

which there appears to be no means of testing. Compare Schömann

de Comitiis, p. 343, and Wordsworth, Athens and Attica, p. 229,

2d edit.

[115] Dikæarchus, Fragm. p. 109, ed. Fuhr; Plutarch, Theseus, c.

33.

[116] Such as that between the Pallenæans and Agnusians

(Plutarch, Theseus, 12).

Acharnæ was the largest and most populous deme in Attica

(see Ross, Die Demen von Attika, p. 62; Thucyd. ii, 21); yet

Philochorus does not mention it as having ever constituted a

substantive πόλις.

Several of the demes seem to have stood in repute for peculiar

qualities, good or bad: see Aristophan. Acharn. 177, with

Elmsley’s note.

[117] Strabo, ix, p. 396; Plutarch, Theseus, 14. Polemo had

written a book expressly on the eponymous heroes of the Attic

demes and tribes (Preller. Polemonis Fragm. p. 42): the

Atthidographers were all rich on the same subject: see the

Fragments of the Atthis of Hellanikus (p. 24, ed. Preller), also

those of Istrus, Philochorus, etc.

[118] J. H. Voss, Erlaüterungen, p. 1: see the Hymn, 96-106,

451-475: compare Hermesianax ap. Athen. xiii, p. 597.

[119] Herodot. i, 30.

[120] Dikæarch. Vita Græciæ, p. 141, Fragm. ed. Fuhr.

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.

[121] Plutarch, Theseus, c. 25: Dionys. Hal. ii, 8.

[122] Etymologic. Magn. Εὐπατρίδαι—οἱ αὐτὸ τὸ ἄστυ οἰκοῦντες, καὶ

μετέχοντες τοῦ βασιλικοῦ γένους, καὶ τὴν τῶν ἱερῶν ἐπιμέλειαν

ποιούμενοι. The βασιλικὸν γένος includes not only the Kodrids,

but also the Erechtheids, Pandionids, Pallantids, etc. See also

Plutarch, Theseus, c. 24; Hesychius, Ἀγροιῶται.

Yet Isokratês seems to speak of the great family of the

Alkmæonidæ as _not_ included among the eupatridæ. (Orat. xvi, De

Bigis, p. 351, p. 506, Bek.)

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.

[123] Meier und Schömann, Der Attische Prozess. Einleitung, p. 10.

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.

[124] Plutarch, Solon, c. 19; Aristotle, Polit. ii. 9, 2; Cicero,

De Offic. i. 22. Pollux seems to follow the opinion that Solon

first instituted the senate of areopagus (viii, 125).

Of the nine archons, whose number continued unaltered from 638 B.

C. to the end of the free democracy, three bore special titles,—the

archon eponymus, from whose name the designation of the year was

derived, and who was spoken of as _The Archon_; the archon basileus

(king), or more frequently, the basileus; and the polemarch. The

remaining six passed by the general title of Thesmothetæ. Of the

first three, each possessed exclusive judicial competence in regard

to certain special matters: the thesmothetæ were in this respect all

on a par, acting sometimes as a board, sometimes individually. The

archon eponymus determined all disputes relative to the family, the

gentile, and the phratric relations: he was the legal protector of

orphans and widows.[125] The archon basileus, or king archon, enjoyed

competence in complaints respecting offences against the religious

sentiment and respecting homicide. The polemarch, speaking of times

anterior to Kleisthenês, was the leader of the military force and

judge in disputes between citizens and non-citizens. Moreover, each

of these three archons had particular religious festivals assigned

to him, which it was his duty to superintend and conduct. The six

thesmothetæ seem to have been judges in disputes and complaints,

generally, against citizens, saving the special matters reserved for

the cognizance of the first two archons. According to the proper

sense of the word thesmothetæ, all the nine archons were entitled to

be so called,[126] though the first three had especial designations

of their own: the word thesmoi, analogous to the themistes[127] of

Homer, includes in its meaning both general laws and particular

sentences,—the two ideas not being yet discriminated, and the general

law being conceived only in its application to some particular case.

Drako was the first thesmothet who was called upon to set down his

thesmoi in writing, and thus to invest them essentially with a

character of more or less generality.

[125] Pollux, viii, 89-91.

[126] We read the θεσμοθέτων ἀνάκρισις in Demosthen. cont.

Eubulidem, c. 17, p. 1319, and Pollux, viii, 85; a series of

questions which it was necessary for them to answer before they

were admitted to occupy their office. Similar questions must have

been put to the archon, the basileus, and the polemarch: so that

the words θεσμοθέτων ἀνάκρισις may reasonably be understood to

apply to all the nine archons, as, indeed, we find the words τοὺς

ἐννέα ἄρχοντας ἀνακρίνετε shortly afterwards, p. 1320.

[127] Respecting the word θέμιστες in the Homeric sense, see

above, vol. ii, ch. xx.

Both Aristotle (Polit. ii, 9, 9) and Dêmosthenês (contr. Euerg.

et Mnêsibul. c. 18, p. 1161) call the ordinances of Drako νόμοι,

not θεσμοί. Andokidês distinguishes the θεσμοὶ of Drako and

the νόμοι of Solon (De Mysteriis, p. 11). This is the adoption

of a phrase comparatively modern; Solon called his own laws

θεσμοί. The oath of the περίπολοι ἔφηβοι (the youth who formed

the armed police of Attica during the first two years of their

military age), as given in Pollux (viii, 106), seems to contain

at least many ancient phrases: this phrase,—καὶ τοῖς θεσμοῖς

τοῖς ἱδρυμένοις πείσομαι,—is remarkable, as it indicates the

ancient association of religious sanction which adhered to the

word θεσμοί; for ἱδρύεσθαι is the word employed in reference to

the establishment and domiciliation of the gods who protected

the country,—θέσθαι νόμους is the later expression for making

laws. Compare Stobæus De Republic. xliii, 48, ed. Gaisford, and

Dêmosthen. cont. Makartat. c. 13, p. 1069.

In the later and better-known times of Athenian law, we find these

archons deprived in great measure of their powers of judging and

deciding, and restricted to the task of first hearing the parties and

collecting the evidence, next, of introducing the matter for trial

into the appropriate dikastery, over which they presided. Originally,

there was no separation of powers: the archons both judged and

administered, sharing among themselves those privileges which had

once been united in the hands of the king, and probably accountable

at the end of their year of office to the senate of areopagus. It

is probable also, that the functions of that senate, and those of

the prytanes of the naukrars, were of the same double and confused

nature. All of these functionaries belonged to the eupatrids, and all

of them doubtless acted more or less in the narrow interest of their

order: moreover, there was ample room for favoritism, in the way of

connivance as well as antipathy, on the part of the archons. That

such was decidedly the case, and that discontent began to be serious,

we may infer from the duty imposed on the thesmothet Drako, B. C.

624, to put in writing the thesmoi, or ordinances, so that they might

be “shown publicly,” and known beforehand.[128] He did not meddle

with the political constitution, and in his ordinances Aristotle

finds little worthy of remark except the extreme severity[129] of the

punishments awarded: petty thefts, or even proved idleness of life,

being visited with death or disfranchisement.

[128] Ὅτε θεσμὸς ~ἐφάνη ὅδε~,—such is the exact expression of

Solon’s law (Plutarch, Solon, c. 19); the word θεσμὸς is found in

Solon’s own poems, θεσμοὺς δ᾽ ὁμοίους τῷ κακῷ τε κἀγαθῷ.

[129] Aristot. Polit. ii, 9, 9; Rhetoric. ii. 25, 1; Aulus Gell.

N. A. xi, 18; Pausanias, ix, 36, 4; Plutarch, Solon, c. 19;

though Pollux (viii, 42) does not agree with him. Taylor, Lectt.

Lysiacæ, ch. 10.

Respecting the θεσμοὶ of Drako, see Kuhn. ad Ælian. V. II. viii,

10. The preliminary sentence which Porphyry (De Abstinentiâ, iv,

22) ascribes to Drako can hardly be genuine.

But we are not to construe this remark as demonstrating any special

inhumanity in the character of Drako, who was not invested with

the large power which Solon afterwards enjoyed, and cannot be

imagined to have imposed upon the community severe laws of his own

invention. Himself of course an eupatrid, he set forth in writing

such ordinances as the eupatrid archons had before been accustomed to

enforce without writing, in the particular cases which came before

them; and the general spirit of penal legislation had become so

much milder, during the two centuries which followed, that these

old ordinances appeared to Aristotle intolerably rigorous. Probably

neither Drako, nor the Lokrian Zaleukus, who somewhat preceded him

in date, were more rigorous than the sentiment of the age: indeed,

the few fragments of the Drakonian tables which have reached us, far

from exhibiting indiscriminate cruelty, introduce, for the first

time, into the Athenian law, mitigating distinctions in respect to

homicide;[130] founded on the variety of concomitant circumstances.

He is said to have constituted the judges called Ephetæ, fifty-one

elders belonging to some respected gens or possessing an exalted

position, who held their sittings for trial of homicide in three

different spots, according to the difference of the cases submitted

to them. If the accused party, admitting the fact, denied any

culpable intention and pleaded accident, the case was tried at the

place called the palladium; when found guilty of accidental homicide,

he was condemned to a temporary exile, unless he could appease the

relatives of the deceased, but his property was left untouched.

If, again, admitting the fact, he defended himself by some valid

ground of justification, such as self-defence, or flagrant adultery

with his wife on the part of the deceased, the trial took place on

ground consecrated to Apollo and Artemis, called the Delphinium. A

particular spot called the Phreattys, close to the sea-shore, was

also named for the trial of a person, who, while under sentence of

exile for an unintentional homicide, might be charged with a second

homicide, committed of course without the limits of the territory:

being considered as impure from the effects of the former sentence,

he was not permitted to set foot on the soil, but stood his trial on

a boat hauled close in shore. At the prytaneium, or government-house

itself, sittings were held by the four phylo-basileis, or

tribe-kings, to try any inanimate object (a piece of wood or

stone, etc.) which had caused death to any one, without the proved

intervention of a human hand: the wood or stone, when the fact was

verified, was formally cast beyond the border.[131] All these

distinctions of course imply the preliminary investigation of the

case, called anakrisis, by the king-archon, in order that it might be

known what was the issue, and where the sittings of the ephetæ were

to be held.

[130] Pausanias, ix, 36, 4. Δράκοντος Ἀθηναίοις θεσμοθετήσαντος

ἐκ τῶν ἐκείνου κατέστη νόμων οὓς ἔγραφεν ἐπὶ τῆς ἀρχῆς, ἄλλων

τε ὁπόσων ἄδειαν εἶναι χρή, καὶ δὴ καὶ τιμωρίας μοιχοῦ: compare

Dêmosthen. cont. Aristokrat. p. 637; Lysias de Cæde Eratosthen.

p. 31.

[131] Harpokration, vv. Ἐφέται, Ἐπὶ Δελφινίῳ, Ἐπὶ Παλλαδίῳ,

Ἐν Φρεαττοῖ; Pollux, viii, 119, 124, 125; Photius, v. Ἐφέται;

Hesychius, ἐς Φρέατου; Dêmosthen. cont. Aristokrat. c. 15-18, pp.

642-645; cont. Makartat. c. 13, p. 1068. When Pollux speaks of

the five courts in which the ephetæ judged, he probably includes

the areopagus (see Dêmosth. cont. Aristokrat. c. 14, p. 641).

About the judges ἐν Φρεαττοῖ, see Aristot. Polit. iv, 13, 2.

On the general subject of this ancient and obscure criminal

procedure, see Matthiæ, De Judiciis Atheniensium (in Miscellan.

Philologie, vol. i, p. 143, _seq._); also Schömann, Antiq. Jur.

Pub. Att. sect. 61, p. 288; Platner, Prozess und Klagen bey den

Attikern, b. i, ch. 1; and E. W. Weber, Comment. ad Dêmosthen.

cont. Aristokrat. pp. 627, 641; Meier und Schömann, Attisch.

Prozess, pp. 14-19.

I cannot consider the ephetæ as judges in appeal, and I agree

with those (Schömann, Antiq. Jur. Pub. Gr. p. 171; Meier und

Schömann, Attisch. Prozess, p. 16; Platner, Prozess und Klagen,

t. i, p. 18) who distrust the etymology which connects this word

with ἐφέσιμος. The active sense of the word, akin to ἐφίεμαι

(Æsch. Prom. 4) and ἐφετμὴ, meets the case better: see O. Müller,

Prolegg. ad Mythol. p. 424 (though there is no reason for

believing the ephetæ to be older than Drako): compare, however,

K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griechischen Staats Alterthümer,

sects. 103, 104, who thinks differently.

The trial, condemnation, and banishment of inanimate objects

which had been the cause of death, was founded on feelings widely

diffused throughout the Grecian world (see Pausan. vi, 11, 2;

and Theokritus, Idyll, xxiii, 60): analogous in principle to the

English law respecting deodand, and to the spirit pervading the

ancient Germanic codes generally (see Dr. C. Trümmer, Die Lehre

von der Zurechnung, c. 28-38. Hamburg, 1845).

The Germanic codes do not content themselves with imposing a

general obligation to appease the relatives and gentiles of the

slain party, but determine beforehand the sum which shall be

sufficient to the purpose, which, in the case of involuntary

homicide, is paid to the surviving relatives as a compensation;

for the difference between culpable homicide, justifiable

homicide, and accidental homicide, see the elaborate treatise

of Wilda, Das Deutsche Strafrecht, ch. viii, pp. 544-559, whose

doctrine, however, is disputed by Dr. Trümmer, in the treatise

above noticed.

At Rome, according to the Twelve Tables, and earlier, involuntary

homicide was to be expiated by the sacrifice of a ram (Walter,

Geschichte des Römisch. Rechts, sect. 768).

So intimately was the mode of dealing with homicide connected with

the religious feelings of the Athenians, that these old regulations

were never formally abrogated throughout the historical times,

and were read engraved on their column by the contemporaries of

Dêmosthenês.[132] The areopagus continued in judicial operation, and

the ephetæ are spoken of as if they were so, even through the age of

Dêmosthenês; though their functions were tacitly usurped or narrowed,

and their dignity impaired,[133] by the more popular dikasteries

afterwards created. It is in this way that they have become known

to us, while the other Drakonian institutions have perished: but

there is much obscurity respecting them, particularly in regard to

the relation between the ephetæ and the areopagites. Indeed, so

little was known on the subject, even by the historical inquirers of

Athens, that most of them supposed the council of areopagus to have

received its first origin from Solon: and even Aristotle, though

he contradicts this view, expresses himself in no very positive

language.[134] That judges sat at the areopagus for the trial of

homicide, previous to Drako, seems implied in the arrangements of

that lawgiver respecting the ephetæ, inasmuch as he makes no new

provision for trying the direct issue of intentional homicide,

which, according to all accounts, fell within the cognizance of

the areopagus: but whether the ephetæ and the areopagites were

the same persons, wholly or partially, our information is not

sufficient to discover. Before Drako, there existed no tribunal

for trying homicide, except the senate, sitting at the areopagus,

and we may conjecture that there was something connected with that

spot,—legends, ceremonies, or religious feelings,—which compelled

judges there sitting to condemn every man proved guilty of homicide,

and forbade them to take account of extenuating or justifying

circumstances.[135] Drako appointed the ephetæ to sit at different

places; and these places are so pointedly marked, and were so

unalterably maintained, that we may see in how peculiar a manner

those special issues, of homicide under particular circumstances,

which he assigned to each, were adapted, in Athenian belief, to the

new sacred localities chosen,[136] each having its own distinct

ceremonial and procedure appointed by the gods themselves. That

the religious feelings of the Greeks were associated in the most

intimate manner with particular localities, has already been often

remarked; and Drako proceeded agreeably to them in his arrangements

for mitigating the indiscriminate condemnation of every man found

guilty of homicide, which was unavoidable so long as the areopagus

remained the only place of trial. The man who either confessed, or

was proved to have shed the blood of another, could not be acquitted,

or condemned to less than the full penalty (of death or perpetual

exile, with confiscation of property) by the judges on the hill of

Arês, whatever excuse he might have to offer: but the judges at the

palladium and delphinium might hear him, and even admit his plea,

without contracting the taint of irreligion. Drako did not directly

meddle with, nor indeed ever mention, the judges sitting in areopagus.

[132] Dêmosthen. cont. Euerg. et Mnêsib. p. 1161.

[133] Dêmosthen. cont. Aristokrat. p. 647. τοσούτοις

δικαστηρίοις, ἃ θεοὶ κατέδειξαν, καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα ἄνθρωποι χρῶνται

πάντα τὸν χρόνον, p. 643.—οἱ ταῦτ᾽ ἐξαρχῆς τὰ νόμισμα διαθέντες,

οἵτινές ποθ᾽ ἦσαν, εἴθ᾽ ἥρωες, εἴτε θεοί. See also the Oration

cont. Makartat. p. 1069; Æschin. cont. Ktesiphon. p. 636; Antiph.

De Cæde Herodis, c. 14.

The popular dikastery, in the age of Isokratês and Dêmosthenês,

held sittings ἐπὶ Παλλαδίῳ for the trial of charges of

unintentional homicide,—a striking evidence of the special

holiness of the place for that purpose (see Isokrat. cont.

Kallimachum, Or. xviii, p. 381; Dêmosth. cont. Neær. p. 1348).

The statement of Pollux (viii, 125), that the ephetæ became

despised, is not confirmed by the language of Dêmosthenês.

[134] Plutarch, Solon, c. 19; Aristot. Polit. ii, 9, 2.

[135] Read on this subject the maxims laid down by Plato (Legg.

xii, p. 941). Nevertheless, Plato copies, to a great degree,

the arrangements of the ephetic tribunals in his provisions for

homicide (Legg. ix. pp. 865-873).

[136] I know no place in which the special aptitude of particular

localities consecrated each to its own purpose, is so powerfully

set forth, as in the speech of Camillus against the transfer of

Rome to Veii (Livy, v, 52).

In respect to homicide, then, the Drakonian ordinances were partly a

reform of the narrowness, partly a mitigation of the rigor, of the

old procedure; and these are all that have come down to us, having

been preserved unchanged from the religious respect of the Athenians

for antiquity on this peculiar matter. The rest of his ordinances are

said to have been repealed by Solon, on account of their intolerable

severity. So they doubtless appeared, to the Athenians of a later

day, who had come to measure offences by a different scale; and even

to Solon, who had to calm the wrath of a suffering people in actual

mutiny.

That under this eupatrid oligarchy and severe legislation the people

of Attica were sufficiently miserable, we shall presently see, when

I recount the proceedings of Solon: but the age of democracy had not

yet begun, and the government received its first shock from the hands

of an ambitious eupatrid who aspired to the despotism. Such was the

phase, as has been remarked in the preceding chapter, through which,

during the century now under consideration, a large proportion of the

Grecian governments passed.

Kylôn, an Athenian patrician, who superadded to a great family

position the personal celebrity of a victory at Olympia, as runner

in the double stadium, conceived the design of seizing the acropolis

and constituting himself despot. Whether any special event had

occurred at home to stimulate this project, we do not know: but he

obtained both encouragement and valuable aid from his father-in-law

Theagenês of Megara, who, by means of his popularity with the

people, had already subverted the Megarian oligarchy, and become

despot of his native city. Previous to so hazardous an attempt,

however, Kylôn consulted the Delphian oracle, and was advised by

the god in reply, to take the opportunity of “the greatest festival

of Zeus” for seizing the acropolis. Such expressions, in the

natural interpretation put upon them by every Greek, designated

the Olympic games in Peloponnesus,—to Kylôn, moreover himself an

Olympic victor, that interpretation came recommended by an apparent

peculiar propriety. But Thucydidês, not indifferent to the credit of

the oracle, reminds his readers that no question was asked nor any

express direction given, _where_ the intended “greatest festival of

Zeus” was to be sought,—whether in Attica or elsewhere,—and that the

public festival of the Diasia, celebrated periodically and solemnly

in the neighborhood of Athens, was also denominated the “greatest

festival of Zeus Meilichius.” Probably no such exegetical scruples

presented themselves to any one, until after the miserable failure of

the conspiracy; least of all to Kylôn himself, who, at the recurrence

of the next ensuing Olympic games, put himself at the head of a

force, partly furnished by Theagenês, partly composed of his friends

at home, and took sudden possession of the sacred rock of Athens.

But the attempt excited general indignation among the Athenian

people, who crowded in from the country to assist the archons and the

prytanes of the naukrari in putting it down. Kylôn and his companions

were blockaded in the acropolis, where they soon found themselves

in straits for want of water and provisions; and though many of the

Athenians went back to their homes, a sufficient besieging force was

left to reduce the conspirators to the last extremity. After Kylôn

himself had escaped by stealth, and several of his companions had

died of hunger, the remainder, renouncing all hope of defence, sat

down as suppliants at the altar. The archon Megaklês, on regaining

the citadel, found these suppliants on the point of expiring with

hunger on the sacred ground, and to prevent such a pollution, engaged

them to quit the spot by a promise of sparing their lives. No sooner,

however, had they been removed into profane ground, than the promise

was violated and they were put to death: some even, who, seeing the

fate with which they were menaced, contrived to throw themselves

upon the altar of the venerable goddesses, or eumenides, near the

areopagus, received their death-wounds in spite of that inviolable

protection.[137]

[137] The narrative is given in Thucyd. i, 126; Herod. v, 71;

Plutarch, Solon, 12.

Though the conspiracy was thus put down, and the government

upheld, these deplorable incidents left behind them a long train

of calamity,—profound religious remorse mingled with exasperated

political antipathies. There still remained, if not a considerable

Kylonian party, at least a large body of persons who resented the

way in which the Kylonians had been put to death, and who became in

consequence bitter enemies of Megaklês the archon, and of the great

family of the Alkmæônidæ, to which he belonged. Not only Megaklês

himself and his personal assistants were denounced as smitten

with a curse, but the taint was supposed to be transmitted to his

descendants, and we shall hereafter find the wound reopened, not only

in the second and third generation, but also two centuries after the

original event.[138] When we see that the impression left by the

proceeding was so very serious, even after the length of time which

had elapsed, we may well believe that it was sufficient, immediately

afterwards, to poison altogether the tranquillity of the state.

The Alkmæônids and their partisans long defied their opponents,

resisting any public trial,—and the dissensions continued without

hope of termination, until Solon, then enjoying a lofty reputation

for sagacity and patriotism, as well as for bravery, persuaded them

to submit to judicial cognizance,—at a moment so far distant from the

event, that several of the actors were dead. They were accordingly

tried before a special judicature of three hundred eupatrids, Myrôn,

of the deme Phlyeis, being their accuser. In defending themselves

against the charge that they had sinned against the reverence due to

the gods and the consecrated right of asylum, they alleged that the

Kylonian suppliants, when persuaded to quit the holy ground, had tied

a cord round the statue of the goddess and clung to it for protection

in their march; but on approaching the altar of the eumenides, the

cord accidentally broke,—and this critical event, so the accused

persons argued, proved that the goddess had herself withdrawn from

them her protecting hand and abandoned them to their fate.[139]

Their argument, remarkable as an illustration of the feelings of

the time, was not, however, accepted as an excuse: they were found

guilty, and while such of them as were alive retired into banishment,

those who had already died were disinterred and cast beyond the

borders. Yet their exile, continuing as it did only for a time, was

not held sufficient to expiate the impiety for which they had been

condemned. The Alkmæônids, one of the most powerful families in

Attica, long continued to be looked upon as a tainted race,[140] and

in cases of public calamity were liable to be singled out as having

by their sacrilege drawn down the judgment of the gods upon their

countrymen.[141]

[138] Aristophan. Equit. 445, and the Scholia; Herodot. v, 70.

[139] Plutarch, Solon, c. 12. If the story of the breaking of the

cord had been true, Thucydidês could hardly have failed to notice

it; but there is no reason to doubt that it was the real defence

urged by the Alkmæônids.

When Ephesus was besieged by Crœsus, the inhabitants sought

protection to their town by dedicating it to Artemis: they

carried a cord from the walls of the town to the shrine of the

goddess, which was situated without the walls (Herod. i, 26).

The Samian despot Polykratês, when he consecrated to the Delian

Apollo the neighboring island of Rhêneia, connected it with the

island of Delos by means of a chain (Thucyd. iii, 104).

These analogies illustrate the powerful effect of visible or

material continuity on the Grecian imagination.

[140] Herodot. i, 61.

[141] See Thucyd. v, 16, and his language respecting Pleistoanax

of Sparta.

Nor was the banishment of the guilty parties adequate in other

respects to restore tranquillity. Not only did pestilential disorders

prevail, but the religious susceptibilities and apprehensions of

the Athenian community also remained deplorably excited: they were

oppressed with sorrow and despondency, saw phantoms and heard

supernatural menaces, and felt the curse of the gods upon them

without abatement.[142] In particular, it appears that the minds of

the women—whose religious impulses were recognized generally by the

ancient legislators as requiring watchful control—were thus disturbed

and frantic. The sacrifices offered at Athens did not succeed in

dissipating the epidemic, nor could the prophets at home, though they

recognized that special purifications were required, discover what

were the new ceremonies capable of appeasing the divine wrath. The

Delphian oracle directed them to invite a higher spiritual influence

from abroad, and this produced the memorable visit of the Kretan

prophet and sage Epimenidês to Athens.

[142] Plutarch, Solon, c. 12. Καὶ φόβοι τινὲς ἐκ δεισιδαιμονίας

ἅμα καὶ φάσματα κατεῖχε τὴν πόλιν, etc.

The century between 620 and 500 B. C. appears to have been remarkable

for the first diffusion and potent influence of distinct religious

brotherhoods, mystic rites, and expiatory ceremonies, none of which,

as I have remarked in a former chapter, find any recognition in

the Homeric epic. To this age belong Thalêtas, Aristeas, Abaris,

Pythagoras, Onomakritus, and the earliest provable agency of the

Orphic sect.[143] Of the class of men here noticed, Epimenidês, a

native of Phæstus or Knossus in Krete,[144] was one of the most

celebrated,—and the old legendary connection between Athens and

Krete, which shows itself in the tales of Theseus and Minos, is

here again manifested in the recourse which the Athenians had to

this island to supply their spiritual need. Epimenidês seems to

have been connected with the worship of the Kretan Zeus, in whose

favor he stood so high as to receive the denomination of the new

Kurête[145]—the Kurêtes having been the primitive ministers and

organizers of that worship. He was said to be the son of the nymph

Baltê; to be supplied by the nymphs with constant food, since he was

never seen to eat; to have fallen asleep in his youth in a cave, and

to have continued in this state without interruption for fifty-seven

years; though some asserted that he remained all this time a wanderer

in the mountains, collecting and studying medicinal botany in the

vocation of an Iatromantis, or leech and prophet combined. Such

narratives mark the idea entertained by antiquity of Epimenidês,

the Purifier,[146] who was now called in to heal both the epidemic

and the mental affliction prevalent among the Athenian people, in

the same manner as his countryman and contemporary Thalêtas had

been, a few years before, invited to Sparta to appease a pestilence

by the effect of his music and religious hymns.[147] The favor of

Epimenidês with the gods, his knowledge of propitiatory ceremonies,

and his power of working upon the religious feeling, was completely

successful in restoring both health and mental tranquillity at

Athens. He is said to have turned out some black and white sheep on

the areopagus, directing attendants to follow and watch them, and to

erect new altars to the appropriate local deities on the spots where

the animals lay down.[148] He founded new chapels and established

various lustral ceremonies; and more especially, he regulated the

worship paid by the women, in such a manner as to calm the violent

impulses which had before agitated them. We know hardly anything

of the details of his proceeding, but the general fact of his

visit, and the salutary effects produced in removing the religious

despondency which oppressed the Athenians, are well attested:

consoling assurances and new ritual precepts, from the lips of a

person supposed to stand high in the favor of Zeus, were the remedy

which this unhappy disorder required. Moreover, Epimenidês had the

prudence to associate himself with Solon, and while he thus doubtless

obtained much valuable advice, he assisted indirectly in exalting

the reputation of Solon himself, whose career of constitutional

reform was now fast approaching. He remained long enough at Athens

to restore completely a more comfortable tone of religious feeling,

and then departed, carrying with him universal gratitude and

admiration, but refusing all other reward, except a branch from the

sacred olive-tree in the acropolis.[149] His life is said to have

been prolonged to the unusual period of one hundred and fifty-four

years, according to a statement which was current during the time

of his younger contemporary Xenophanês of Kolophon;[150] and the

Kretans even ventured to affirm that he lived three hundred years.

They extolled him not merely as a sage and a spiritual purifier, but

also as a poet,—very long compositions on religious and mythical

subjects being ascribed to him; according to some accounts, they even

worshipped him as a god. Both Plato and Cicero considered Epimenidês

in the same light in which he was regarded by his contemporaries, as

a prophet divinely inspired, and foretelling the future under fits

of temporary ecstasy: but according to Aristotle, Epimenidês himself

professed to have received from the gods no higher gift than that of

divining the unknown phenomena of the past.[151]

[143] Lobeck, Aglaophamus, ii, p. 313; Hoeckh, Kreta, iii, 2, p.

252.

[144] The statements respecting Epimenidês are collected and

discussed in the treatise of Heinrich, Epimenides aus Kreta.

Leipsic, 1801.

[145] Diogen. Laërt. i, 114, 115.

[146] Plutarch, Solon, c. 12; Diogen. Laërt. i, 109-115; Pliny,

H. N. vii, 52. θεοφιλὴς καὶ σοφὸς περὶ τὰ θεῖα τὴν ἐνθουσιαστικὴν

καὶ ~τελεστικὴν σοφίαν~, etc. Maxim. Tyrius, xxxviii, 3, δεινὸς

τὰ θεῖα, οὐ μαθὼν ἀλλ᾽ ὕπνον αὐτῷ διηγεῖτο μακρὸν καὶ ὄνειρον

διδάσκαλον.

Ἰατρόμαντις, Æschyl. Supplic. 277; Καθαρτὴς, Iamblichus, Vit.

Pythagor. c. 28.

Plutarch (Sept. Sapient. Conviv. p. 157) treats Epimenidês

simply as having lived up to the precepts of the Orphic life, or

vegetable diet: to this circumstance, I presume, Plato (Legg.

iii, p. 677) must be understood to refer, though it is not very

clear. See the Fragment of the lost _Krêtes_ of Euripides, p. 98,

ed. Dindorf.

Karmanor of Tarrha in Krete had purified Apollo himself for the

slaughter of Pytho (Pausan. ii, 30, 3).

[147] Plutarch, De Musicâ, pp. 1134-1146; Pausanias, i, 14, 3.

[148] Cicero (Legg. ii, 11) states that Epimenidês directed a

temple to be erected at Athens to Ὕβρις and Ἀναίδεια (Violence

and Impudence): Clemens said that he had erected _altars_ to the

same two goddesses (Protrepticon, p. 22): Theophrastus said that

there were _altars_ at Athens (without mentioning Epimenidês) to

these same (ap. Zenobium, Proverb. Cent. iv, 36). Ister spoke

of a ἱερὸν Ἀναιδείας at Athens (Istri Fragm. ed. Siebelis, p.

62). I question whether this story has any other foundation than

the fact stated by Pausanias, that the stones which were placed

before the tribunal of areopagus, for the accuser and the accused

to stand upon, were called by these names,—Ὕβρεως, that of the

accused; Ἀναιδείας, that of the accuser (i, 28, 5). The confusion

between stones and altars is not difficult to be understood. The

other story, told by Neanthês of Kyzikus, respecting Epimenidês,

that he had offered two young men as human sacrifices, was

distinctly pronounced to be untrue by Polemo: and it reads

completely like a romance (Athenæus, xiii, p. 602).

[149] Plutarch. Præcept. Reipubl. Gerend. c. 27, p. 820.

[150] Diogen. Laërt. _l. c._

[151] Plato, Legg. i, p. 642; Cicero, De Divinat. i, 18; Aristot.

Rhet. iii, 17.

Plato places Epimenidês ten years before the Persian invasion

of Greece, whereas his real date is near upon 600 B. C.; a

remarkable example of carelessness as to chronology.

The religious mission of Epimenidês to Athens, and its efficacious

as well as healing influence on the public mind, deserve notice

as characteristics of the age in which they occurred.[152] If we

transport ourselves two centuries forward, to the Peloponnesian

war, when rational influences and positive habits of thought had

acquired a durable hold upon the superior minds, and when practical

discussions on political and judicial matters were familiar to every

Athenian citizen, no such uncontrollable religious misery could well

have subdued the entire public; and if it had, no living man could

have drawn to himself such universal veneration as to be capable of

effecting a cure. Plato,[153] admitting the real healing influence

of rites and ceremonies, fully believed in Epimenidês as an inspired

prophet during the past; but towards those who preferred claims to

supernatural power in his own day, he was not so easy of faith. He,

as well as Euripides and Theophrastus, treated with indifference,

and even with contempt, the orpheotelestæ of the later times, who

advertised themselves as possessing the same patent knowledge of

ceremonial rites, and the same means of guiding the will of the

gods, as Epimenidês had wielded before them. These orpheotelestæ

unquestionably numbered a considerable tribe of believers, and

speculated with great effect, as well as with profit to themselves,

upon the timorous consciences of rich men:[154] but they enjoyed no

respect with the general public, or with those to whose authority

the public habitually looked up. Degenerate as they were, however,

they were the legitimate representatives of the prophet and purifier

from Knossus, to whose presence the Athenians had been so much

indebted two centuries before: and their altered position was owing

less to any falling off in themselves, than to an improvement in

the mass upon whom they sought to operate. Had Epimenidês himself

come to Athens in those days, his visit would probably have been

as much inoperative to all public purposes as a repetition of the

stratagem of Phyê, clothed and equipped as the goddess Athênê, which

had succeeded so completely in the days of Peisistratus,—a stratagem

which even Herodotus treats as incredibly absurd, although, a century

before his time, both the city of Athens and the demes of Attica

had obeyed, as a divine mandate, the orders of this magnificent and

stately woman, to restore Peisistratus.[155]

[152] Respecting the characteristics of this age, see the second

chapter of the treatise of Heinrich, above alluded to, Kreta und

Griechenland in Hinsicht auf Wunderglauben.

[153] Plato, Kratylus, p. 405; Phædr. p. 244.

[154] Eurip. Hippolyt. 957; Plato, Republ. ii, p. 364;

Theophrast. Charact. c. 16.

[155] Herodot. i, 60.