The people, therefore, had good reason to place confidence in
Cleisthenes. Accordingly, now that he was the popular leader, three
years after the expulsion of the tyrants, in the archonship of
Isagoras, his first step was to distribute the whole population into
ten tribes in place of the existing four, with the object of
intermixing the members of the different tribes, and so securing that
more persons might have a share in the franchise. From this arose the
saying 'Do not look at the tribes', addressed to those who wished to
scrutinize the lists of the old families. Next he made the Council to
consist of five hundred members instead of four hundred, each tribe now
contributing fifty, whereas formerly each had sent a hundred. The
reason why he did not organize the people into twelve tribes was that
he might not have to use the existing division into trittyes; for the
four tribes had twelve trittyes, so that he would not have achieved his
object of redistributing the population in fresh combinations. Further,
he divided the country into thirty groups of demes, ten from the
districts about the city, ten from the coast, and ten from the
interior. These he called trittyes; and he assigned three of them by
lot to each tribe, in such a way that each should have one portion in
each of these three localities. All who lived in any given deme he
declared fellow-demesmen, to the end that the new citizens might not be
exposed by the habitual use of family names, but that men might be
officially described by the names of their demes; and accordingly it is
by the names of their demes that the Athenians speak of one another. He
also instituted Demarchs, who had the same duties as the previously
existing Naucrari,--the demes being made to take the place of the
naucraries. He gave names to the demes, some from the localities to
which they belonged, some from the persons who founded them, since some
of the areas no longer corresponded to localities possessing names. On
the other hand he allowed every one to retain his family and clan and
religious rites according to ancestral custom. The names given to the
tribes were the ten which the Pythia appointed out of the hundred
selected national heroes.