The Historians' History of the World 03 [Greece to the Peloponnesian War]

The ten newly created tribes, arranged in an established order of precedence, were called: Erechtheis, Ægeis, Pandionis, Leontis, Acamantis, Œneis, Cecropis, Hippothoöntis, Æantis, Antiochis—names borrowed chiefly from the respected heroes of Attic legend. This number remained unaltered until the year 305 B.C., when it was increased to twelve by the addition of two new tribes, Antigonias and Demetrias, afterwards designated anew by the names of Ptolemais and Attalis. The mere names of these last two, borrowed from living kings and not from legendary heroes, betray the change from freedom to subservience at Athens. Each tribe comprised a certain number of demes—cantons, parishes, or townships—in Attica. But the total number of these demes is not distinctly ascertained.

There is another point, however, which is at once more certain, and more important to notice. The demes which Clisthenes assigned to each tribe were in no case all adjacent to each other; and therefore, the tribe, as a whole, did not correspond with any continuous portion of the territory, nor could it have any peculiar local interest, separate from the entire community. Such systematic avoidance of the factions arising out of neighbourhood will appear to have been more especially necessary, when we recollect that the quarrels of the Paralii, the Diacrii, the Pedieis, during the preceding century, had all been generated from local feud, though doubtless artfully fomented by individual ambition. Moreover, it was only by this same precaution that the local predominance of the city, and the formation of a city-interest distinct from that of the country, was obviated; which could hardly have failed to arise had the city by itself constituted either one deme or one tribe. Clisthenes distributed the city (or found it already distributed) into several demes, and those demes among several tribes; while Piræus and Phalerum, each constituting a separate deme, were also assigned to different tribes; so that there were no local advantages either to bestow predominance, or to create a struggle for predominance, of one tribe over the rest. Each deme had its own local interests to watch over; but the tribe was a mere aggregate of demes for political, military, and religious purposes, with no separate hopes or fears apart from the whole state. Each tribe had a chapel, sacred rites and festivals, and a common fund for such meetings, in honour of its eponymous hero, administered by members of its own choice; and the statues of all the ten eponymous heroes, fraternal patrons of the democracy, were planted in the most conspicuous part of the agora of Athens. In the future working of the Athenian government we shall trace no symptom of disquieting local factions—a capital amendment compared with the disputes of the preceding century, and traceable, in part, to the absence of border-relations between demes of the same tribe.

The deme now became the primitive constituent element of the commonwealth, both as to persons and as to property. It had its own demarch, its register of enrolled citizens, its collective property, its public meetings and religious ceremonies, its taxes levied and administered by itself. The register of qualified citizens was kept by the demarch, and the inscription of new citizens took place at the assembly of the demots, whose legitimate sons were enrolled on attaining the age of eighteen, and their adopted sons at any time when presented and sworn to by the adopting citizen. The citizenship could only be granted by a public vote of the people, but wealthy non-freemen were enabled sometimes to evade this law and purchase admission upon the register of some poor deme, probably by means of a fictitious adoption. At the meetings of the demots, the register was called over, and it sometimes happened that some names were expunged—in which case the party thus disfranchised had an appeal to the popular judicature. So great was the local administrative power, however, of these demes, that they are described as the substitute, under the Clisthenean system, for the naucraries under the Solonian and anti-Solonian. The trittyes and naucraries, though nominally preserved, and the latter (as some affirm) augmented in number from forty-eight to fifty, appear henceforward as of little public importance.

Clisthenes preserved, but at the same time modified and expanded, all the main features of Solon’s political constitution; the public assembly, or ecclesia,—the preconsidering senate, composed of members from all the tribes,—and the habit of annual election, as well as annual responsibility of magistrates, by and to the ecclesia. The full value must now have been felt of possessing such pre-existing institutions to build upon, at a moment of perplexity and dissension. But the Clisthenean ecclesia acquired new strength, and almost a new character, from the great increase of the number of citizens qualified to attend it; while the annually changed senate, instead of being composed of four hundred members taken in equal proportion from each of the old four tribes, was enlarged to five hundred, taken equally from each of the new ten tribes. It now comes before us, under the name of Senate of Five Hundred, as an active and indispensable body throughout the whole Athenian democracy: and the practice now seems to have begun (though the period of commencement cannot be decisively proved), of determining the names of the senators by lot. Both the senate thus constituted, and the public assembly, were far more popular and vigorous than they had been under the original arrangement of Solon.