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and Peloponnesian wars: so that the old ante-Solonian,—nay, even the real Solonian,—polity was thus put more and more out of date and out of knowledge.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,