Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/79

 GENTES AND DEMES IN ATTICA. 63 ^ponded 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. The revolution of Kleisthenes in 509 B. c. abolished the old tribes for civil purposes, and created ten new tribes, leaving (he phratries and gentes unaltered, but introducing the local dis- tribution 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 con- nection, as such, with these new tribes, and the members of the came gens might belong to demes. 1 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 gennetes 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 Kleisthenes recognized a certain number of new demes, to which he gave names derived from some im- portant gens resident near the spot. It is thus that we are to explain the large number of the Kleisthenean demes which bear patronymic names. 2 1 Demosth. cont. Neaer. p. 1365. Tittmann (Griechische Stoats vcrfass, 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 evi- dence which he produces is, in my judgment, insufficient. The ideas of the phratry and the tribe are often confounded together ; thus the JEgeidse 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 ehrubs or plants which grew in their neighborhood (Schol. ad Aristophan. Piutus, 586, Mi'pp/voCc, 'Pa//voi>f, etc.). 8 For example, JEthalida, Butadse, Kothukidaa, Dosdalidas, Eiresidac, Epici- kidse, Erceadae, Eupyridae, Echclidae, KeiriiuUe. Kydantidae, Lakiadae, Pam- botadae, Perithcidae, Persidae, Semachidae. Skambonidae, Sybridae, Titakidso, Thyrgonidae. Hybudie, Thyma-tadae, Paeonidae, Philaidoe, Chollidae: all these