Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/82

 66 HISTORY OF GREECE. 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 ob- served that this division is completely independent of any prop- erty qualification, rich men as well as poor being compre- hended in the same gens. 1 Moreover, the different gentes were very unequal in dignity, arising chiefly from the religious cere- monies of which each possessed the hereditary and exclusive administration, and which, being in some cases considered as of preeminent sanctity in reference to the whole city, were there- fore nationalized. Thus the Eumolpidne and Kerykes, who supplied the Hierophant, and superintended the mysteries of the Eleusinian Demeter, and the Butadae, who furnished the priestess of Athene Polias as well as the priest of Poseidon Erechtheus in the acropolis, seem to have been reverenced above all the other gentes. 2 "When the name Butadaj was those of Demosthenes : Swyycv^f usually belongs to -ysvof in the narrower sense, ytvvTjTTjs to yevoc in the wider sense ; but Isrcus sometimes uses the former word as an exact equivalent of the latter (Orat. vii, pp. 95, 99, 102, 103,Bckker). Tpiaicuf appears to be noted in Pollux as the equivalent of ysvof, 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 Peiraeeus given in Boeckh (Corp. Insc.No. 101, p. 140,) rather adds to the confusion by revealing the existence of a rpfoucuf constituting the fractional part of a deme, and not connected with a gens : compare Boeckh's Com- ment, ad loc. and his Addenda and Corrigenda, p. 900. Dr. Thirl wall translates ycvof, house; which I cannot but think incon- venient, because that word is the natural equivalent of okof, a very important word in reference to Attic feelings, and quite different from yevog (Hist of Greece, vol. ii, p. 14, ch. 11). It will be found impossible to trans- late it by any known English word which docs not at the same time suggest erroneous ideas : which I trust will be accepted as my excuse for adopting it untranslated into this History. 1 Dcmosthcn. cont. Makartat /. c. 108; Andokid. de Mysteriis, p. 63, Reiske ; Deinarchus and Hellanikus ap. Harpokration. v, 'lepoQuvrrif. In case of crimes of impiety, particularly in offences against the sanctity of the Mysteries, the Eumolpidse had a peculiar tribunal of their own num- ber, before which offenders were brought by the king nrchon. Whether it w&s often used, seems doubtful ; they had also certain unwritten customs of
 * Se ^Eschines de Fals Legat. p. 292, c. 46 ; Lysias cont. Andokid. p.