Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/146

 128 HISTORY OF GREECE. four Ionic tribes, each of which was an aggregate of so man* close corporations or quasi-farailies, the gentes and the phra- tries. None of the residents in Attica, therefore, except those included in some gens or phratry, had any part in the political franchise. Such non-privileged residents were probably at all times numerous, and became more and more so by means ot li-esh settlers: moreover, they tended most to multiply in Athens and Peirseus, where emigrants would commonly establish them- selves. Kleisthenes broke down the existing wall of privilege. and imparted the political franchise to the excluded mass. But this could not be done by enrolling them in new gentes or phra- tries, created in addition to the old ; for the gentile tie was found- ed upon old faith and feeling, which, in the existing state of the Greek mind, could not be suddenly conjured up as a bond ot union for comparative strangers : it could only be done by dis- connecting the franchise altogether from the Ionic tribes as well as from the gentes which constituted them, and by redistributing the population into new tribes with a character and purpose ex- clusively political. Accordingly, Kleisthenes abolished the four Ionic tribes, and created in their place ten new tribes founded upon a different principle, independent of the gentes and phra- tries. Each of his new tribes comprised a certain number of denies or cantons, with the enrolled proprietors and residents in each of them. The demes taken altogether included the entire surface of Attica, so that the Kleisthenean constitution admitted to the political franchise all the free native Athenians ; and not merely these, but also many Metics, and even some of the supe- rior order of slaves. 1 Putting out of sight the general body of 1 Aristot. Folit. iii, 1, 10, vi, 2, 11. i-Evovf Kal dovhuvf [leTo'tKovf. Several able critics, and Dr. Thirlwall among the number, consider this passage as affording no sense, and assume some conjectural emendation to be indispensable ; though there is no particular emendation which suggests itself as preeminently plausible. Under these circumstances, I rather pre- fer to make the best of the words as they stand ; which, though unusual seem to me not absolutely inadmissible. The expression fevof //eroi/coc (which is a perfectly good one, as we find is Aristoph. Equit. 347, el~ov SiKidiov etnas ev Kara gtvov (J.ETOIKOV) may be considered as the correlative to 6oi>hovf [tETniKovr, the last word being construed both with 6ov?>.ovf and with fivovf. I apprehend that there always must have been in Attica a