Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/153

 SOLON'S CONSTITUTION MODIFIED. 1M the meetings of the deraots, 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. 1 So great was the local administrative power, how ever, of these demes, that they are described as the substitute, under the Kleisthenean system, for the naukraries under the So- Ionian and ante-Solonian. The trittyes and naukraries, though nominally preserved, and the latter (as some affirm) augmented in number from forty-eight to fifty, appear henceforward as of little public importance. Kleisthenes preserved, but at the same time modified and ex- panded, all the main features of Solon's political constitution ; the public assembly, or ekklesia, the precortsidering senate, com- posed of members from all the tribes, and the habit of annual election, as well as annual responsibility of magistrates, by and to the ekklesia. The full value must now have been felt oi pos- sessing such preexisting institutions to build upon, at a moment of perplexity and dissension. But the Kleisthenean ekklesia ac- quired 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 hun- dred 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. The new constitution of the tribes, as it led to a change in the annual senate, so it transformed, no less directly, the military 1 See Scliomann, Antiq. Jur. P. Grace, ch. xxiv. The oration of Demos- thenes against Eubulides is instructive about these proceedings cf the assembled demots : compare Harpokration, v, Aiiai<;, and Meier, D Bonis Damnatorum, ch. xii. p. 78, etc. p. 88 ; Schol. ad Aristhophan. Ran. 37 ; Harpokration, v, A^wa/^of Now Photius, v. Navicpaaia.
 * Aristot. Fragment, de Ilepubl., ed. Neumann, 'Ai?7?v. TroAtr. Fr. 40,