Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/62

 44 HISTORY OF GREECK. landed domains l and the various sacerdotal functions which had belonged to iris predecessors. Respecting the government, as newly framed, however, Herod- otus unfortunately gives us hardly any particulars. DemOnax classified the inhabitants of Kyrene into three tribes ; composed of: 1. Theneans with their Libyan Perioeki ; 2. Greeks who had come from Peloponnesus and Krete; 3. Such Greeks a-; had come from all other islands in the jEgean. It appears, too, that a senate was constituted, taken doubtless from these three tribes, and we may presume, in equal proportion. It seems probable that there had been before no constitutional classifica- tion, nor political privilege, except what was vested in the The- rseans, that these latter, the descendants of the original colo- nists were the only persons hitherto known to the constitution, and that the remaining Greeks, though free landed proprietors and hoplites, were not permitted to act as an integral part of the body politic, nor distributed in tribes at all.- The whole powers Ilerodot. iv. 161. T (iaaiUi Burr^j Tfjiivsa ^s?.uv KOI ipuavvaf, r<i TUVTO TO. Trporepov d^ov oi /?acrt^.eZf if piaov rcj df/fit,) Z&TJKE. I construe the word re^ivta as meaning all the domains, doubtless large, which had belonged to the Battiad princes; contrary to Thrige (Historia Cyre'ne's, ch. 38, p. 150), who restricts the expression to revenues derived from sacred property. The reference of Wcsseling to Ilesych. Burroti jD.tiiov is of no avail for illustrating this passage. The supposition of O. Miiller, that the preceding king had made himself despotic by means of Egyptian soldiers, appears to me neither probable in itself, nor admissible upon the simple authority of Plutarch's romantic story, when we take into consideration the silence of Herodotus. Nor is Miiller correct in affirming that Demonax " restored the supremacy of the community:" that legislator superseded the old kingly political privileges, and framed a new constitution (see 0. Miiller, History of Dorians, b. iii, ch. 9. s. 13.) 148), speak of Demonax as having abolished the old tribes and created new ones. I do not conceive the change in this manner. Demonax did not abolish any tribes, but distributed for the first time the inhabitants into tribes. It is possible indeed that, before his time, the Therreans of Kyrenfi may have been divided among themselves into distinct tribes; but th<? other inhabitant?, having emigrated from a great number of different places, had never before been thrown into tribes at all. Snne forma]
 * Both O. Miiller (Dor. b. iii, 4, 5), and Thrige (Hist. Cyren. c. 38, p.