Page:On two Greek inscriptions, from Kamiros and Ialysos, in Rhodes, respectively (1878).djvu/6

4 marks this entry with an asterisk, because it is out of its alphabetical order, but, since the discovery of this inscription, there is no ground for stigmatizing this entry. The gloss is somewhat obscure. If the words had been 🇬🇷, we might have interpreted them "the setting apart of ancestral rites or of sacred precincts inherited from ancestors," but I cannot find that 🇬🇷 is ever used in that sense, though in the Septuagint it bears the sense of "festival," "sacrifice." The second part of the gloss, 🇬🇷 suggests that the 🇬🇷 was a deme divided into allotments.

So far as we can gather from this inscription, the 🇬🇷 had some analogy with the Attic demes, the introduction of which is attributed to Kleisthenes, and which were districts or parishes which had a common temple or place of assembly within their territory, and in which all the citizens resident in the district were registered. These local demes in Attica must be distinguished from the more ancient gentes or groups of families united by a common band of kinsmanship and common rites, though in some instances these gentes may have been absorbed into demes.

In an unedited inscription from Kamiros, we have a long list of 🇬🇷 ranged under larger classes, perhaps, 🇬🇷 or 🇬🇷, and these 🇬🇷 may have corresponded at Kamiros with the Attic 🇬🇷, while the 🇬🇷 may have been local divisions, introduced like the demi of Kleisthenes, in the course of some political revolution. But I am not in a condition yet to determine the connection between the Kamirean 🇬🇷 and 🇬🇷.

The 🇬🇷 who is to be chosen by the 🇬🇷,