Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/176

 170 THE CITY. BOOK IH. religious ceremony, which takes place six days after his birth. Some years later he enters the phratry by a new ceremony, which we have already described. Finally, at the age of sixteen or eighteen, he is pre- sented for admission into the city. On that day, in the presence of an altar, and before the smoking flesh of a victim, he pronounces an oath, by which he binds himself, among other things, always to respect the re- ligion of the city. From that day he is initiated into the public worship, and becomes a citizen.* If we observe this young Athenian rising, step by step, from worship to worship, we have a sjmbol of the degrees through which human association has passed. The course which this young man is constrained to follow, is that which society first followed. An example will make this truth clearer. There have remained to us in the antiquities of Athens traditions and traces enough to enable us to see quite clearly how the Athenian city was formed. At first, says Plu- tarch, Attica was divided by families.* Some of these families of the primitive period, like the Eumolpidae, the Cecropidae, the Gephyraei, the Phytalidae, and the Lakiadae, were perpetuated to the following ages. At that time the city did not exist; but every family, surrounded by its yoimger branches and its clients, occupied a canton, and lived there in absolute inde- pendence. Each had its own religion ; the EumolpidaB, fixed at Eleusis, adored Demeter; the Cecropidae, who inhabited the rocks where Athens was afterwai-ds built, had Poseidon and Athene for protecting divinities. 7G. Schol.,tnZ?c>nosiA., p. 438. Pollux, VIII. 105. Stobaeus, De Repuh. » Kara yivt], Plutarch, Theseus, 24, 13.
 * Demosthenes, in Euhul. Isaeus, VII. IX. Lycurgus, I.