Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/179

 CHAP. in. THE CITY FORMED. 173 religion every canton preserver! its ancient worship, but adopted one that Avas common to all. Politically, each preserved its chiefs, its judges, its right of assem- bling; but above all thesolocal governments, there was the central government of the city.' From these precise memorials and traditions, which Athens preserved so religiously, there seem to us to be two truths equally manifest: the one is, that the city was a coirfederation of groups that had been established before it; and the other is, that society developed only ' According to Plutarch and Tliucydides, Theseus destroyed tlic local prytanics, and abolished the magistracies of the burghs. If he attempted this, he certainly did not succeed: for a long while after him we still find the local worships, the assemblies, and the kings of tribes. Boeckh, Corp. Inscrip., 82, 85. De- mosthenes, in Theocrinem. Pollux, VIII. 111. We put aside the legend of Ion, to which several modern historians seem to us to have given too much importance, by presenting it as an indi- cation of a foreign invasion of Attica. This invasion is indicated by no tradition. If Attica had been conquered by these lonians of the Peloponnesus, it is not probable that the Athenians would have so religiously preserved their names of Cecropidae, and Erechtheidae, and that they would have been ashamed of the name of lonians. (Hdts, I. 143.) We can also reply to those who believe in this invasion, and that the nobility of the Eupa- trjds is due to it, that most of the great families of Athens go back to a date much earlier than that given for the arrival of Ion in Attica. The Athenians certainly belong to the Ionic branch of the Hellenic race. Strabo tells us that, in the earliest times, Attica was called Ionia and las. But it is a mistake to make the son of Xuthus, the legendary hero of Euripides, the parent stock of these lonians; they are long anterior to Ion, and their name is perhaps much more ancient than that of Hellenes. It is wrong to make all the Eupatrids descendants of this Ion, and to present this diss of men as conquerors who oppressed a conquered people. There is no ancient testimony to support this opinion.