Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/73

II together in their several townships. Some of them at times even went to war with him, as the Eleusinians under Eumolpus with Erechtheus. But when Theseus came to the throne, he, being a powerful as well as a wise ruler, among other improvements in the administration of the country, dissolved the councils and separate governments, and united all the inhabitants of Attica in the present city, establishing one council and town hall. They continued to live on their own lands, but he compelled them to resort to Athens as their metropolis, and henceforward they were all inscribed on the roll of her citizens. A great city thus arose which was handed down by Theseus to his descendants, and from his day to this the Athenians have regularly celebrated the national festival of the Synoikia, or union of the communes, in honour of the Goddess Athene."

The net historical result of this passage, and of the corresponding one of Plutarch, is that at an early date the village communities of Attica, already perhaps grouped together here and there for mutual aid or worship, and looking to the kings of the Acropolis for aid in serious danger, were induced to give up their local self-government, and the worships with which it was connected, and to own one government only, of which the seat was Athens. They did not migrate thither in a body — that would have been to leave their lands untilled. Many indeed of the noble families may have removed to the new centre, glad of the prospect of concentrating