Page:The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.djvu/137

131 CHAPTER V.

ORIGIN OF THE ATTIC STATE.

How the state gradually developed by partly transforming the organs of the gentile constitution, partly replacing them by new organs and finally installing real state authorities; how the place of the nation in arms defending itself through its gentes, phratries and tribes, was taken by an armed public power of coercion in the hands of these authorities and available against the mass of the people; nowhere can we observe the first act of this drama so well as In ancient Athens. The essential stages of the various transformations are outlined by Morgan, but the analysis of the economic causes producing them is largely added by myself.

In the heroic period, the four tribes of the Athenians were still installed in separate parts of Attica. Even the twelve phratries composing them seem to have had separate seats in the twelve different towns of Cecrops. The constitution was in harmony with the period: a public meeting (agorâ), a council (bûlê) and a basileus.

As far back as we can trace written history we find the land divided up and in the possession of private individuals. For during the last period of the higher stage of barbarism the production of commodities and the resulting trade had well advanced. Grain, wine and oil were staple articles. The sea trade on the Aegean Sea drifted more and more out of the hands of the Phoenicians into those of the Athenians. By the purchase and sale of land, by continued division of labor between agriculture and industry, trade