Page:The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.djvu/148

142 the infantry and the strategic leader, who was in command of the entire contingent raised in the tribal territory by conscription. The local tribe furthermore furnished, equipped and fully manned five war vessels. It was designated by the name of the Attic hero who was its guardian deity. It elected fifty councilmen into the council of Athens.

Thus we arrive at the Athenian state, governed by a council of five hundred elected by and representing the ten tribes and subject to the vote of the public meeting, where every citizen could enter and vote. Archons and other officials attended to the different departments of administration and justice.

By this new constitution and by the admission of a large number of aliens, partly freed slaves, partly immigrants, the organs of gentile constitution were displaced in public affairs. They became mere private and religious clubs. But their moral influence, the traditional conceptions and views of the old gentile period, survived for a long time and expired only gradually. This was evident in another state institution.

We have seen that an essential mark of the state consists in a public power of coercion divorced from the mass of the people. Athens possessed at that time only a militia and a navy equipped and manned directly by the people. These afforded protection against external enemies and held the slaves in check, who at that time already made up the large majority of the population. For the citizens, this coercive power at first only existed in the shape of the police, which is as old as the state. The innocent Frenchmen of the 18th century, therefore, had the habit of speaking not of civilized, but of policed nations (nations policies). The Athenians, then, provided for a police in their new state, a vsritable "force" of bowmen on foot