factions; but, being intrusted with a body cf
troops, made himself master of both. This
event took place two generations before the
Persian war; but the usurpation appears to
have been transitory, and not to have left any
durable traces, while the factions of Larissa
continue to appear from time to time through-
out the whole course of Grecian history.
We must here conclude this survey; for the
western states of Greece are, during this peri-

generally able to draw the government of the whole nation into their hands. Thus Larissa was subject to the great house of the Aleuada, who were considered as descendants of the ancient Aleuas; Crannon and Pharsalus to the Scopada and the Creondæ, who were branches of the same stock. The vast estates of these nobles were cultivated, and their countless flocks and herds fed, by their serfs, the Penests, who at their call were ready to follow them into the field on foot or on horseback. They main-od, shrouded in so complete obscurity, that we tained a princely state, drew poets and artists to their courts, and shone in the public games of Greece by their wealth and liberality. We are not informed whether there were any institutions which provided for the union of the four districts, and afforded regular opportunities for consultation on their common interests. But, as often as an occasion appeared to require it, the great families were able to bring about the election of a chief magistrate, always, of course, taken from their own body, whose proper title was that of tagus, but who is sometimes called a king. We know little of the nature of his authority, except that it was probably rather military than civil; nor of its constitutional extent, which, perhaps, was never precisely ascertained, and depended on the personal character and the circumstances of the individual.

cannot pretend to give any account of their condition. With respect to the Etolians, indeed, it is uncertain how far they are entitled to the name of Greeks. The Acarnanians, as soon as they begin to take a part in the affairs of Greece, distinguish themselves as a finer and more civilized people, and it is probable that the Corinthian colonies on the Ambracian Gulf may have exerted a beneficial influence on their social progress.

CHAPTER XI.

CIVIL HISTORY OF ATTICA TO THE EXPULSION OF
THE PISISTRATIDS.

We have already taken a survey of the legends relating to the origin of the people of Attica, and to the events of their history down to the Ionian migration. We must now look back to the same period, in order to trace the progress of their political institutions, from the earliest times to the establishment of that form of government under which the Athenians were living when they first came into conflict with the power of Persia.

mitted. We read that the territory of Attica was originally divided into a number of little states; and tradition has preserved the names of some petty chiefs who are said to have ruled in these districts with the title of king. These communities were independent of each other and of Athens in their internal government, and sometimes even made war on their neighbours. On the other hand, we are informed that attempts were made at a very early period to unite the forces of the whole nation for the purpose of mutual defence. It was Cecrops, according to an Attic antiquarian, who first es

The population of Thessaly, besides the Penests, whose condition was nearly that of the Laconian Helots, included a large class of free subjects, in the districts not immediately occupied by the Thessalian invaders, who paid a certain tribute for their lands, but, though not admitted to the rights of citizens, preserved their personal liberty unmolested. But above this class stood a third, of the common Thessalians, who, though they could not boast, like Among the few facts which we are able to the Aleuadæ and the Scopada, of heroic de-collect with regard to the state of Attica in the scent, and had therefore received a much small- earliest times, there are two which seem to be er portion of the conquered land, still, as the so well attested, or so clearly deduced from aupartners of their conquest, might think them-thentic accounts, that they may be safely adselves entitled to some share in the administration of public affairs. Contests seem early to have arisen between this commonalty and the ruling families, and at Larissa the aristocracy of the Aleuada was tempered by some institutions of a popular tendency. We do not know, indeed, to what period Aristotle refers when he speaks of certain magistrates at Larissa who bore the title of guardians of the freemen,‡ and exercised a superintendence over the admission of citizens, but were themselves elected by the whole body of the people, out of the privileged order, and hence were led to pay their court to the multitude in a manner which proved dan-tablished a confederacy among the inhabitants gerous to the interests of the oligarchy. It seems not improbable that the election of a tagus, like that of a dictator at Rome, was sometimes used as an expedient for keeping the commonalty under. But the power of the oligarchs was also shaken by intestine feuds; and, under the government of the Aleuads, such was the state of parties at Larissa, that, by common agreement, the city was committed to the care of an officer, who was chosen, perhaps, from the commonalty, to mediate between the opposite *Theocr., xvi., 34, f. Buttmann on the Aleuada Mythol., 11, xxii. + Dem., De Contr., p. 173. moλeropoλakes, Pol., v., 6. It is not clear whether their office differed from that of the improvpyoi, mentioned Pol., iii., 1.

of Attica, to repel the inroads of the Carian pirates, and of the Boeotians, who invaded it on

Ar., Pol., v., 6. The context seems to require this interpretation, since the distrust of the oligarchs towards one another is here manifestly contrasted with their distrust of the commonalty just before mentioned. Yet Kortoem (Hellenische Staatsverfassungen, p. 79) supposes that Aristotle is speaking of a struggle between the oligarchical and democratical parties. + Buttm., p. 252, 279.

+ Colanus at Myrrhinus (Paus., 1. 31, 5). Porphyrion at Athmonia (Paus., 1. 14,7). Crocon, whose palace had stood near Rheiti (Paus., 1. 38, 1). Compare Plut., Thes, 32. Thucydides, ii., 15. But it is not clear that there is any reference to this state of things in the tradition that Crunaus, when dethroned by Amphictyon, fled to the dome of Lamptrae, and was buried there (Paus., 1. 31, 3); which Platner (Beitraege, p. 25) considers as another example. ◊ Philochorus in Strabo, ix., p. 397.

CIVIL HISTORY OF ATTICA.

the land side. The same author, indeed, speaks without much violence, to make the three aboveas if Cecrops, with this view, had founded twelve mentioned divisions tally with each other.* But cities, or had divided the country into twelve we have so little assurance that they are anydistricts, which were members of this confed- thing more than arbitrary combinations, inventeracy and this it was necessary to suppose, ed by writers who transferred the form of instiif Cecrops was believed to be sovereign of At- tutions which existed in the historical period to tica. But, though we reject this opinion, we the mythical ages, that the attempt is scarcely need not, on this account, question the existence worth making. of the league itself. The number (one which predominates in the Ionian institutions) was made up, according to Philochorus, of the following names: Cecropia, Tetrapolis, Epacria, Decelea, Eleusis, Aphidna, Thoricus, Brauron, Cytherus, Sphettus, Cephisia, Phalerus. The first of these names probably represents the town which afterward became the capital, but which may not have been more ancient than several of the others in this list, nor for a long time more powerful. Among the rest, the Tetrapolis (which contained the four villages Enoe, Marathon, Probalinthus, Tricorythus) and Sphettus were, according to other traditions, founded long after the time of Cecrops. It seems to be a similar event, if it is not the same, that is implied in the name of the Attic king Amphictyon. This may be probably interpreted to signify the foundation of an Amphictyonic congress, such as appears to have subsisted in early times in almost every part of Greece. But the influence attributed to Cecrops, and the mention of Amphictyon among the kings of Athens, indicate that Athens was acknowledged as the head of this confederacy. The periodical meetings of its council were probably held in Cecropia, and the religious rites, which were invariably connected with such associations, celebrated in the temple of the Athenian goddess.

It is not so clear what kind of foundation ought to be attributed to other accounts, in which the whole country, or people, is said to have been divided into four tribes, which changed their names, if not their constitution, under several successive kings. Thus, in the reign of Cecrops, these tribes received the names Cecropis, Autocthon, Actaea, and Paralia. Under Cranaus, either a new distribution was made, or the old one was designated by the new names Cranais, Atthis, Mesogaa, Diacris. Under Erichthonius, again, each tribe took its name from a god; they were then called Dias, Athenias, Posidonias, Hephaestias. It must be observed, that as the last series of names is entirely derived from the religion of the country, so in the two preceding some of the names relate to the natural features of the land (Actæa, Paralia, Mesogæa, Diacris, and perhaps Atthis), others to the origin or political relations of its inhabitants (Cecropis, Autocthon, Cranais). We may readily believe that the inhabitants of Attica were very early distinguished from one another by various names, according to the different stocks from which they sprang; which may, perhaps, be indicated by the names of some of their mythical kings, as Cranaus and Cecrops; or according to the nature of the regions which they occupied, in the plains, or the highlands, or the coast; or, according to the habits and pursuits belonging to these various situations; or, finally, according to the deities who were exclusively or pre-eminently objects of worship among them. And it would not be difficult,

sented by the reigns of Cecrops and Cranaus,
Attica comprehended four main divisions, de-
Even if we believe that, in the period repre-
scribed by any of the above-mentioned names,
it will not follow that the term tribe is correctly
applied to them in a sense implying the exist-
ence of a political unity pervading the whole
nation. They may still have been connected
by no bond but the temporary fear of a common
enemy. The fourfold distribution of the coun-
try is the foundation of another tradition, which
distinctly asserts the absolute independence of
the several parts. The four sons of Pandion
share his dominions among them, and rule their
respective portions with supreme authority.
But all these divisions were finally superseded
by one much more celebrated and lasting, which
is said to have been instituted by Ion, the pro-
genitor of the Ionian race, and to have derived
its names from his four sons. This last feature
in the tradition, indeed, though it is adopted
with perfect confidence by Herodotus, excited
the suspicion of many even among the ancients,
who perceived that the names of the tribes
founded by Ion were all, or mostly, descriptive
of certain occupations. They were the Tele-
ontes (or, as it is also found written, Geleontes
or Gedeontes), the Hopletes, the Ægicores, and
the Argades. With regard to the second and
the former denotes a class of warriors; and
there seems to be as little room to doubt that
third of these names, there is no question that
the latter was once applied to the race which
tended its flocks on the Attic hills. And this is
ground sufficient for inferring that the two oth-
er names are similarly significant; but their
precise meaning is still the subject of a contro-
versy which is not likely to be ever decided,
because each of the conflicting opinions may be
easily connected with a plausible theory. With
the assistance, however, of other descriptions
left by the ancients of these divisions, we per-
ceive that the last name, which will signify
labourers in general, must have been applied
in this case either to a class of husbandmen,
or to one employed in other laborious occupa-
tions. Our choice between these meanings
must depend on that which is to be assigned to
the first name, which is, unfortunately, both
variously written, and, according to each way
of writing it, ambiguous in sense; and the dif-

first two divisions by Dr. Arnold (Thucyd, i., p. 656), and
for the third by Platner in a little dissertation, De Gentibus
The reader may see how this has been done for the
Atticis.

p. 140), that "the notion that the four Ionic tribes were
+ With the highest respect for Mr. Malden's judgment,
castes, deriving their names from their employments, is
we cannot be satisfied with his assertion (History of Rome,
founded on nothing but bad etymologies." He should at
and Alytképes. Niebuhr's objection, from the order in
which the names occur, is weighty, but not conclusive.
least have proposed some better etymology for "ORANTES
on a pont of etymology, Buttmann's authority is at least
picion of having fallen into any very palpable error. See
his Mythologus, ii., p. 318.
sufficient to shelter those who agree with him from the sus

ference amounts to nothing less than the whole interval between the summit and the base of the social scale. For, according to one opinion, the Teleontes or Geleontes were a sacerdotal caste; according to another, they were peasants, who tilled the land of their lords, and paid a tribute or a rent for the use of it.

maintain their independence against the warrior tribe, notwithstanding the advantages it may have possessed in its weapons, or its armour, or its closer and more orderly array.

We have spoken of the priestly tribe as a caste; and if there was such a tribe, it can scarcely be considered in any other light. This question is subordinate to another as to Hence we are naturally led to apply the same the origin and nature of these divisions; for it term to the other three: and undoubtedly there is doubtful in what sense they are to be called may have been a period during which the occutribes. The mythical story describes Ion as pations from which they derived their names their founder, just as Romulus is said to have continued hereditary in the same families. But instituted the distinction between the patricians we have no ground for believing that this sepand the plebeians at Rome. This supposition aration was ever enforced by any religious saneneeds not now be refuted; but we still have to tion, or was anything more than the natural reinquire whether these four tribes were, from sult of situation and circumstances. We have the beginning, comprehended under a higher no reason to imagine that the four tribes connational unity, or whether they remained insu- stituted a hierarchy, after the manner of the Inlated and independent of each other down to dian or Egyptian; on the contrary, it is probathe period represented by the reign of Theseus. ble that, in proportion as they became more One of the four names-that of the pastoral closely united in one body, the primitive distribe--implies a geographical separation, and it tinctions to which they owed their names were must have been contrasted in the same sense gradually obliterated by mutual intercourse. to one of the rest, that which describes the till- The difficulty of conceiving how this may have ers of the plain. This leads us to believe that been effected with regard to the priests is rather the other two were similarly separated from an objection to the hypothesis that they once each other and the rest, though a tribe of war-formed a caste, than a ground for doubting that riors or priests was not necessarily connected they had ceased to be one before they became with any peculiar habitation. If, however, the a part of the Attic nation. For if they once ocwarrior tribe was chiefly composed of foreign cupied such a station by the side of the warrior conquerors, it may easily be imagined that it tribe, it could only have been through some conmay have occupied a separate district, and that vulsion, of which no trace is left in history, it was thus locally distinguished from the rest. that they lost their sacred character, with its But here we find ourselves perplexed by the consequent privileges and influence. Such a ambiguity of the name Geleontes, which in He- revolution may undoubtedly have occurred; but rodotus stands first, and by this position seems if so, it must have preceded that settlement of to confirm the opinion that it denoted a priestly the Attic population which is designated in the easte. In this case, no reason can be assigned legend by the arrival and the institutions of Ion; for limiting it to any situation distinct from the for from this epoch we must date the comothers. Still, it is not impossible that it may mencement of a heroic age in Attica, during have occupied a territory of its own; and it is which the state of society became more and not an improbable conjecture that this territory more similar to that described in the Homeric was the hallowed land of Eleusis. On this poems, when a priestly caste was utterly unsupposition, the four tribes would correspond known in Greece, or, at the utmost, all that reto a geographical division of Attica, which may mained of such a one were a few scattered fragbe compared with that which is attributed to ments-sacred functions appropriated to certain the sons of Pandion, and which may also be families-affording doubtful traces of a long easily adjusted to that which we find at a much past existence. later period determining the state of political The four tribes of Ion, then, were perhaps parties in Attica-the threefold division of the originally not members of one body, but displain, the highlands, and the coast. On the tinct communities, long kept apart by differenother hand, if the tribe which has been taken ces of descent, of situation, of pursuits, and of for a priestly caste was really composed of a religion, yet still connected by neighbourhood, dependant peasantry, they cannot so well have by affinities, closer or looser, of blood and lanbeen locally distinguished from the warriors, guage, and by the occasional need of mutual asfor these must then have been the lords whose sistance. Thus was their gradual interfusion lands they tilled; as, on the other supposition, prepared and promoted, while the superiority both the priests and the warriors must be con- of the race which occupied Athens, as it beceived to have employed the services of a sim-came more and more felt, disposed all to look ilar class of subjects in cultivating their pos- to their city as the natural centre of political sessions; and it would, therefore, be necessary to suppose either that the warriors were confined to the town and a district in its immediate vicinity, while their serfs inhabited the country, or that the Geleontes were a tribe of free husbandmen, who occupied a different part of the Attic plains. But, in any case, we perceive that no political union is implied by the four tribes of Ion. The Eleusinian priesthood, indeed, might only be protected by its sanctity; but the inhabitants of the mountains and of the maritime valleys might have been able long to

union. The time at length arrived when the effect of all these causes became visible in the important change which is commonly described as the work of Theseus, by which the national unity was consolidated, and many of the germs were fixed out of which the institutions to which Athens owed her greatness finally unfolded themselves.

Theseus is said to have collected the inhabitants of Attica in one city, and thus forever to have put an end to the discord and hostilities which had till then prevented them from con

is entirely groundless, thougn the former is more simply and evidently true. Theseus is said to have accomplished his purpose partly by force, partly by persuasion. With the lower classes, we read, he found no difficulty, but the powerful men were only induced to comply with his proposals by his promise that all should be admitted to an equal share in the government, and that he would resign all his royal prerogatives except those of commanding in war and of watching over the laws. The promise he fulfilled in his regulation of the state, when he laid aside his kingly majesty, and invited all the citizens to equal rights. But, on the other hand, to guard against democratical confusion, he inate distribution of power. He divided the people into three classes-nobles, husbandmen, artisans ;* and to the first of these he reserved all the offices of the state, with the privilege of ordering the affairs of religion, and of interpreting the laws, human and divine. This same division, however, is also represented to have been made in each of the four tribes, so that each included a share of each class. This can only be conceived possible on the supposition that the distinctions which originally separated the tribes had become merely nominal, and that, although the occupations from which two of them at least derived their names were always held ignoble, there were families among them no less proud of their antiquity than the most illustrious of the warriors or the priests. Still we need not imagine that the numbers of the noble class were equal in each of the tribes. The nobles of the tribe to which Athens itself belonged may have formed the main body, and may, on that account, have been the less unwilling to extend and strengthen their power on

sidering themselves as one people. The sense in which this account is to be understood is probably not that any considerable migration immediately took place out of other districts to Athens, but only that Athens now became the seat of government for the whole country; that all the other Attic towns sank from the rank of sovereign independent states to that of subjects; and that the administration of their affairs, with the dispensation of justice, was transferred from them to the capital.* The courts and councils in which the functions of government had hitherto been exercised throughout the rest of Attica were abolished, or concentrated in those of the sovereign city. This union was cemented by religion, perhaps by the mutual recog-stituted a gradation of ranks and a proportionnition of deities, which had hitherto been honoured only with a local and peculiar worship, and certainly by public festivals, in which the whole people assembled to pay their homage to the tutelary goddess of Athens, and to celebrate the memory of their incorporation. That this event was attended with a great enlargement of the city itself might be readily presumed, even if it was not expressly related. Thucydides fixes on this as the epoch when the lower city was added to the ancient one, which had covered little more than the rock which was afterward the citadel, though it still retained the name of the city. And hence there may seem to have been some foundation for Plutarch's statement that Theseus called the city Athens, if this name properly signified the whole enclosure of the Old and the New Town. But though, after this revolution, new temples and other buildings, public and private, must have continued to rise at the foot of the Cecropian rock, it is not necessary to suppose that any considerable addition was immediately made to the population of Athens. It is probable that the fam-condition of admitting a few additional partners. lies who were induced by the new order of things to change their abode were chiefly those of the highest rank, whose members had constituted the ruling class in their respective states, and were admitted to a similar station under the new Constitution.

This leads us to consider the ambiguous light in which Theseus is represented by the ancients, on the one hand as the founder of a government which was for many centuries after him rigidly aristocratical, and on the other hand as the parent of the Athenian democracy. If we make due allowance for the exaggerations of poets or rhetoricians, who adorn him with the latter of these titles in order to exalt the antiquity of the popular institutions of later times, we shall, perhaps, find that neither description

The privileges which Theseus is said to have conferred on his nobles were undoubtedly the same which they had enjoyed, in narrower spheres, before the union. His institutions were aristocratical, because none were then known of any other kind. The effect of the union would even be, in the first instance, to increase the influence of the noble class by concentrating it in one spot; and hence it proved too powerful both for the king and the people. In this sense, we may say, with Plutarch, that Theseus gained the assent of the great men to his plan by surrendering his royal prerogatives, which they shared equally among them. The king was no more than the first of the nobles: the four kings of the tribes,† all chosen from the privileged class, were his constant assessors, and rather as colleagues than as counsellors. The principal difference between them and him appears to have consisted in the duration of their office, which was probably never long enough to leave them independent of the body from which they were taken, and to which they returned.

Dr. Arnold (Appendix iii. to Thucydides, i., p. 662) seems to think that residence at Athens was the condition on which the nobles were admitted to a share in the government; and that those parts of the population of Attica which still remained in their original habitations were not included in the tribes at all. We conceive both these points to be very doubtful, and the second extremely improbable. Indeed, the former proposition is a little qualified in a subsequent page (664), where it is said the Eupatridæ seem mostly to have resided at Athens; and as it is there admit-might, without impropriety, be regarded as the

ted that some inhabitants of the country were enrolled in the tribes, it does not appear in Dr. Arnold's statement on what principle the rest were excluded.

† The Euroita (Thue.. ii, 15, and Steph. Byz., voc. Abral, Panathenes. Festival of Aphrodite Pandemus (Pausan, L. 22, 3). To the same head may perhaps be re ferred the introduction of the worship of Dionysus, which is said to have taken place under Amphictyon.

But there was also a sense in which Theseus

founder of the Athenian democracy, both with respect to the tendency and remote consequences, and to the immediate effect of the institutions ascribed to him. The incorporation of