The revolution of Kleisthenês in 509 B. C. abolished the old
tribes for civil purposes, and created ten new tribes,—leaving
the phratries and gentes unaltered, but introducing the local
distribution according to demes, or cantons, as the foundation of
his new political tribes. A certain number of demes belonged to each
of the ten Kleisthenean tribes (the demes in the same tribes were
not usually contiguous, so that the tribe was not coincident with a
definite circumscription), and the deme, in which every individual
was then registered, continued to be that in which his descendants
were also registered. But the gentes had no connection, as such, with
these new tribes, and the members of the same gens might belong to
different demes.[97] It deserves to be remarked, however, that to a
certain extent, in the old arrangement of Attica, the division into
gentes coincided with the division into demes; that is, it happened
not unfrequently that the gennêtes or members of the same gens lived
in the same canton, so that the name of the gens and the name of the
deme was the same: moreover, it seems that Kleisthenês recognized
a certain number of new demes, to which he gave names derived from
some important gens resident near the spot. It is thus that we are
to explain the large number of the Kleisthenean demes which bear
patronymic names.[98]
[97] Demosth. cont. Neær. p. 1365. Tittmann (Griechische
Staatsverfass, p. 277) thinks that every citizen, after the
Kleisthenean revolution, was of necessity a member of some
phratry, as well as of some deme: but the evidence which he
produces is, in my judgment, insufficient. The ideas of the
phratry and the tribe are often confounded together; thus the
Ægeidæ of Sparta, whom Herodotus (iv, 149) calls a tribe, are
by Aristotle called a phratry of Thebans (ap. Schol. ad Pindar.
Isthm. vii, 18). Compare Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde,
sect. 83, p. 17.
A great many of the demes seem to have derived their names from
the shrubs or plants which grew in their neighborhood (Schol. ad
Aristophan. Plutus, 586, Μυρρινοῦς, Ῥαμνοῦς, etc.).
[98] For example, Æthalidæ, Butadæ, Kothôkidæ, Dædalidæ,
Eiresidæ, Epieikidæ, Erœadæ, Eupyridæ, Echelidæ, Keiriadæ,
Kydantidæ, Lakiadæ, Pambôtadæ, Peritheidæ, Persidæ, Semachidæ,
Skambônidæ, Sybridæ, Titakidæ, Thyrgonidæ, Hybadæ, Thymœtadæ,
Pæonidæ, Philaidæ, Chollidæ: all these names of demes, bearing
the patronymic form, are found in Harpokration and Stephanus Byz.
alone.
We do not know that the Κεραμεῖς ever constituted a γένος, but
the name of the deme Κεραμεῖς is evidently given, upon the same
principle, to a place chiefly occupied by potters. The gens
Κοιρώνιδαι are said to have been called Φιλιεῖς (? Φλυεῖς) and
Περιθοῖδαι as well as Κοιρώνιδαι: the names of gentes and those
of demes seem not always distinguishable.
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