So things went on till the reign of Theseus and his famous Synoikismos, the Dwelling-together or Unification. Theseus, Thucydides says, was a man of ideas and of the force of character necessary to carry them out. He substituted the one for the many; he put an end to the little local councils and council-houses and centralized the government of Attica in Athens. Where the government is, thither naturally population will flock. People began to gather into Athens, and for a certain percentage of the population town-life became fashionable. Then, and not till then, did the city become ‘great,’ and that ‘great’ city Theseus handed down to posterity. ‘And from that time down to the present day the Athenians celebrate to the Goddess at the public expense a festival called the Dwelling-together[4].’ One unified city and one goddess, _the goddess_ who needs no name. Their unity and their greatness the Athenians are not likely to forget, but will they remember the time before the union, when Athens was but Kekropia, but one among the many scattered citadel-communities? Will they remember how small was their own beginning, how limited their burgh, how impossible—for that is the immediate point—that it should have contained in its narrow circuit a large town population? Thucydides clearly is afraid they will _not_. There was much to prevent accurate realization. The walls of Themistocles, when Thucydides wrote, enclosed a _polis_ that was not very much smaller than the modern town; the walls of the earlier community, the old small burgh, were in part ruined. It was necessary therefore, if the historian would make clear his point, namely, the smallness of the ancient burgh and its inadequacy for town-life, that he should define its limits. This straightway he proceeds to do. Our whole discussion will centre round his definition and description, and at the outset the passage must be given in full. Immediately after his notice of the festival of the ‘Dwelling-together,’ celebrated to ‘the Goddess,’ Thucydides[5] writes as follows: