Thus the province of Attica, containing a triangular tract of land with two sides about fifty miles long, and the third forty, was moulded into a well-united and well-regulated commonwealth, whose chief magistrate was yet hereditary, and retained the title of king. In consequence of so improved a state of things, the Athenians began the first of all the Greeks to acquire more civilised manners. Thucydides remarks that they were the first who dropped the practice, formerly general among the Greeks, of going constantly armed; and who introduced a civil dress in contradistinction to the military. This particularity, if not introduced by Theseus, appears to have been not less early, since it struck Homer, who marks the Athenians by the appellation of long-robed Ionians. If we may credit Plutarch, Theseus coined money; which was certainly rare in Greece two centuries after. The rest of the history of Theseus affords little worthy of notice. It is composed of a number of the wildest adventures, many of them consistent enough with the character of the times, but very little so with what is related of the former part of his life. It seems indeed as if historians had inverted the order of things; giving to his riper years the extravagance of youth, after having attributed to his earliest manhood what the maturest age seldom has equalled. Whether this should be attributed altogether, or in any part, to the fancy which afterward prevailed among philosophical writers to mix mythology with history, will be rather for the dissertator than the historian to inquire. Theseus however, it may be proper to observe, is said to have lost in the end all favour and all authority among the Athenians; and though his institutions remained in vigour, to have died in exile. After him, Menestheus, a person of the royal family, acquired the sovereignty, and commanded the Athenian troops in the Trojan War.[d] According to some historians, Theseus, however explained, deserves no credit for the Athenian union, since at the time this union took place, Theseus was not even a national hero but only a local and minor god worshipped about Marathon. RISE OF POPULAR LIBERTY We may perhaps safely conclude from analogy, that, even while the power of the nobles was most absolute, a popular assembly was not unknown at Athens; and the example of Sparta may suggest a notion of the limitations which might prevent it from endangering the privileges of the ruling body. So long as the latter reserved to itself the office of making, or declaring, of interpreting, and administering the laws, as well as the ordinary functions of government, it might securely entrust many subjects to the decision of the popular voice. Its first contests were waged, not with the people, but with the kings.