Poseidon,(779) and probably having the same duties and privileges as the amphipolus, hierapolus, and hierothytes in the Sicilian states. The antiquity of this office is evident from its occurrence in the colonies of Megara, Byzantium and Chalcedon. In the former a hieromnamon is mentioned in a decree quoted by Demosthenes,(780) who gives his name to the year; in the latter, a decree now extant(781) mentions first a king, then a hieromnamon, then a prophet, together with three nomophylaces, all administering the public affairs (αἰσυμνῶντες) for the appointed term of a month. The two first we have already seen united in the very same manner at Megara; the third refers to the worship of Apollo, of the transfer of which from the mother-state to Chalcedon we have already spoken, and pointed out an oracle of Apollo which was delivered there;(782) the nomophylaces also occur at Sparta. The hieromnamon was probably priest also of Poseidon in the colonies, the worship of which god, deriving its origin from the Isthmus of Corinth, was at least more prevalent than any other.(783) 11. The constitution of BYZANTIUM was at first royal,(784) afterwards aristocratical,(785) and the oligarchy, which soon succeeded, was, in 390 B.C., changed by Thrasybulus the Athenian into democracy.(786) Equal privileges were at the same time probably granted to the new citizens, who, on account of their demands, had been driven from the city by the ancient colonists.(787) After this, the democracy appears to have continued for a long time;(788) but on account of the duration of this form of government, and the habit of passing their time in the market-place and the harbour, which the people had contracted from the situation of the town, a great dissoluteness of manners existed; and this was also transferred to the neighbouring city of Chalcedon, which had adopted the Byzantine democracy, and, together with its ancient constitution, had lost the temperance and regularity for which it had been distinguished. In these times the Byzantians were frequently in great financial difficulties, from which they often endeavoured to extricate themselves by violent measures.(789) In the document quoted by Demosthenes, the senate (βωλὰ) transfers a decree in its first stage, called ῥήτρα,(790) to an individual, in order to bring it before the people in the assembly (ἁλία), nearly in the same manner as was customary at Athens; the existing constitution is called in this document ἁ πάτριος πολιτεία. The office of archon was perhaps introduced together with the democracy;(791) the civil authority of the generals existed in many states in later times. The hundreds (ἑκατοστῦς) occur apparently as a subdivision of the tribes,(792) and therefore as a species of phratriæ;(793) they were probably common to all the colonies of Megara, since we find them in Heraclea on the Pontus. In this city we know to a certainty that the hundreds were divisions of the tribes, of which there were three;(794) the