The above legal provision, however, does not appear to have sufficed, and there sometimes occurred cases of distress which it could not reach. Many, too, would submit to great privation rather than have recourse to public aid. Such persons, where numbers were in similar circumstances, usually united and formed, what may very properly be denominated a Benefit Club (ἔρανος[296]), to which they contributed when in their power, that, should misfortune overtake them, they might still be sure of support. This description, however, of Eranos constituted only one branch of the numerous Clubs, Companies, Associations, Trades-unions, &c., which, like the Clubs of the Civil Wars[297] and Associations of a still later date, occasionally assumed a political character and impeded the movements of the machinery of the state.[298] These societies were instituted with various objects. In the first place they were established to defray by subscription the expense of certain sacrifices, offered up in behalf of their members who were called Eranistæ and Thiasotæ. But under cover of this pretext combinations of an evil tendency were sometimes formed,—among the aristocracy, for example, who established the tyranny of the Four Hundred,—and these obnoxious clubs, varying in character with the period, espoused the cause of freedom in Roman times, and were of course watched jealously by the conquerors.[299] ----- Footnote 296: Sch. Aristoph. Acharn. 1171. Poll. iii. 129. vi. 7. viii. 144. 157. Footnote 297: See Locke, Memoirs of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, Works, folio. vol. iii. Footnote 298: Van Holst, de Eranis. c. ii. p. 35. Footnote 299: Casaub. ad Theoph. Charact. p. 284. ----- With respect to those associations which bore a legal character, they were by the laws of Solon permitted to enact whatever rules and regulations they judged proper for their own government and advantage, provided no public ordinance prevented.[300] Sometimes the citizens of a whole Demos, or borough, formed themselves into a club, or a ship’s crew,[301] or an eating society, or persons having a right to the same burial-ground, or the partners in a mercantile expedition. Thus we find three several motives,—religion, gain, and pleasure,—impelling men into unions of this kind, all recognised by law. The curious and intricate internal structure of Athenian society lent itself readily to the formation of such clubs; the whole population having originally been divided into four tribes, each tribe into three phratriæ,[302] each phratria into thirty clans (γενη), each clan containing thirty houses, among whom the honours of the priesthood were distributed by lot.[303] ----- Footnote 300: Gaius. lib. iv. ad leg. xii. Tabul. in f. 4. d. Petit, Legg. Att. v. 7. 427. Potter, i. 200. Footnote 301: