Saturday 5 September 2015

The Ten Tribes of Athens

In 508 bc Cleisthenes re-invented the political structure of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica. He completely restructured the Athenian political electorate. Up till then there had only been four tribes, which the citizens of Athens had belonged to and owed their loyalty to by reason of their clan, region and religion. Every citizen of Athens was a member of one of these four tribes, and up until 508 bc the noble families exerted a huge influence upon them preventing the development and growth of any real kind of democracy.

Cleisthenes replaced the existing tribal structure by breaking up the traditional and conservative power of the aristocratic families by making the village (the demos or deme) as the unit of electoral democracy. Attica, the territory directly controlled by the Athens, was divided by Cleisthenes into three areas - the city of Athens itself, the coastal district of Attica and the rural inland region. He then replaced Attica's four historical tribes with ten  completely new ones. Each of the new tribes (phylae) was to comprise of people, that is demes, one from the city, one from the coast of Attica, and one from the rural inland region. This was known as the trittys system. Membership of all the democratically elected bodies, including the council and all civic and military duties including putting on of theatrical perfomances were then to be shared equally amongst the ten tribes or phyla, that is, for example, each tribe was responsible for the training and equipping of a hoplite regiment as well as a cavalry unit and the appointment of a general to lead their tribe's troops for the defence of Athens; and at the time of the Dionysiac festivals each tribe had to fund and train two choruses of dithyrambic dancers, one of young boys and one of men as well as hire a poet and aulos player to lead them. The new tribes were not all equal:  the divisions were not based on size of population, nor on the wealth of the citizens that comprised them.

Over time however the topological logic behind this reorganization broke down, as the rule for membership of a given tribe was hereditary rather than based of its regional location as in the initial setup. Nonetheless the ten new tribes were very soon accepted by all the people of Athens and the system soon become part of everyday life with people giving their loyalty to their newly assigned tribe : Cleisthenes reform was material in the very success of Athenian democracy during the 5th century bc.


References

Deme - Wikipedia


Cleisthenes - Wikipedia

 

History of Athens - Wikipedia

 

Metic - Wikipedia  

 

Trittys - Wikipedia

 

Phyle - Wikipedia


Archive Link

 

Dennis C. Mueller (1996). Constitutional Democracy. Ancient Greece: Oxford University Press, USA. pp. 44–. ISBN 978-0-19-534939-9.

The Tribes and Eponymous Heroes of the Ancient Athenians

www.stoa.org/athens/essays/tribes.html

Birth of Democracy: The Ten New Tribes - Agathe.gr
www.agathe.gr/democracy/the_ten_new_tribes.html


Cleisthenes' Creation of the Ten Tribes of Athens

 

John S. Traill (1975). The political Organization of Attica. A study of the Demes, Trittyes, and Phylai, and their representation in the Athenian Council. Hesperia Supplement XIV: ASCSA. ISBN 978-0-87661-514-0.

DEME THEATERS IN ATTICA AND THE TRITTYS SYSTEM Jessica Paga
Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens
Vol. 79, No. 3 (July-September 2010), pp. 351-384
Published by: The American School of Classical Studies at Athens
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40981054


Kleisthenes and the Creation of the Ten Phylai
C. W. J. Eliot
Phoenix
Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring, 1968), pp. 3-17
Published by: Classical Association of Canada
DOI: 10.2307/1087033
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1087033

Kleisthenes, Participation, and the Dithyrambic Contests of Late Archaic and Classical Athens
David Pritchard
Phoenix
Vol. 58, No. 3/4 (Autumn - Winter, 2004), pp. 208-228
Published by: Classical Association of Canada
DOI: 10.2307/4135166
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4135166

David Whitehead (2014). The Demes of Attica, 508/7 -ca. 250 B.C.: A Political and Social Study. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-5768-5.


 



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