Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/85

TWELVE tOCAL SUBDIVISIONS OF ATTICA 6U on the southern side. It was Theseus, he states, who effected that great revolution whereby the whole of Attica was consoli- dated into one government, all the local magistracies and councils being made to centre in the prytaneium and senate of Athens : his combined sagacity and power enforced upon all the inhabi- tants of Attica the necessity of recognizing Athens as the one city in the country, and of occupying their own abodes simply as constituent portions of Athenian territory. This important move, which naturally produced a great extension of the central city, was commemorated throughout the historical times by the Athenians in the periodical festival called Synoekia, in honor of the goddess Athene. 1 Such is the account which Thucydides gives of the original severally and subsequent consolidation of the different portions of Attica. Of the general fact there is no reason to doubt, though the operative cause assigned by the historian, the power and sagacity of Theseus, belongs to legend and not to history. Nor can we pretend to determine either the real steps by which such a change was brought about, or its date, or the number of portions which went to constitute the full-grown Athens, far- ther enlarged at some early period, though we do not know when, by voluntary junction of the Boeotian, or semi-Boeotian, town Eleutherre, situated among the valleys of Kithaeron between Eleusis and Plata^a. It was the standing habit of the population of Attica, even down to the Peloponnesian war, 2 to reside in their several cantons, where their ancient festivals and temples yet continued as relics of a state of previous autonomy : their visits to the city were made only at special times, for purposes 1 Thucyd. ii, 15; Thcophrast. Charact. 29, 4. Plutarch (Theseus, 24} gives the proceedings of Theseus in greater detail, and with a stronger tinge of democracy. 8 Pausan. i, 2, 4 ; 38, 2 ; Diodor. Sicul. iv, 2 ; Schol. ad Aristophan. Acharn 242. The Athenians transferred from Eleutherse to Athens both a venerable statue of Dionysus and a religious ceremony in honor of that god. The junction of the town with Athens is stated by Pausanias to have taken place in consequence of the hatred of its citizens for Thebes, and must have occurred before 509 E. c., about which period we find Hysise to be the frontier Aemc of Attica (Hen-dot, v, 72; vi, 108).