Micah Gould
CLST 4003H
February 19, 2001
ATHENIAN RELIGION: A HISTORY
Chapter 7: Before and After Clisthenes
“Attic religion in its familiar shape is a creation of Clisthenes
no less than is the democracy.” (Parker pg. 102)
I. After Clisthenes (better known material)
A. Outside of their respective city, every Athenian belonged to four
other organizations: deme, trittys, tribe, and phratry.
1. A group of demes formed a trittys, three trittyes a tribe, and ten
tribes a city; all units of a single structure.
a) Demes were the most important organizations in religious life; they
each had their own sanctuaries, priests, and calendar of sacrifices.
b) A trittys was made up of one to seven demes; of the three
trittys that made up a tribe, one came from each of the regions
of Attica: the city, the coast, and the plain; very little social bond
between members because of separation
c) The trittyes gave diversity to the tribe and allowed it to be a
centralizing institution; although tribe served mainly political and military
ends, it was also linked to religion through festivals and public rituals;
medium through which individuals were involved in public festivals: each
tribe probably also sacrificed to their own eponymous hero; tribe calendar
focused on their patron hero, not public calendars
2. Phratrys: distinct from these three institutions
a) Hereditary association of male Athenian citizens
b) Purpose was to scrutinize candidates for membership into the phratry
and thus eventually into citizenship
c) Local associations with deme,
d) Registration of members occurred at the ancestral festival of Apatouria;
an animal was sacrificed by the candidates father and acceptance of the
meat signified acceptance of the candidate
e) Registration focused around the altar of Zeus Phratrios who was paired
with Athena Phratria
f) Each phratry also honored their own special god (Therrikleidai
and Apollo Patroos)
g) Ties between members of phratry were less binding than those between
members of a deme or tribe
h) Phratries also leased property, passed honorary decrees, elected
officials, and made loans within the phratry
3. Minority associations
a) Genos: hereditary groups closely linked to phratries
1. Those accepted into a certain genos were by law automatically
admitted into the corresponding phratry;
2. Like members of a phratry, gennetai also celebrated Apatouria
as a group
b)Orgeones: celebrants of orgia or rites;
1. One type of orgeones was much like the genos in that it was a hereditary
society whose members were automatically admitted into the related phratry;
2. Sacrificed to a hero once a year at a private shrine; though Parker
believes that their privilege and prominence is perhaps suggestive of a
more public function as well (receiving sacred objects before the Mysteries,
appeasing gods for the local good)
c) Local league of demes: hereditary association
1. Best known is Marathonian Tetrapolis made up of the four Clisthenic
demes: Marathon, Tricorynthus, Oinoe, and Probalinthus
2. “Extra level of organization fitted over the structure of the
deme religion”
3. Each deme mainly participated in its own set of rites but also took
part in activities of the larger group
II. Before Clisthenes
A. Before Clisthenes, there had been four tribes instead of ten
1. Expanding the amount of tribes allowed each tribe to have an ideal
maximum size
2. Trittys system ensured that each tribe reflected the diversity
of political interests throughout Attica
3. From Nicomachus we learn that old tribes survived as religious units
after Clisthenes
a) Like the new tribes, they contained trittyes
b) The pre-Clisthenes tribes also acted as mediums whereby individuals
participated in the public festivals of the whole city
c) Designed to unite Athens
d) Phratries were subdivisions of the old tribes
1. After Clisthenes, members of a single phratry were dispersed throughout
several deme
2. Phratries became private, rather than public entities
B. The deme, as an administrative unit, did not exist before the time
of Clisthenes
1. How were local rites organized before Clisthenes?
a) Gene
1. could have served local cults as they did city cults after Clisthenes
2. lacking an organizing authority
b) Phratries
1. Although weakened by new tribal structure, would have put up a protest
against the take over of shrines and rites under their control
2. Under Clisthenes they had few communal rites and he claimed no changes
had been made to the phratry system
c) proto-demes
1. Widely accepted that demes existed as social groups before Clisthenes
who merely gave them a place in administrative structure
2. Changes in religious life of Demes
a) Political status
b) New official, the demarch, at the center of religious life
C. Clisthenic revolution
1. Two Theories
a) Devious subverter?
1. Did not abolish existing organizations, but did subvert the flow
of political life to other sources
2. Did not destroy old local associations, but did dissolve their unity
by distributing among the tribes them for military and political purposes
b) Conservative reformer?
1. even though new political structure were created, the old ones were
not attacked; ex. deme did not replace phratryas as a road to citzenship
2. old associations may have belonged to separate tribes intitally
3. association members were hoplite farmers, the keystone of Clisthenes’
support, an attack on them would have injured his own cause
D. Formation of Tribes
1. Ten eponymous heroes chosen by Apollo of Delphi to represent the
ten tribes
a) Clisthenes may have submitted a list of 100 heroes from which Apollo
then gave a “yea” or a “nay”
b) Random selection would have produced a much less well-known list
2. Clisthenes did not create the cults of these heroes out of thin air
a) Probably drew on existing cults, sanctuaries, and religious structures
b) Would explain random dotting of tribal sanctuaries
3. Offerings to these heroes was a public matter generally carried out
by officials
4. heroes sometimes referred to as archegetes or archegos,
from the Greek word “arche” for origin and “hegeomai”
for authority; heroes seen as the origin of authority for a tribe.
Return to Main Page: CLST 4003 H. Greek Religion
Colloquium. Spring 2002.
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