ON THE ATTIC TRIBES

The view we have taken of the four ancient Attic tribes, agrees in the main with those of Wachsmuth, Buttmann (in the Essay on φρατρία in the Mythologus), and Dr. Arnold, in his Appendix I. to Thucydides, vol. i. But some readers may like to learn the opinions of other learned men on this subject, and on some other points connected with it, to which allusions have here and there been made in the text.

Niebuhr in the first edition of his Roman History (i. p. 226.) considered the names of the four tribes abolished by Cleisthenes as significant of so many castes. In the second edition he retains the same opinion with regard to the origin of the names, but on account of the order in which they stand doubts whether they ever had any such meaning in Attica (i. n. 707.) And in the third edition he appears to have been induced by Hermann's arguments, in the Preface to the Ion of Euripides, to abandon his former opinion on this question altogether. But this is of less importance than his view of what the Attic tribes were down to the time of Solon. He conceived them to have included only a part of the population of Attica – the Ionian conquerors blended perhaps with a portion of the ancient inhabitants (see ed. 2. i. p. 307.) – and to have stood in a relation to the rest, similar to that between the Patricians and Plebeians at Rome.