to the idea of a national unity;
even Ajax, the eponym of the tribe Aeantis, though not Attic, was famous
as an ally (Herod, v. 66) and ranked as a national hero. Each tribe had
its shrine and its particular hero-cult, which, however, was free from
local association and the dominance of particular families. This
national idea Cleisthenes further emphasized by setting up in the
market-place at Athens a statue of each tribal hero.

Demes.

The next step was the organization of the deme. Within each tribe he
grouped ten demes (see below), each of which had (1) its hero and its
chapel, and (2) its census-list kept by the demarch. The demarch (local
governor), who was elected popularly and held office for one year,
presided over meetings affecting local administration and the provision
of crews for the state-navy, and was probably under a system of scrutiny
like the _dokimasia_ of the state-magistrates. According to the
Aristotelian _Constitution of Athens_, Cleisthenes further divided
Attica into three districts, Urban and Suburban, Inland (_Mesogaios_),
and Maritime (_Paralia_), each of which was subdivided into ten
_trittyes_; each tribe had three trittyes in each of these districts.
The problem of establishing this decimal system in connexion with the
demes and trittyes is insoluble. Herodotus says that there were ten[3]
demes to each tribe ([Greek: deka eis tas phylas]); but each tribe was
composed of three trittyes, one in each of the three districts. Since
the deme was, as will be seen, the electoral unit, it is clear that in
tribal voting the object of ending the old threefold schism of the
Plain, the Hill and the Shore was attained, but the relation of deme and
trittys is obviously of an unsymmetrical kind. The _Constitution of
Athens_ says nothing of the ten-deme-to-each-tribe arrangement, and
there is no sufficient reason for supposing that the demes originally
were exactly a hundred in number. We know the names of 168 demes, and
Polemon (3rd century B.C.) enumerated 173. It has been suggested that
the demes did originally number exactly a hundred, and that new demes
were added as the population increased. This theory, however,
presupposes that the demes were originally equal in numbers. In the 5th
and 4th centuries this was certainly not the case; the number of
demesmen in some cases was only one hundred or two hundred, whereas the
deme Acharnae is referred to as a "great part" of the whole state, and
is k