ther sacrifice, called Metoecia, or Feast of Migration, which
is yet celebrated on the sixteenth day of Hecatombaeon. Then, as he
had promised, he laid down his regal power and proceeded to order a
commonwealth, entering upon this great work not without advice from the
gods. For having sent to consult the oracle of Delphi concerning the
fortune of his new government and city, he received this answer:

Son of the Pitthean maid,
To your town the terms and fates
My father gives of many states.
Be not anxious or afraid:
The bladder will not fail to swim
On the waves that compass him.

Which oracle, they say, one of the sibyls long after did in a manner
repeat to the Athenians, in this verse:

The bladder may be dipt, but not be drowned.

Farther yet designing to enlarge his city, he invited all strangers to
come and enjoy equal privileges with the natives, and it is said that
the common form, "Come hither all ye people," was the words that Theseus
proclaimed when he thus set up a commonwealth, in a manner, for all
nations. Yet he did not suffer his state, by the promiscuous multitude
that flowed in, to be turned into confusion and be left without any
order or degree, but was the first that divided the commonwealth into
three distinct ranks, the noblemen, the husbandmen, and artificers.
To the nobility he committed the care of religion, the choice of
magistrates, the teaching and dispensing of the laws, and interpretation
and direction in all sacred matters; the whole city being, as it were,
reduced to an exact equality, the nobles excelling the rest in honor,
the husbandmen in profit, and the artifices in number. And that Theseus
was the first, who, as Aristotle says, out of an inclination to popular
government, parted with the regal power, Homer also seems to testify,
in his catalogue of ships, where he gives the name of "People" to the
Athenians only.

He also coined money, and stamped it with the image of an ox, either
in memory of the Marathonian bull, or of Taurus, whom he vanquished, or
else to put his people in mind to follow husbandry; and from this coin
came the expression so frequent among the Greeks, as a thing being
worth ten or a hundred oxen. After this he joined Megara to Attica, and
erected that famous pillar on the isthmus, which bears an inscription of
two lines, showing the bounds of the two countries that meet there. On
the east side the inscription is,-"Peloponnesus