Kleisthenes and the Creation of the Ten Phylai

Abstract

The evidence that the trittyes were grouped together by careful design and not by accident to form the phylai seems to me overwhelming, even after we admit that the basis of the theory-the inequality of the trittyes in population-is a matter of inference rather than demonstration. Precisely how Kleisthenes went about organizing the trittyes and phylai we do not know. Of one thing, however, we can be sure: he did not use the lot. Aristotle was wrong in saying that Kleisthenes assigned by lot three trittyes to each phyle, the obvious meaning of the received text. (145)

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