FOUR EARLY TRIBES OF ATTICA. 51 continued to form the classification of the citizens until the revo- lution of Kleisthenes in 509 u. c., by which the ten tribes were introduced, as we find them down to the period of Macedonian ascendency. It is affirmed, and with some etymological plausi- bility, that the denominations of these four tribes must originally have had reference to the occupations of those who bore them, the Hopletes being the warrior-class, the ./Egikoreis goatherds, the Argadcis artisans, and the Geleontes (Teleontes, or Gedeontes) cultivators: and hence some authors have ascribed to the ancient inhabitants of Attica 1 an actual primitive distribution into hered- itary professions, or castes, similar to that which prevailed it India and Egypt. If we should even grant that such a division into castes might originally have prevailed, it must have grown obsolete long before the time of Solon: but there seem no suf- ficient grounds for believing that it ever did prevail. The names of the tribes may have been originally borrowed from certain professions, but it does not necessarily follow that the reality cor- responded to this derivation, or that every individual who be- longed to any tribe was a member of the profession from whence the name had originally been derived. From the etymology oi the names, be it ever so clear, we cannot safely assume the his- torical reality of a classification according to professions. And this objection (which would be weighty, even if the etymology had been clear) becomes irresistible, when we add that even the etymology is not beyond dispute ; 2 that the names themselves are written with a diversity which cannot be reconciled : and that the four professions named by Strabo omit the goatherds and 1 Ion, the father of the four heroes after whom these tribes were named, was affirmed by one story to be the primitive civilizing legislator of Attica, like Lykurgus, Numa, or Deukalion (Plutarch, adv. Koloten, c. 31, p. 1125).
- Thus Euripides derives the AiyiKopelf, not from atf, a goat, but from
Aiylf, the JEgis of Athene (Ion. 1581 ) : he also gives Teleontes, derived from an eponymous Telfdn, son of Ion, while the inscriptions at Kyzikus concur with Herodotus and others in giving Geleontes. Plutarch (Solon, 25) gives Gedeontes. In an Athenian inscription recently published by Professor Ross (dating, seemingly, in the first century after the Christian era), the worship of Zeus Geleon at Athens has been for the fr.st time verified, Atoc TeAFovrot; frpoajpof (Ross, Die Attischen Dcmcn pp. vii-ix. Ualle, 1846).
