Deme

The establishment of demes as the fundamental units of the state weakened the gene, or aristocratic family groups, that had dominated the phratries.

Cleisthenes divided the landscape in three zones—urban (asty), coastal (paralia) and inland (mesogeia)—and the 139 demes were organized into 30 groups called trittyes ("thirds"), ten for each of the zones and into ten tribes, or phylai, each composed of three trittyes, one from the coast, one from the city, and one from the inland area.

The ten tribes were named after legendary heroes and came to have an official order: In 307/306 – 224/223 BC the system was reorganized with the creation of two Macedonian Phylai (XI.

Demetrias), named after Demetrius I of Macedon and Antigonus I Monophthalmus, and an increase in the membership of the Boule to 600.

Ptolemais, named after Ptolemy III Euergetes was created in 224/223 BC and the Boule was again increased, this time to 650 members, the twelve tribes giving each a demos.

From this period onward, quotas were no longer assigned to the demes for the 50 Boule members from each tribe.

[7] The criticism performed by John S. Traill[8] shows that 24 are the result of error, ancient[9] or modern,[10] or of misinterpretation[11] and 19[12] are well known chiefly from inscriptions of the second and third centuries AD, i.e. in the fifth period, and thus for political purposes they were originally dependent on legitimate Cleisthenic demes.

There were[13] six pairs of homonymous demes: There were six divided demes, one composed of three parts: When the city was settled under the support of Pericles and the command of Lampon and Xenocritus the population was organized in ten tribes, following the Athenian organization: there were tribes for the population of 1.

By the time of the Byzantine Empire, the term was used to refer to one of the four chariot racing factions, the Reds, the Blues, the Greens and the Whites.