Note 93 — Chapter XXVII · KYRENE AND BARKA. — HESPERIDES.

Both O. Müller (Dor. b. iii, 4, 5), and Thrige (Hist. Cyren. c. 38, p. 148), speak of Demônax as having abolished the old tribes and created new ones. I do not conceive the change in this manner. Demônax did not abolish any tribes, but distributed for the first time the inhabitants into tribes. It is possible indeed that, before his time, the Theræans of Kyrênê may have been divided among themselves into distinct tribes; but the other inhabitants, having emigrated from a great number of different places, had never before been thrown into tribes at all. Some formal enactment or regulation was necessary for this purpose, to define and sanction that religious, social, and political communion, which went to make up the idea of the Tribe. It is not to be assumed, as a matter of course, that there must necessarily have been tribes anterior to Demônax, among a population so miscellaneous in its origin.