DEME    A   local   territorial district,   either  a   village or  a   neighborhood    of  a   larger  urban   area;   also,   by

extension,  the inhabitants of  the district.

TRITTYS (PLURAL:    TRITTYES)           One of  30  units   into    which   the population  of  Attica  was

divided by  Cleisthenes in  508 BC, with    one trittys from    each    of  the three   geographical    divisions

(city,  coast,  and inland) combining   to  constitute  one of  the 10  tribes  created by  Cleisthenes (figure

40  and map 11).

The division into 10 tribes served a partly military and partly administrative function. When Athens was
at war, all soldiers from the same tribe stood together in battle and were commanded by a member of their
own tribe; there were 10 generals, one elected annually from each tribe. Each of the 10 tribes also
selected 50 of its own members each year to represent it in the Council of 500. This Council was itself a
newly created body, replacing an earlier Council of 400, which had consisted of 100 members from each
of the (now discontinued) ancestral tribes. The new Council of 500 set the agenda for the meetings of the
assembly of all Athenians, so that all matters of public policy necessarily passed through it. Every deme
was represented on the Council by a number of its members ranging from one to 22, depending on the
population of the deme. In this way, the government of the state was rooted at the level of the deme where,
presumably, every citizen was familiar with all his fellow demesmen. This was the level of “the people.”
In fact, the Greek word for “thepeople,” the word from which English “democracy” is derived, is
precisely the word “deme,” which can mean either “the people as a whole” or “the local division of the
people.” The structure through which the inhabitants of each deme participated in the government of the
polis was both elaborate and arbitrary, giving each individual citizen a genuine sense of participation
while ensuring that no one individual was in a position to exercise undue influence. The sense of
familiarity that a citizen felt toward his fellow demesman, whom he saw and dealt with locally on a daily
basis, was combined with a feeling of solidarity with his fellow tribesman, who might live at quite a
distance in a very different environment, but with whom he served in the Council deciding on matters of
state and by whose side he risked his life in battle. The stunning success of the Athenian military forces at
Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea must have reinforced the tribal solidarity brought about by these recently
introduced reforms.

Ostracism

There was one other institution that the Athenians attributed to Cleisthenes – whether correctly or not is
matter for debate – that also had the effect of both promoting a sense of grassroots participation and of
preventing any individual from attaining excessive power. This was the practice known as
OSTRACISM, which takes its name from the Greek word ostrakon (plural ostraka), which means
“broken piece of pottery” and is related to the Greek word from which English “oyster” comes. As we
have seen, ceramic vessels were in very common use in every period of ancient Greek civilization.
Because of their fragile nature and because they are not readily biodegradable, fragments of these vessels
are the most numerous, and the most long-lasting, components of ancient Greek trash. The Athenians
discovered a way of recycling these fragments by using them as ballots in an unusual form of popular self-
expression. Once every year, the Athenian assembly decided whether or not an ostracism was to be held.
If a majority voted in favor, an election of sorts was held in the agora later that year, in which each citizen
had the right to cast a ballot by inscribing the name of any Athenian on an ostrakon. The person receiving