Deme

For the biological term, see Deme (Biology).

Pinakia, identification tablets (name, father's name, deme) used for tasks like jury selection, Museum at the Ancient Agora of Athens

In Ancient Greece, a deme (plural demoi) was a subdivision of Attica, the region of Greece surrounding Athens. Demoi as simple subdivisions of land in the countryside seem to have existed in the 6th century BC and earlier, but did not acquire particular significance until the reforms of Cleisthenes in 508 BC. In those reforms, enrollment in the citizen-lists of a deme became the requirement for citizenship; prior to that time, citizenship had been based on membership in a phratry, or family group. At this same time, demoi were established in the city of Athens itself, where they had not previously existed; in all, at the end of Cleisthenes' reforms, Attica was divided into 139 demoi. The establishment of demoi as the fundamental units of the state weakened the gene, or aristocratic family groups, that had dominated the phratries.J.V. Fine, The Ancient Greeks: A Critical History

A deme functioned to some degree as a polis in miniature, and indeed some demes, such as Eleusis and Acharnae, were in fact significant towns. Each deme had a demarchos who supervised its affairs; various other civil, religious, and military functionaries existed in various demoi. Demoi held their own religious festivals and collected and spent revenue.David Whitehead, "Demes, demoi" from the Oxford Classical Dictionary, Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth ed.

Demes were combined with other demes from the same area to make trittyes, larger population groups, which in turn were combined to form the ten tribes, or phyles of Athens. Each tribe contained one trittys from each of three regions, the city, the coast, and the inland area.

References

Fine, John V.A. The Ancient Greeks: A critical history (Harvard University Press, 1983) ISBN 0674033140
Hornblower, Simon, and Anthony Spawforth ed., The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 2003) ISBN 019866172X

Footnotes

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