To distinguish this Solonian constitution from the democracy which followed it, is essential to a due comprehension of the progress of the Greek mind, and especially of Athenian affairs.  That democracy was achieved by gradual steps.  Demosthenes and AEschines lived under it as a system consummated and in full activity, when the stages of its previous growth were no longer matter of exact memory; and the dicasts then assembled in judgment were pleased to hear their constitution associated with the names either of Solon or of Theseus.  Their inquisitive contemporary Aristotle was not thus misled:  but even commonplace Athenians of the century preceding would have escaped the same delusion.  For during the whole course of the democratical movement, from the Persian invasion down to the Peloponnesian war, and especially during the changes proposed by Pericles and Ephialtes, there was always a strenuous party of resistance, who would not suffer the people to forget that they had already forsaken, and were on the point of forsaking still more, the orbit marked out by Solon.  The illustrious Pericles underwent innumerable attacks both from the orators in the assembly and from the comic writers in the theatre.  And among these sarcasms on the political tendencies of the day we are probably to number the complaint, breathed by the poet Cratinus, of the desuetude into which both Solon and Draco had fallen—­“I swear (said he in a fragment of one of his comedies) by Solon and Draco, whose wooden tablets (of laws) are now employed by people to roast their barley.”  The laws of Solon respecting penal offences, respecting inheritance and adoption, respecting the private relations generally, etc., remained for the most part in force:  his quadripartite census also continued, at least for financial purposes, until the archonship of Nausinicus in B.C. 377—­so that Cicero and others might be warranted in affirming that his laws still prevailed at Athens:  but his political and judicial arrangements had undergone a revolution not less complete and memorable than the character and spirit of the Athenian people generally.  The choice, by way of lot, of archons and other magistrates—­and the distribution by lot of the general body of dicasts or jurors into panels for judicial business—­may be decidedly considered as not belonging to Solon, but adopted after the revolution of Clisthenes; probably the choice of senators by lot also.  The lot was a symptom of pronounced democratical spirit, such as we must not seek in the Solonian institutions.

It is not easy to make out distinctly what was the political position of the ancient gentes and phratries, as Solon left them.  The four tribes consisted altogether of gentes and phratries, insomuch that no one could be included in any one of the tribes who was not also a member of some gens and phratry.  Now the new pro-bouleutic, or pre-considering, senate consisted of four hundred members,—­one hundred from each of the tribes:  persons not included