He therefore destroyed the prytanea, the senate house, and the magistracy of each individual township, built one common prytaneum and senate house for them all on the site of the present acropolis, called the city Athens, and instituted the Panathenaic festival common to all of them.  He also instituted a festival for the resident aliens, on the sixteenth of the month, Hecatombaion, which is still kept up.  And having, according to his promise, laid down his sovereign power, he arranged the new constitution under the auspices of the gods; for he made inquiry at Delphi as to how he should deal with the city, and received the following answer: 

    “Thou son of AEgeus and of Pittheus’ maid,
    My father hath within thy city laid
    The bounds of many cities; weigh not down
    Thy soul with thought; the bladder cannot drown.”

The same thing they say was afterward prophesied by the Sibyl concerning the city, in these words: 

    “The bladder may be dipped, but cannot drown.”

Wishing still further to increase the number of his citizens, he invited all strangers to come and share equal privileges, and they say that the words now used, “Come hither all ye peoples,” was the proclamation then used by Theseus, establishing as it were a commonwealth of all nations.  But he did not permit his state to fall into the disorder which this influx of all kinds of people would probably have produced, but divided the people into three classes, of Eupatridae or nobles, Geomori or farmers, Demiurgi or artisans.

To the Eupatridae he assigned the care of religious rites, the supply of magistrates for the city, and the interpretation of the laws and customs sacred or profane; yet he placed them on an equality with the other citizens, thinking that the nobles would always excel in dignity, the farmers in usefulness, and the artisans in numbers.  Aristotle tells us that he was the first who inclined to democracy, and gave up the title of king; and Homer seems to confirm this view by speaking of the people of the Athenians alone of all the states mentioned in his catalogue of ships.

Theseus also struck money with the figure of a bull, either alluding to the bull of Marathon, or Taurus, Minos’ general, or else to encourage farming among the citizens.  Hence, they say, came the words, “worth ten,” or “worth a hundred oxen.”  He permanently annexed Megara to Attica, and set up the famous pillar on the Isthmus, on which he wrote the distinction between the countries in two trimeter lines, of which the one looking east says,

    “This is not Peloponnesus, but Ionia,

and the one looking west says,

    “This is Peloponnesus, not Ionia.”

And also he instituted games there, in emulation of Heracles; that, just as Heracles had ordained that the Greeks should celebrate the Olympic games in honor of Zeus, so by Theseus’ appointment they should celebrate the Isthmian games in honor of Poseidon.