ual disputes kept the whole district in broils and confusion. But Theseus had influence enough with all parties to obtain their consent to the abolition of the separate jurisdictions, and to the fixing of all civil and judicial authority in the capital. He at the same time voluntarily resigned into their hands a portion of his own power. Having divided the people into three classes—the nobles, the artisans, and the cultivators of the soil—he intrusted the first of these with the administration of public affairs, and the dispensation of justice, while he conferred upon every freeman or citizen, without distinction of class, a vote in the legislative assemblies. The command of the army, and the presidency of the state, he retained in his own person.
To strengthen the political union of the various districts of his kingdom by the tie of a common religion, he instituted a solemn festival, to be celebrated annually at Athens by all the inhabitants of Attica, in honor of Minerva, the tutelary deity of the city. This festival he denominated Panathenæ, or the Feast of all the Athenians, the name by which the whole of the people of Attica were thenceforth called.
The wise and liberal policy of Theseus caused Attica to advance considerably beyond the other states of Greece in prosperity and civilization; and the ancient historian, Thucydides, informs us that the Athenians were the first of the Greeks who laid aside the military dress and arms, which till now had been constantly worn. The example of Athens was not lost on the other Grecian communities, all of which gradually adopted, to a greater or less extent, those political institutions which had conferred so many advantages upon Attica.
Notwithstanding the judicious and exemplary conduct of Theseus in the early part of the reign, he appears to have afterwards allowed his restless and adventurous disposition to hurry him into many extravagances, and even crimes, by which he forfeited the respect of his people, and brought disgrace and suffering on his latter years. If we may believe the traditionary accounts, he accompanied Hercules in some of his celebrated expeditions, and assisted by Pirithoüs, a king of Thessaly, engaged in many martial and predatory adventures, conformably rather with the very imperfect morality and rude manners of the age, than with his own previous character. There reigned in Lacedæmon at this period a king named Tyndarus, who had a beautiful daughter called Helen, and according to the ancient historians, Theseus and his friend Pirithous formed the design of stealing away this young lady, and a princess of Epirus named Proserpine. They succeeded in carrying off Helen; but in their attempt to obtain Proserpine, they fell into the hands of her father, by whom Pirithoüs was put to death, and Theseus thrown into prison. Meanwhile, Castor and Pollux, the twin-brothers of Helen, who were afterwards deified, and whose names have been bestowed upon one of the signs of the Zodiac (Gemini), rescued their sister from the men to whom Theseus had given her in charge, and ravaged Attica in revenge for the injury they had received from its king.
Theseus was afterwards released from imprisonment by the assistance of Hercules, and returned home; but the Athenians had become so offended with his conduct, and were so angry at his having exposed them to ill treatment from the Lacedæmonians by his wicked attempt upon Helen, that they refused to receive him again as their sovereign. He therefore with
