Philochoros on Phratries

Abstract

FGrH 328 F 35a (Phot., Suid. S.V. ὀργεῶνες): … περὶ τὶν ὀργεώνων γέγραφεν καὶ Φιλόχορος̇ ‘τοὺς δὲ φράτορας ἐπάναγκες δέχεσθαι καὶ τοὺς ὀργεῶνας καὶ τοὺς όμογάλακτας, οὓς γεννήτας καλοῦμεν.’F 35b (Harp., Suid. S.v. γεννῆται, etc.): … Φιλόχορος δ̓ ἐν τῇ δ̄ ̓Ατθίδος φησὶ πρότερον ὁμογάλακτας ὀνομάζεσθαι οὓς νῦν γεννήτας καλοῦσιν.Modern interpretations of this fragment differ widely, but they agree in assuming that the two classes orgeones and gennetai between them made up the whole membership of the phratry, gennetai being the aristocratic minority, orgeones the great mass of commoners; and that the purpose of the clause here quoted was to safeguard the admission of orgeones to the phratry. Drakon's law of homicide (IG i2 115 = Tod 87, 18–19) takes it for granted that a murdered man, if he has no near relatives, will at least have phrateres, and that social distinctions can be made among them. Already by his time, then, all Athenians belonged to phratries, nobles and commoners alike, and if commoners were ever outside the phratries their first admission belongs to a period before written law. Our fragment has thus had to be taken as referring to the repulse of a later attempt to exclude the orgeones, and it has generally been dated to the time either of Solon or of Kleisthenes.