24.5
Theseus, offspring of Aegeus, son of the daughter of Pittheus, Many indeed the cities to which my father has given Bounds and future fates within your citadel’s confines. Therefore be not dismayed, but with firm and confident spirit Counsel only; the bladder will traverse the sea and its surges. And this oracle they say the Sibyl afterwards repeated to the city, when she cried:— Bladder may be submerged; but its sinking will not be permitted.
25.1
Desiring still further to enlarge the city, he invited all men thither on equal terms, and the phrase Come hither all ye people, they say was a proclamation of Theseus when he established a people, as it were, of all sorts and conditions. However, he did not suffer his democracy to become disordered or confused from an indiscriminate multitude streaming into it, but was the first to separate the people into noblemen and husbandmen and handicraftsmen.
25.2
To the noblemen he committed the care of religious rites, the supply of magistrates, the teaching of the laws, and the interpretation of the will of Heaven, and for the rest of the citizens he established a balance of privilege, the noblemen being thought to excel in dignity, the husbandmen in usefulness, and the handicraftsmen in numbers. And that he was the first to show a leaning towards the multitude, as Aristotle says, and gave up his absolute rule, seems to be the testimony of Homer also, in the Catalogue of Ships, Hom. Il. 2.547 where he speaks of the Athenians alone as a people.
