History of the Peloponnesian War

When the Athenians had heard him, they approved of his words and fetched into the city their wives and children and the furniture of their houses, pulling down the very timber of the houses themselves. Their sheep and oxen they sent over into Euboea and into the islands over against them.

Nevertheless this removal, in respect they had most of them been accustomed to the country life, grieved them very much.

This custom was from great antiquity more familiar with the Athenians than any other of the rest of Greece. For in the time of Cecrops and the first kings down to Theseus the inhabitants of Attica had their several boroughs and therein their common halls and their governors, and, unless they were in fear of some danger, went not to the king for advice; but every city administered their own affairs and deliberated by themselves.

And some of them had also their particular wars, as the Eleusinians who joined with Eumolpus against Erectheus. But after Theseus came to the kingdom, one who besides his wisdom was also a man of very great power, he not only set good order in the country in other respects but also dissolved the councils and magistracies of the rest of the towns; and assigning them all one hall and one council-house, brought them all to cohabit in the city that now is; and constrained them, enjoying their own as before, to use this one for their city, which (now when they all paid their duties to it) grew great and was by Theseus so delivered to posterity.

And from that time to this day, the Athenians keep a holiday at the public charge to the goddess and call it Synoecia.

That which is now the citadel, and the part which is to the south of the citadel, was before this time the city. An argument whereof is this: that the temples of the gods are all set either in the citadel itself or, if without, yet in that quarter, as that of Jupiter Olympius and of Apollo Pythius and of Tellus and of Bacchus in Limnae (in honour of whom the old Bacchanals were celebrated on the twelfth day of the month Athesterion, according as the Ionians who are derived from Athens do still observe them), besides other ancient temples situated in the same part.

Moreover, they served themselves with water for the best uses of the fountain which, now the Nine-pipes, built so by the tyrants, was formerly, when the springs were open, called Callirhoe, and was near. And from the old custom, before marriages and other holy rites they ordain the use of the same water to this day.

And the citadel, from the ancient habitation of it, is also by the Athenians still called the city.

The Athenians therefore had lived a long time governed by laws of their own country towns and, after they were brought into one, were nevertheless (both for the custom which most had, as well of the ancient time as since till the Persian war, to live in the country with their whole families; and also especially for that since the Persian war they had already repaired their houses and furniture) unwilling to remove.