For much of the Peloponnesian War the links between Athens and outlying areas nof Attica were severely strained, if not severed. The disruption was most criti-ncal around Decelea under Spartan occupation (413–404). The traditional fabric nof demes, phratries and genē unravelled, as many households relocated. Further nfrayed by civil conflict, the ties that bound these groups together must have been nslow to mend, even after the reunification of Attica in 401/0. A curious document nof that mending survives to us in the set of decrees for a phratry centred at nDecelea, most often called ‘the decrees of the Demotionidae’.n1n The decrees deal nwith procedures for contesting members’ rights: the contest is called diadikasia nbut usually translated ‘scrutiny’, on the assumption that the aim of this procedure nis to exclude those who lack citizen qualifications.n2n The first decree, moved by nHierocles in 396/5, focusses on the cases of standing phratry members (already on nthe roster) whose diadikasiai have not yet been decided; it also refers to annual ndiadikasiai for new members at the Apatouria. The second decree, moved by nNicodemus, deals with that annual procedure (the third decree was added much nlater and does not mention the diadikasiai). But it is disputed whether the phratry ninvoked in these decrees is indeed the Demotionidae, and the connection between nthis group and the ‘house of the Deceleans’, prominent in the first decree, is still a nvexed question. Important studies in the 1990s, by Hedrick and Lambert, disposed nof old assumptions with more sophisticated models of how these groups interact, nbut many difficulties remain.
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