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The trittyes (τριττύες trittúes), singular trittys  (τριττύς trittús) were the organizational structure the divided the population in ancient Attica, and is commonly thought to have been established by the reforms of Cleisthenes in 508 BC. The name trittys means "third", owing to the fact that there were three regions in each trittys. There were thirty trittyes and ten tribes (before Cleisthenes, there were only four tribes organized by royal families) named after local heroes in Attica. Trittyes were composed of one or more demes; demes were the basic unit of division in Attica, which were the smaller units of population that made up the trittyes.

Origin
Cleisthenes is credited with changing the way the Athenians were organized, changing the original four tribes (based on family relations) into ten according to residence, and forming each of the 139 demes (subdivisions of smaller city-states) into three groups of trittyes. The goal of this new distribution of tribes was to spread out the areas and make the representation more equal and distributed more evenly. Each tribe was composed of three trittyes, which included one from the coast (paralia), one from the city (asty), and one from the inland area (mesogeia).

Layout and Background
The trittyes were the larger denomination of tribes (phylai) in Ancient Attica, and were formed by the demes that were near each other. The trittyes were often unequal in size and, with that, representation. The amount of representation for each trittys ranged from some areas having twenty-seven representatives (such as Coastal Antiochis), and some areas having only nine representatives/councilors (such as the city section of Aiantis), with others not having much more; the amount of representation for each group does not appear to change drastically over time. Consistently, the city areas tended to have the least amount of representation, and the coastal areas had slightly more than the inland sections.

As would make sense, the smaller trittyes had less citizens in them and the larger ones had more, though there are exceptions .Individuals in the trittys consisted of resident alien, slaves and citizens (men aged 18 introduced to their respective deme by their father, thus making them a citizen of the trittys). Therefore, there was the possibility for there to be less citizens than a separate area but more residents in general compared to other areas.

There were two main functions for the trittyes. The first function is that of military organization - grouping areas in order to pull troops from - so that one type of area is not out of all their able bodied men in times of war (more spread out among groups). The second reason is for more of a political organization necessity. The trittys was made up of people from all the three different areas - the city, the coast and the inland areas. With this spread of people, the representation of a group is not limited to just those who live in the same area - that is, when there are meetings in the city and it is easier for city citizens to attend than coastal citizens, all of the areas have some degree of representation.

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This chart represents the original ten Phylai. This is included to show the distribution of city and coastal trittys in the original ten phylai.

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