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The family aspect of the Greek city is accentuated by the fact that the town hall was a town hearth; that the chief subdivisions of citizens were brotherhoods, and that all permanent associations of them for public purposes assumed the descent of their several members from common ancestors, who were naturally gods or demigods. When heroes had to be discovered, with the help of the Pythian prophetess, to act as progenitors for the groups of citizens artificially united in the new electoral divisions which Clisthenes established in Athens in 508 B.C., it is conceivable that popular regard for purity of stock helped Pericles to enact the notorious law of 451 B.C. limiting citizenship at Athens to those sprung from the legitimate union of Athenian parents. Every city in Greece inherited from its distant tribal past a strong feeling of the kinship of its inhabitants, in comparison with which the sense of ethnic and racial unity was weak and watery. To destroy the political identity of a city was like taking human life.