Resumen de Apollo Patroos and the Phratries
In our continuing reevaluation of Classical Athenian citizenship�s character, recent scholarship has come to conclude that, to be a citizen, one also needed membership in one of the private groups called the phratry. One proof cited for the fact that citizenship required phratry membership is that, according to ancient testimony, every citizen must �own�, viz., be recognized as participating in, a cult of the phratry god Apollo Patroos. A thorough exami¬nation of literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence indicates that, on the contrary, Apollo Patroos was not a phratry god, was a civic god tangential to private phratry life, and that his cult probably was instituted only in the fourth century, continuing into Roman imperial times, long after phratries were extinguished. The �proof� built on Apollo Patroos� cult is as insubstantial as the few other hypotheses used to prove that citizenship required phratry membership.
