The Athenian Constitution   

scheme. There
should be a Council of Four Hundred, as in the ancient constitution,
forty from each tribe, chosen out of candidates of more than thirty
years of age, selected by the members of the tribes. This Council
should appoint the magistrates and draw up the form of oath
which they
were to take; and in all that concerned the laws, in the examination
of official accounts, and in other matters generally, they might act
according to their discretion. They must, however, observe the laws
that might be enacted with reference to the constitution of
the state,
and had no power to alter them nor to pass others. The
generals should
be provisionally elected from the whole body of the Five
Thousand, but
so soon as the Council came into existence it was to hold an
examination of military equipments, and thereon elect ten persons,
together with a secretary, and the persons thus elected should hold
office during the coming year with full powers, and should have the
right, whenever they desired it, of joining in the deliberations of
the Council. The Five thousand was also to elect a single
Hipparch and
ten Phylarchs; but for the future the Council was to elect these
officers according to the regulations above laid down. No office,
except those of member of the Council and of general, might be held
more than once, either by the first occupants or by their
successors. With reference to the future distribution of the Four
Hundred into the four successive sections, the hundred commissioners
must divide them whenever the time comes for the citizens to join in
the Council along with the rest.

Part 32

The hundred commissioners appointed by the Five Thousand
drew up the
constitution as just stated; and after it had been ratified by the
people, under the presidency of Aristomachus, the existing Council,
that of the year of Callias, was dissolved before it had
completed its
term of office. It was dissolved on the fourteenth day of the month
Thargelion, and the Four Hundred entered into office on the
twenty-first; whereas the regular Council, elected by lot, ought to
have entered into office on the fourteenth of Scirophorion. Thus was
the oligarchy established, in the archonship of Callias, just about
a hundred years after the expulsion of the tyrants. The chief
promoters of the revolution were Pisander, Antiphon, and Theramenes,
all of them men of good birth and with high reputations for ability
and judgement. When, however, this constitution had been
established, the Five Thousand were only nominally selected, and the
Four Hundred, together with the ten officers on whom full powers had
been conferred, occupied the Council-house and really
administered the
government. They began by sending ambassadors to the Lacedaemonians
proposing a cessation of the war on the basis of the existing
Position; but as the Lacedaemonians refused to listen to them unless
they would also abandon the command of the sea, they broke off the
negotiations.

Part 33

For about four months the constitution of the Four Hundred lasted,
and Mnasilochus held office as Archon of their nomination for two
months of the year of Theopompus, who was Archon for the remaining
ten. On the loss of the naval battle of Eretria, however, and the