The Athenian boule

Thesis



The first section of the chapter is concerned with the membership of the boule - the conditions of appointment and service, the men who served in the boule, and the rewards and risks to which they were exposed. In particular the evidence is surveyed for the allocation to individual demes of specified numbers of seats in the boule, a system which seems in fact to have broken down in the second century B.C., though it continued to influence the layout of lists of bouleutae. The subdivision of the boule into tribal prytanies is next examined, and it is suggested that this may be the work of Ephialtes rather than a part of Cleisthenes' original organisation. In connection with the further subdivision of the prytanies so that some men should always be on duty, attention is given to a recently advanced theory that the prytanies split according to a regular scheme resembling but not identical with Cleisthenes' division of the tribes into trittyes: the evidence supports the adoption of such a convention by some tribes, but not a universally enforced rule. Little can be added to older discussions of the proedri, who took over the presidential duties of the prytanes in the fourth century, but their institution seems to be at any rate a little later than the democratic restoration of 403/2. The chapter ends with a study of the boule's meetings and meeting-places: the buildings occupied by the boule in the Agora are discussed, with special reference to the internal arrangements of the bouleuterium and the conditions in which members of the public were admitted during meetings; other places where the boule met are listed; procedure at meetings is examined; and the evidence for the position of the generals vis-a-vis the boule is reconsidered, with the suggestion that except at the time of the Peloponnesian War the generals did not in the classical period possess extra- ordinary privileges.

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Authors: Rhodes, P; Rhodes, P. J.

• Publication date: 1969
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English