The Fall of the Athenian Empire-(A New History of the Peloponnesian War) Donald Kagan - (1987)

204 -THE FALL OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
narrow oligarchy of the Four Hundred nor the full democracy that
allowed all citizens to take part in political life.
There was also a council, and what little evidence we have suggests
that it may have consisted of 500 members but that it was elected, not
chosen by lot like the old democratic council. 49 It also appears to have
had greater power and discretion. 50 The function of the nomothetai
mentioned by Thucydides is unclear; perhaps they were established
at an early meeting of the new assembly of the Five Thousand to
evaluate the constitutional proposals still to be brought before them,
or they may have been a commission to revise the legal code. 51 A new
board of katalogeis, no doubt, will have been appointed to compile the
official list of those eligible to sit in the assembly. In other respects,
the constitution seems to have been the same as in the old democracy.
Some elections must have been held, for we know that the eponymous
archon chosen by the Four Hundred, Mnasilochus, was replaced by
Theopompus after having served only two months. 52 Perhaps the other
archons were replaced as well. The generals chosen by the fleet at
Samos continued to serve, along with some of the moderates who had
been chosen by the Four Hundred. Perhaps there was an election to
confirm these men in office and to elect new men to substitute for the
oligarchic generals." The court system seems to have functioned in
the old way, although the juries will have excluded the thetes." The
limited evidence we have, then, seems to show that the government
49
Alcibiades had told the embassy from the oligarchs at Athens to replace the council
of Four Hundred with the old council of Five Hundred (8.86.6), but that does not
prove that they did so. A decree of the newly restored democracy in 410 (And. De
Myst. 96) tells us that a "council of five hundred chosen by lot" (iJ ~ouAi) oL1TevTo.K6