Note 44 — Chapter LXII · TWENTY-FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR. — OLIGARCHY OF FOUR HUNDRED AT ATHENS.

Thucyd. viii, 67. Καὶ πρῶτον μὲν τὸν δῆμον ξυλλέξαντες εἶπον γνώμην, δέκα ἄνδρας ἑλέσθαι ξυγγραφέας αὐτοκράτορας, τούτους δὲ ξυγγράψαντας γνώμην ἐσενεγκεῖν ἐς τὸν δῆμον ἐς ἡμέραν ῥητὴν, καθ᾽ ὅτι ἄριστα ἡ πόλις οἰκήσεται.

In spite of certain passages found in Suidas and Harpokration (see K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griechischen Staats Alterthümer, sect. 167, note 12: compare also Wattenbach, De Quadringentor. Factione, p. 38), I cannot think that there was any connection between these ten ξυγγραφεῖς, and the Board of πρόβουλοι mentioned as having been before named (Thucyd. viii, 1). Nor has the passage in Lysias, to which Hermann makes allusion, anything to do with these ξυγγραφεῖς. The mention of Thirty persons by Androtion and Philochorus, seems to imply that they, or Harpokration, confounded the proceedings ushering in this oligarchy of Four Hundred, with those before the subsequent oligarchy of Thirty. The σύνεδροι, or ξυγγραφεῖς, mentioned by Isokratês (Areopagit. Or. vii, sect. 67) might refer either to the case of the Four Hundred or to that of the Thirty.