Note 45 — Chapter LXII · TWENTY-FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR. — OLIGARCHY OF FOUR HUNDRED AT ATHENS.

Thucyd. viii, 67. Ἔπειτα, ἐπειδὴ ἡ ἡμέρα ἐφῆκε, ξυνέκλῃσαν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἐς τὸν Κόλωνον (ἔστι δ᾽ ἱερὸν Ποσειδῶνος ἔξω πόλεως, ἀπέχον σταδίους μάλιστα δέκα), etc.

The very remarkable word ξυνέκλῃσαν, here used respecting the assembly, appears to me to refer (not, as Dr. Arnold supposes in his note, to any existing practice observed even in the usual assemblies which met in the Pnyx, but rather) to a departure from the usual practice, and the employment of a stratagem in reference to this particular meeting.

Kolônus was one of the Attic demes: indeed, there seems reason to imagine that two distinct demes bore this same name (see Boeckh, in the Commentary appended to his translation of the Antigonê of Sophoklês, pp. 190, 191: and Ross, Die Demen von Attika, pp. 10, 11). It is in the grove of the Eumenides, hard by this temple of Poseidon, that Sophoklês has laid the scene of his immortal drama, the Œdipus Koloneus.