occurred at Athens, as well as bespeaking their full concurrence and unabated efforts against the common enemy. [100] Thucyd. viii, 97. [101] It is to this assembly that I refer, with confidence, the remarkable dialogue of contention between Peisander and Sophoklês, one of the Athenian probûli, mentioned in Aristotel. Rhetoric. iii, 18, 2. There was no other occasion on which the Four Hundred were ever publicly thrown upon their defence at Athens. This was not Sophoklês the tragic poet, but another person of the same name, who appears afterwards as one of the oligarchy of Thirty. [102] Thucyd. viii, 97. Καὶ ἐκκλησίαν ξυνέλεγον, μίαν μὲν εὐθὺς τότε πρῶτον ἐς τὴν Πνύκα καλουμένην, οὗπερ καὶ ἄλλοτε εἰώθεσαν, ἐν ᾗπερ καὶ τοὺς τετρακοσίους καταπαύσαντες ~τοῖς πεντακισχιλίοις~ ἐψηφίσαντο τὰ πράγματα παραδοῦναι· ~εἶναι δὲ αὐτῶν, ὁπόσοι καὶ ὅπλα παρέχονται~· καὶ μισθὸν μηδένα φέρειν, μηδεμιᾷ ἀρχῇ, εἰ δὲ μὴ, ἐπάρατον ἐποιήσαντο. Ἐγίγνοντο δὲ καὶ ἄλλαι ὕστερον πυκναὶ ἐκκλησίαι, ἀφ᾽ ὧν καὶ ~νομοθέτας καὶ τἄλλα ἐψηφίσαντο ἐς τὴν πολιτείαν~. In this passage I dissent from the commentators on two points. First, they understand this number Five Thousand as a real definite list of citizens, containing five thousand names, neither more nor less. Secondly, they construe νομοθέτας, not in the ordinary meaning which it bears in Athenian constitutional language, but in the sense of ξυγγραφεῖς (c. 67), “persons to model the constitution, corresponding to the ξυγγραφεῖς appointed by the aristocratical party a little before,” to use the words of Dr. Arnold. As to the first point, which is sustained also by Dr. Thirlwall (Hist. Gr. ch. xxviii, vol. iv, p. 51, 2d ed.), Dr. Arnold really admits what is the ground of my opinion, when he says: “Of course the number of citizens capable of providing themselves with heavy arms must _have much exceeded five thousand_: and it is said in the defence of Polystratus, one of the Four Hundred (Lysias, p. 675, Reisk.), that he drew up a list of nine thousand. But we must suppose that all who could furnish heavy arms _were eligible into the number of the Five Thousand_, whether the members were fixed on by lot, by election, or by rotation; as it had been proposed to appoint the Four Hundred by rotation out of the Five Thousand (viii, 93).”