To the persons, who were summoned thither, the name of γέροντες appears to have been officially applied. It had thus become dissociated from the idea of age, its original signification: for Nestor was the only old man among the Greek senators. Idomeneus, indeed, was near upon old age: Ulysses was elderly (ὠμογέρων[189]), apparently not under fifty. The majority would seem to have been rather under middle life; so that γέρων was, when thus employed, a title, not a description. The βουλὴ was composed of the men of greatest rank and weight; and no more required an advanced age among the qualifications for it, than does the presbyterate of the Christian Church, though it too signifies eldership. [189] Il. xxiii. 791. Before the great assembly of the Second Book, we are told, not that Agamemnon thought it would be well, as it were for the nonce, to consult the kings or seniors of the expedition; but, in language which indicates a fixed practice, that the choice of the place for the meeting was on this occasion by the ship of Nestor, whose great age possibly either made nearness convenient, or entitled him to this mark of honour: βουλὴ δὲ πρῶτον μεγαθύμων ἷζε γερόντων Νεστορέῃ παρὰ νηῒ Πυλαιγενέος βασιλῆος. Il. ii. 53. These γέροντες were summoned[190] again by Agamemnon before the sacrifice of the Second Book, which preceded the enumeration. On this occasion they are not called a βουλή; probably because they were not called for consultation. [190] Il. ii. 408-9. The Council meets again in the Ninth Book[191], by appointment of the Assembly, and sends the mission to Achilles[192]. In the same night, and perhaps under the same authority, the expedition of Ulysses and Diomed is arranged. [191] Il. ix. 10. 89. [192] Il. x. 195. There is no βουλὴ indeed in the First Book, and none in the great Assembly of the Nineteenth: but then both of these were summoned by Achilles, not by Agamemnon, and neither of them were called for properly deliberative purposes[193]. [193] Il. i. 54. xix. 41. Again, Ulysses, in urging the Greeks not to quit the assembly of the Second Book prematurely, reminds them that they ought to know fully the views of Agamemnon, and that they have not all had the advantage of learning those views in the βουλή. In the Seventh Book, the Council held under the roof of Agamemnon forms the plan for a pause to bury the dead, and erect the rampart. Accordingly, when just afterwards a herald arrives with a proposal from Troy, he finds the Greeks in their Assembly, doubtless an Assembly held to sanction the project of the kings. That this amounted to an institution of the Greeks, we may further judge from the familiar manner, in which Nestor mentions it in the Odyssey to Telemachus, on seeing him for the first time, (Od. iii. 127). ‘Ulysses and I,’ he says, ‘never differed:’ οὔτε ποτ’ εἰν ἀγορῇ δίχ’ ἐβάζομεν, οὔτ’ ἐνὶ βουλῇ[194]. [194] Il. vii. 344, 382.