The council consisted of five hundred citizens taken by lot. It was a committee to manage the details of the business of the assembly. It met on every day in the year except the religious festivals or holidays and it drew up the list of business for the assembly, determining what business ought and what ought not to be brought forward. All business intended for the assembly passed through the hands of the council; and sometimes, in cases that demanded immediate action, (as in the accusation brought against the commanders at Arginusæ which will be described further on,) it had to come to important provisional decisions. The fifty councillors belonging to a tribe were presidents during a tenth part of the year: and if, during their presidency, a special meeting of the assembly was required, it was their business to summon it[168]. [168] The details about the five hundred are from Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, 43. An inscription of the date 410-409 B.C. printed in Clinton, _Fasti Hellenici_ (vol. II. p. 345), shows how important the prytaneis then were. (2) The chief servants of the sovereign assembly were the ten generals and the nine archons. The generals were elected and not like the rest of the officers of the state taken by lot: this might be inferred from the constant occurrence among the generals of the names of distinguished men, but it is completely proved by the fact that in the year 430 B.C. the Athenians though they were many of them angry with Pericles yet re-elected him general because his services could not be dispensed with[169]. The ten generals levied troops, managed the revenue allotted to military purposes, and named trierarchs to command the ships[170]. In the battle of Marathon and in an expedition to Samos in 440 B.C. all ten generals acted as commanders: in most cases the assembly appointed a convenient number, usually three, of the generals to conduct an enterprise abroad, while the rest remained at home to manage the ordinary business of their office. [169] Thucydides II. 65. [170] Smith, _Dictionary of Antiquities_, article Strategus. The nine archons, taken yearly by lot from among a number of men who had declared themselves to be candidates, and had submitted the respectability of their characters to a public examination, had duties of a ceremonial character and attended to the routine of some business of state, but had no political influence[171]. There were also some other functionaries for the supervision of markets and of the supply of corn, and for the preservation of order, of whom it is not necessary to speak further. [171] Smith, _Dictionary of Antiquities_, article Archon.