Much earlier than this, the farmers and fishmen from the hill towns or from Salamis have been in their places, grumbling at the slowness of the officials.  People sit down where they can; little groups and clans together, wedged in closely, chattering up to the last minute, watching every proceeding with eyes as keen as cats’.  All the gossip left over from the Agora is disposed of ere the prytanes—­proverbially late—­scramble into their seats of honor.  The police-archers move up and down, enforcing a kind of order.  Amid a growing hush a suckling pig is solemnly slaughtered by some religious functionary at the altar, and the dead victim carried around the circuit of the Pnyx as a symbolic purification of the audience.

“Come inside the purified circuit,” enjoins a loud herald to the little groups upon the edge.[*]

[*]Aristophanes’s “Acharnians” (ll. 50 ff.) gives a valuable picture of this and other proceedings at the Pnyx, but one should never forget the poet’s exaggerations for comedy purposes, nor his deliberate omission of matters likely to be mere tedious detail to his audience.

Then comes a prayer invoking the gods’ favor upon the Athenians, their allies, and this present meeting in particular, winding up (the herald counts this among the chief parts of his duty) with a tremendous curse on any wretch who should deceive the folk with evil counsel.  After this the real secular business can begin.  Nothing can be submitted to the Ecclesia which has not been previously considered and matured by the Council of 500.  The question to be proposed is now read by the heralds as a “Pro-bouleuma”—­a suggested ordinance by the Council.  Vast as is the audience, the acoustic properties of the Pnyx are excellent, and all public officers and orators are trained to harangue multitudes in the open air, so that the thousands get every word of the proposition.

134.  Debating a Proposition.—­“Resolved by the Boule, the tribe Leontis holding the prytany, and Heraclides being clerk, upon the motion of Timon the son of Timon the Eleusinian,[*] that”—­and then in formal language it is proposed to increase the garrison of the allied city of Byzantium by 500 hired Arcadian mercenaries, since the king of Thrace is threatening that city, and its continued possession is absolutely essential to the free import of grain into Attica.

[*]This seems to have been the regular form for beginning a “probouleuma” although nearly all our information comes from the texts of proposals after they have been made formal decrees by the sovran Demos.

There is a hush of expectancy; a craning of necks.

“Who wishes to speak?” calls the herald.