摘要
The council with its limited membership and the assembly open to all citizens were important elements in the public life of Athens,and indeed of most Greek cities,and how they functioned is an important part of what we need to know in order to understand their public life;but there are still questions to which we do not have certain answers,and in this paper I focus on them.Knowing about the mechanisms is not all that we need to know;but for a city whose mechanisms were well developed,as those of Athens were,knowing about the mechanisms,and the opportunities and the limitations which they provided for the men active in politics,is an important part of what we need to know–as M.H.Hansen has emphasised in an article in which he justifies his approach against the criticisms of scholars who think other kinds of question more important.
