In spite of certain passages found in Suidas and Harpokration (see K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griechischen Staats Alterthümer, sect. 167, note 12: compare also Wattenbach, De Quadringentor. Factione, p. 38), I cannot think that there was any connection between these ten ξυγγραφεῖς, and the Board of πρόβουλοι mentioned as having been before named (Thucyd. viii, 1). Nor has the passage in Lysias, to which Hermann makes allusion, anything to do with these ξυγγραφεῖς. The mention of Thirty persons by Androtion and Philochorus, seems to imply that they, or Harpokration, confounded the proceedings ushering in this oligarchy of Four Hundred, with those before the subsequent oligarchy of Thirty. The σύνεδροι, or ξυγγραφεῖς, mentioned by Isokratês (Areopagit. Or. vii, sect. 67) might refer either to the case of the Four Hundred or to that of the Thirty.
[45] Thucyd. viii, 67. Ἔπειτα, ἐπειδὴ ἡ ἡμέρα ἐφῆκε, ξυνέκλῃσαν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἐς τὸν Κόλωνον (ἔστι δ᾽ ἱερὸν Ποσειδῶνος ἔξω πόλεως, ἀπέχον σταδίους μάλιστα δέκα), etc.
The very remarkable word ξυνέκλῃσαν, here used respecting the assembly, appears to me to refer (not, as Dr. Arnold supposes in his note, to any existing practice observed even in the usual assemblies which met in the Pnyx, but rather) to a departure from the usual practice, and the employment of a stratagem in reference to this particular meeting.
Kolônus was one of the Attic demes: indeed, there seems reason to imagine that two distinct demes bore this same name (see Boeckh, in the Commentary appended to his translation of the Antigonê of Sophoklês, pp. 190, 191: and Ross, Die Demen von Attika, pp. 10, 11). It is in the grove of the Eumenides, hard by this temple of Poseidon, that Sophoklês has laid the scene of his immortal drama, the Œdipus Koloneus.
[46] Compare the statement in Lysias (Orat. xii, cont. Eratosth. s. 76, p. 127) respecting the small numbers who attended and voted at the assembly by which the subsequent oligarchy of Thirty was named.
[47] Thucyd. viii, 68. Ἐλθόντας δὲ αὐτοὺς τετρακοσίους ὄντας ἐς τὸ βουλευτήριον, ἄρχειν ὅπῃ ἂν ἄριστα γιγνώσκωσιν, αὐτοκράτορας, καὶ τοὺς πεντακισχιλίους δὲ ξυλλέγειν, ὁπόταν αὐτοῖς δοκῇ.
[48] Thucyd. viii, 66. ἦν δὲ τοῦτο εὐπρεπὲς πρὸς τοὺς πλείους, ἐπεὶ ἕξειν γε τὴν πόλιν οἵπερ καὶ μεθιστάναι ἔμελλον.
Plutarch, Alkibiad. c. 26.
[49] Thucyd. viii, 72. Πέμπουσι δὲ ἐς τὴν Σάμον δέκα ἄνδρας ... διδάξοντας—πεντακισχίλιοι δὲ ὅτι εἶεν, καὶ οὐ τετρακόσιοι μόνον, οἱ πράσσοντες.
viii, 86. Οἱ δ᾽ ἀπήγγελλον ὡς οὔτε ἐπὶ διαφθορᾷ τῆς πόλεως ἡ μετάστασις γένοιτο, ἀλλ᾽ ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ ... τῶν δὲ πεντακισχιλίων ὅτε πάντες ἐν τῷ μέρει μεθέξουσιν, etc.