The aim of this work of reference is to provide a full year-by-year list of officials from archaic and classical Athens, along with, where appropriate, a short notice of their activities, including all the evidence pertaining to an individual's office in a particular year. It also contains all state decrees datable to any year or which contain relevant information. It offers a basic reference, of a kind that has been lacking up to now, for the study of Athenian magistracies and (...) official life. The introduction gives essential details of the positions included, and the indexes give an alphabetic listing of individuals with their offices, a listing by geographical provenance (demes), and an indication of documents of disputed date. As far as possible the use of Greek and Latin has been avoided in order that the book should be accessible to a wide readership. It should prove a fundamental tool for future research. (shrink)

Laispodias was general in 414/3 and was evidently from a prominent family. Indeed the latter fact is stressed by the first citation in his entry in PA, from Theognostos' Kanones as in J. A. Cramer, Anecdota graeca e codd. manuscriptis bibliothecarum Oxoniensium II, 9.22 f.: Λαιποδίας Ἀνδρωνύμιος ἑνὸς τῶν Ἀθήνῃσιν ἐπιφανῶν. Kirchner was evidently, and reasonably, puzzled by Ἀνδρωνύμιος. The only other Laispodias in PA is no. 8962, who appears on a dedication, IG i2 616. A. E. Raubitschek included this (...) as no. 87 in Dedications from the Athenian Akropolis ; he restored Laispodias in the genitive as a patronymic and properly supposed that the two men of the name were of the same family. As for the addition ἀνδρονύμιος he asks us to compare ΣAr. Wasps 1239 and the lexicon in order that we should believe that it ‘means only that Laispodias was a proper name’. Indeed, in LSJ we find two references under ἀνδρωνύμιον as a noun meaning ‘proper name’, namely Theognostos and the scholiast. (shrink)

We know of the Atinian plebiscite only from a tantalizing reference of Gellius, apparently citing Ateius Capito: ‘nam et tribunis, inquit plebis senatus habendi ius erat, quamquam senatores non essent ante Atinium plebiscitum.’ Willems was able to note two interpretations, one of which held that the plebiscite required that all tribunes be senators already, the other that it allowed tribunes the enjoyment of senatorial rights. The first was rightly rejected; since all we know disallows the notion that an aedileship would (...) precede the tribunate, senatorial status could only come after the quaestorship and while there were only eight or less quaestors, clearly ten tribunes could hardly all be ex-quaestors. Consequently Willems adopted the second alternative: acquisition of the tribunate entailed the ius sententiae dicendae in the senate. (shrink)