Now the ancient constitution, as it existed before the time of Draco,
was organized as follows. The magistrates were elected according to
qualifications of birth and wealth. At first they governed for life,
but subsequently for terms of ten years. The first magistrates, both in
date and in importance, were the King, the Polemarch, and the Archon.
The earliest of these offices was that of the King, which existed from
ancestral antiquity. To this was added, secondly, the office of
Polemarch, on account of some of the kings proving feeble in war; for
it was on this account that Ion was invited to accept the post on an
occasion of pressing need. The last of the three offices was that of
the Archon, which most authorities state to have come into existence in
the time of Medon. Others assign it to the time of Acastus, and adduce
as proof the fact that the nine Archons swear to execute their oaths
'as in the days of Acastus,' which seems to suggest that it was in his
time that the descendants of Codrus retired from the kingship in return
for the prerogatives conferred upon the Archon. Whichever way it may
be, the difference in date is small; but that it was the last of these
magistracies to be created is shown by the fact that the Archon has no
part in the ancestral sacrifices, as the King and the Polemarch have,
but exclusively in those of later origin. So it is only at a
comparatively late date that the office of Archon has become of great
importance, through the dignity conferred by these later additions. The
Thesmothetae were many years afterwards, when these offices had already
become annual, with the object that they might publicly record all
legal decisions, and act as guardians of them with a view to
determining the issues between litigants. Accordingly their office,
alone of those which have been mentioned, was never of more than annual
duration.
Such, then, is the relative chronological precedence of these offices.
At that time the nine Archons did not all live together. The King
occupied the building now known as the Boculium, near the Prytaneum, as
may be seen from the fact that even to the present day the marriage of
the King's wife to Dionysus takes place there. The Archon lived in the
Prytaneum, the Polemarch in the Epilyceum. The latter building was
formerly called the Polemarcheum, but after Epilycus, during his term
of office as Polemarch, had rebuilt it and fitted it up, it was called
the Epilyceum. The Thesmothetae occupied the Thesmotheteum. In the time
of Solon, however, they all came together into the Thesmotheteum. They
had power to decide cases finally on their own authority, not, as now,
merely to hold a preliminary hearing. Such then was the arrangement of
the magistracies. The Council of Areopagus had as its constitutionally
assigned duty the protection of the laws; but in point of fact it
administered the greater and most important part of the government of
the state, and inflicted personal punishments and fines summarily upon
all who misbehaved themselves. This was the natural consequence of the
facts that the Archons were elected under qualifications of birth and
wealth, and that the Areopagus was composed of those who had served as
Archons; for which latter reason the membership of the Areopagus is the
only office which has continued to be a life-magistracy to the present
day.