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The Council formerly had sovereign power to pass sentences of fine, imprisonment and death. But once it had brought Lysimachus to the public executioner, when, as he already sat awaiting death, Eumelides of the deme Alopece rescued him, saying that no citizen ought to die without sentence by a jury; and when a trial was held in a jury-court Lysimachus got off, and he got the nickname of 'the man from the drum-stick'1 and the People deprived the Council of the power to sentence to death and imprisonment and to impose fines, and made a law that all verdicts of guilty and penalties passed by the Council must be brought before the jury-court by the Legislators, and that any vote of the jurymen should be sovereign. [2]

Trials of officials are held in most cases by the Council, particularly those of the officials who handle funds; but the verdict of the Council is not sovereign, but subject to appeal to the jury-court. Private persons also have the right to lay an information of illegal procedure against any official they may wish; but in these cases also there is an appeal to the People if the Council passes a verdict of guilty. [3]

The Council also checks the qualifications of the Councillors who are to hold office for the following year, and of the Nine Archons. And formerly it had sovereign power to reject them as disqualified, but now they have an appeal to the jury-court. [4]

In these matters therefore the Council is not sovereign, but it prepares resolutions for the People, and the People cannot pass any measures that have not been prepared by the Council and published in writing in advance by the Presidents; for the proposer who carries such a measure is ipso facto liable to penalty by indictment for illegal procedure.

1 i.e., the man who escaped the bastinado.

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