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The Strategi at Athens in the Fifth Century. When Did They Enter on Office?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Extract
It has been assumed for many years that the Strategi, though elected earlier in the year, did not enter office till the first day of Hecatombaeon (July or August), at the same time as the other yearly magistrates. There was considerable controversy about this in the nineteenth century, but the question was thought to be finally settled then, and it may seem presumptuous to reopen it so long after. But two important discoveries have been made since the ‘orthodox’ theory was generally adopted; and together they involve certain difficulties, which suggest that the whole question should be reconsidered. These are, first, the recovery of the Ἀθηναίων Πολιτεία, which fixes the date of the election in the Seventh Prytany (44 § 4); and, second, Merritt's work on the Attic Calendar, which supersedes Keil's system of chronology, and fixes the beginning of the Seventh Prytany in the second week of February.
Both these authorities were unknown to Beloch, whose arguments in favour of the ‘orthodox’ view (Attische Politik seit Perikles) have been generally accepted as the last word on the subject. Beloch's name deservedly carries weight, but his conclusions have perhaps been adopted over-readily by many who have, not studied the evidence on which they are based. It will suffice here to say that most of his arguments are devoted to showing that the election took place in April—a date now disproved by the Ἀθηναίων Πολιτεία—while his arguments with regard to the time of entering on office are slight and unconvincing.
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- Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1939
References
1 The wording of the Ἀθηναίων Πολιτεία (44 § 4) is obscure: 
The meaning is naturally assumed to be that the elections were held on the first auspicious day of the Seventh Prytany; but the words might equally well be translated, ‘on any auspicious day after the Sixth Prytany.’ Such a vague way of fixing the time of an important annual event, however, seems highly improbable; and the first interpretation is doubtless correct.
2 An inscription (IG. I2 324) contains the words, 
This payment was made in October 425, some time after the capture of Sphacteria. Demosthenes was at that time doubly entitled to the designation στρατηγός, first (as shown above), because, though not one of the Ten, he was holding an independent military command; secondly, because he had been selected by Cleon to share the command bestowed on him by the vote of the Ecclesia.
3 Arguments as to the date of the election have been based on a passage in the Clouds (581–586); but the foundations seem too weak for the superstructure. The passage runs as follows:—
.
A scholiast on these lines says: 
, (actually, on 29th October, 425).
It is difficult to see how this date is consistent with the words 
(‘at the moment when you were choosing Cleon general’)—presumably in February 424. Moreover, if a lunar eclipse is implied in l. 584, the next line seems to record the unusual phenomenon of a simultaneous eclipse of the sun.
It is easier to assume that the scholiast, in the inconsequential manner of his tribe, seeing the word ἐξέλειπε, was reminded of the eclipse recorded for 425, and jotted down his note without further regard to the context.
On the face of it, the poet seems simply to mean that the Clouds expressed their displeasure at Cleon's election by sending unusually bad weather about that time; adding, that they made it so dark that you could not see the sun or the moon in the sky. This was more in their power than producing either solar or lunar eclipses, events which would require the active intervention of Zeus, the now-discarded lord of the heavens.