Page "Athenian democracy" Paragraph 19

In the 5th century BC, there were 10 fixed assembly meetings per year, one in each of the ten state months, with other meetings called as needed.

In the following century the meetings were set to forty a year, with four in each state month.

One of these was now called the main meeting, kyria ekklesia.

Additional meetings might still be called, especially as up until 355 BC there were still political trials that were conducted in the assembly rather than in court.

The assembly meetings did not occur at fixed intervals, as they had to avoid clashing with the annual festivals that followed the lunar calendar.

There was also a tendency for the four meetings to be aggregated toward the end of each state month.