Book of the Magistrates of the Athenians

Aeschylus: not that celebrated poet, but another born in Athens and not celebrated by any writer. The second Nomothetos are legislators of any manner, and because the word is convenient to the effect, the Athenians meant a thousand citizens gathered and elected in a group, who had power to make the laws observed, changing them, seeing them, and adjusting them. This Nomothetos had authority to refer to the whole people whether the proposed laws pleased them or not. Nor could the bills be valid if they were not first subscribed by all the Nomothetic Magistrates. These also were accustomed to be present in judging grave causes, and if the defendant or the accuser did not obey their sentence, they punished him in three drachmae units of currency in the presence of the Archon chief magistrate. This is entirely the opinion of Pollux. But Budé, according to Demosthenes, narrates elsewhere and more widely this thing and in what manner those laws were accustomed to be proposed, and therefore we will say his own words. Demosthenes commemorates that Solon, among other things, instituted this: that when some law was proposed to the People, it first had to be recited by the legislator, after it had been written in some place more notable and more frequented by the people in the City, after the Notary gave it to be read in the forum, so that if something in it did not please, it could be amended by them, and if it pleased, that it be given to the Nomothetes who would ultimately approve it, which, done, they would make it observed. This says Budé, whose comparison, so that it might be clearer, I will refer to the words of Macrobius. Rutilius (he says) wrote that the Romans