If there was any difference of opinion the matter was referred to the Ecclesia for settlement.
The members which make up the One Ecclesia are not communities but individual men.
It was found that the government by Boule and Ecclesia did not mean popular control in the full sense; it meant government by the leisured classes, inasmuch as the industrious farmer or herdsman could not leave his work to give his vote at the Ecclesia, or do his duty as a councillor.
The Greek ecclesiastes means one who takes part in the deliberations of an assembly (ecclesia), a debater or speaker in an assembly (Plato, Gorgias, 452 E), and this is the general sense of the Hebrew word.
An important event must be referred probably to the year 451, - the law of Pericles, by which citizenship (including the right to vote in the Ecclesia and to sit on paid juries) was restricted to those who could prove themselves the children of an Athenian father and mother (E d,u001v avroiv).
