Boule

The boule was a council that ran the daily affairs of a city in ancient Greece; originally a council of nobles advising a king, it was hereditary in some oligarchies and chosen by lot for one year in democracies. Athens is the best documented: under Solon it had 400 members, 100 from each of the four tribes, and after 508 BCE Cleisthenes made it a council of 500, 50 from each of his ten new tribes, chosen by lot from male citizens aged 30 or more. It set the agenda of the Assembly and carried out its decisions, and after the reforms of Ephialtes and Pericles it took over many functions of the Areopagus. The name survives as the Vouli, the Parliament of modern Greece.