ABSTRACT
In early times the elders or councillors, along with other distinguished guests, had taken their meals in the prytaneion, but, according to McDonald, 'never in later times, as far as is known, did it retain its old function as the regular meeting-place of the council. ... The typical city included a bouleuterion as a matter of course ... .'8 Yet, according to the available evidence, the Cretan cities appear to be, so far, exceptional. Weickert suggested that there was in the agora at Gortyna an archaic, apsidal bouleuterion, like that at Olympia, bearing on the inner faces of its curved and straight walls the inscription of the Code; but his argument is rejected by McDonald.9
