The popular Assembly met about forty times per year - four regular meetings each month (the Attic year was divided into ten months). Extraordinary meetings also took place at times of crisis, the so-called congresses or assemblies of fear and disturbance. During the 5^thcentury B.C. it met at Pnyka, a small hill to the west of the Acropolis, where there was an altar to Zeus Agoreus. During the 4^thcentury meetings were held at the theatre of Dionysus.

Meetings began very early in the morning and usually went on until sunset. Before a meeting began, a boar was sacrificed and its blood used to demarcate the space within which the citizens would gather. Following that, the crier would read out the preliminary decrees (provouleumata) of the Council of Five Hundred which was followed by the preordination and the crier would ask, “Who wishes to speak?” Although in theory the principal of equality held, in reality, the orators spoke almost exclusively. The citizen called to the rostrum wore a wreath of myrtle on his head, and was considered inviolable and sacred. However, he was cautioned to be extremely cautious in his proposals since he could mislead the people. For that reason at each vote reference was made to the person who had made the proposal, so he could be punished later should his proposal prove misleading. The vote was made by a show of hands, but in certain cases it was secret.

The first of the four meetings of every prytaneia (presidency) was called the ‘sovereign meeting’ and the agenda was set in advance. The approval of the magistrates in office was voted on, that is, if they were thought to govern well; the city’s food supply and the defence of the borders. Other issues for discussion included the eisangelies (the impeachment of citizens for high treason, the best-known cases of which were the mockery of the Eleusinian Mysteries and the mutilation of the hermae on the eve of the Sicilian expedition of 415 B.C.), as well as questions of ostracism and the naturalization.

When the Popular Assembly met for judicial cases, it was called Heliaia and was the main body of sworn jurors of the state. The council of Heliaia held meetings in sections of five to six hundred citizens with a special provision to represent all ten tribes equally. Thus the litigious appetite of the Athenians was satisfied. Aristophanes masterfully satirised this in his play The Wasps.