Split out from "Ancient Lead Mining on the Halkidiki Peninsula & Alexander's Conquest of the Levant"
@Cyclops
Just an aside here to avoid OT posting.
Good link, but I there is a mistake in hanging much to much on thin evidence and creating sort of a historical myth that takes on a life of its own.
First, I object to the word Police even thought it has been widely used by many historians and text books etc over time. Police to modern reader it implies far too wide a scope of power, authority and scale of operation than any source allows. Critically in the references by Aristophanes it is an Athenian Magistrate of one type or another who has the power of action not the Scythian/Archers. Notably they seem not to have been present or played a role in period of assassinations that helped create and install the fear and suspicion that made the coup of 411 possible.
That last point is interesting since in origin both the orators describe a corporate military body, given the listing with military reforms and other new Athenian forces post Salamis. Such a force should have been ideal for the tracking down of assassins. Protecting the special assembly en mass when it was moved outside the walls for the fatal day of coup voting (a move Kagan rightly notes was meant to scare away attendance by the poor not of hoplite or cavalry status) would also seem to have been a potential function of an actual Police force and one that would be disinterested politically. Also note they do not figure in the Pericles list of Athenian military assets in the first Year of the Peloponnesian war..
Using Athenian is also problematic since they are limited at most to the City proper not seen in the Piraeus or on the walls or at the gates etc.
On balance Agora mall cops.
Sorry a lot of typing for a tiny point but it always bugs me to see them called Athenian Police. But it is a bit more than a peeve, since the sort of truism of them as Mecenary police bleeds subtly into arguments about the status of Athenian horse archers (or their origins) and other flat assertions that Peltasts in Athens are mercenaries or such quite in the face of evidence (5th or 4th centuries).