Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898)

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Tettarakonta

（οἱ τετταράκοντα). “The Forty.” Certain officers chosen by lot, who made regular circuits through the demes of Attica, whence they are called δικασταὶ κατὰ δήμους, to decide all cases of αἰκία and τὰ περὶ τῶν βιαίων; and also all other private causes where the matter in dispute was not above the value of ten drachmae. Their number was originally thirty, but was increased to forty after the expulsion of the Thirty Tyrants and the restoration of the democracy by Thrasybulus, in consequence, it is said, of the hatred of the Athenians to the number of thirty (Pollux, viii. 100). See Schömann, Ant. Jur. Publ. p. 267; and Att. Process, pp. 88-93 (ed. Lipsius).