2

to subscribe a benevolence for the public necessities, and a certain tax was paid by the ten tribes. These sources, however, were inadequate, or by special impost on and a great burthen of expense was therefore thrown on a few wealthy the rich. citizens. At one time, these amounted to three hundred ;' at another, ten classes were made, each containing one hundred and twenty persons, of those possessing land, manufactories, or money in trade; and this whole body was divided into two portions, one of which furnished its contingent every alternate year. This taxation was inflicted, not as a definite sum, but in the shape of an order to perform such public services as the equipment of a trireme,-the appointment of a chorus for the tragic or the comic stage, the exhibition of a military dance or musical entertainment,- -or a public supper to a district. Of those, however, who were thus chosen, any one might escape the impost, provided he could find a substitute who was better able to bear it. The person thus cited was obliged by law either to take the place of the other in the list of contributors, or to exchange fortunes with him. From this system sprung much active zeal; one party endeavouring to discover property, the other to conceal it, while the informers thrived at the expense of both. "All the jury," says Isocrates, when he was himself subjected to this pecuniary challenge, "all the jury should exercise that sort of judgment which they would themselves expect to receive; reflecting that, owing to the impudence of sycophants, it is uncertain who may be placed in this danger, and compelled to plead, as I do now, before those who are to pass their votes upon him." These public duties were, indeed, beset by considerable difficulties: if they were discharged expensively, they brought private embarrassment; if frugally, public unpopularity. Thus Socrates tells one of his opulent young friends, that the state will make him expend much in rearing horses, in sacrifices, in receiving strangers and feasting the citizens, in choruses and gymnastic exercises, in naval charges, "and such contributions as you will not easily bear; and if you do any these scantily, the Athenians will punish you as if you had stolen some of their property.' In one of the orations also of Lysias, after a long enumeration of similar public services, with their respective cost, the speaker adds, that had they been performed merely according to the letter of the law, a fourth part of the expense would have sufficed.

993

of

tenure of

From the preceding observations, it will have appeared, that the Precarious people, whose political freedom was their perpetual boast, held indi- Athenian vidually the blessings of this very liberty by a slender and precarious freedom. tenure. It has been seen, that, with reference to treason, peculation, and the public services, the law afforded, and the informers employed,

Libanius, Præfat. to Isocrat. de Permut.

2 The casuist quoted by Paschal says, "Quand on voit un voleur resolu et prêt à voler une personne pauvre, on peut pour l'en detourner lui assigner quelque personne riche en particulier, pour le voler au lieu de l'autre." Lettres Prov. ii. 459. 3 Xenoph. Mem.

Athenian lawsuits.

Preliminary forms of a lawsuit.

The jury

sworn against bribery,

yet openly

such power as endangered the security of life, property, and reputation. The temper with which these and other charges were received by the judicial assembly, may be learnt from the Greek orators; they, of course, knew well the disposition of their audience, and what line d argument was likely to bear upon it effectively. The constant success which attended Lysias, makes his speeches very important, as illustrations of national character; for the jury whom he addressed were not so much representatives of the nation as the nation itself. To this subject, then, with this view, inquiry shall now be directed, after a few preliminary observations on the technical management of a Athenian lawsuit, and a picture of an Athenian dicast, from the comic pencil of Aristophanēs.

As the archons were, in virtue of their office, presidents of the court of judicature, any application from an injured party was first made to some one of the body. If he thought an action would lie, the plaintiff cited the defendant; the matter in question was then discussed; each party made oath that his cause was just. A sum of money was deposited by the plaintiff as a pledge that he would cotinue the suit, which sum went to the jurymen' if he failed; the various depositions and documents were then placed in a vessel, in which they were carried into court. There the jury swore that they would never accept, directly or indirectly, a reward for pronouncing their sentence, nor willingly suffer any of their fellows to be influenced by any artifice whatsoever: nor refuse impartial attention, either the plaintiff or the defendant. The parties brought with them s many friends as they could; their speeches were often composed br some of the professed rhetoricians; a practice which is said to have originated with Isocrates,, and which Demosthenes did not disdain. The length of these was determined by the archon, according to the nature of the cause, and measured by a clepsydra, or water-clock.

Vain, however, were all the precautions used to secure honourable conduct in these Athenian dicasts, who were judges of the law as wel as of the fact, though a scrutiny preceded their admission to the office, and the solemnities of an oath attended it. Eschines accuses them of habitual inattention to the proceedings; and the spot where stood practised it. the statue of Lycus, was as notorious for the negotiations of bribery as were the porticoes of the Piræus for mercantile transactions. But their character is to be learnt most fully from the comedy of The Wasps, whose stings were no insignificant emblems of the author's meaning, It must be remembered, that the originals of these dramatic characters were the very audience before whom they were produced; a fact. which is at once a proof of the author's boldness, and a pledge of the fidelity of the representation.

The

Athenian dicast,

The apparatus of the Athenian dicast was very simple; a cloak in which he enveloped himself, a few beans, by means of which he gave his vote, a tablet which entitled him to his pay, and a staff, which 1 Schol, on Æschin.

Isoc. de Permut.

as described

Aristophanes

directed him to the court, where he was to take his seat. There he The dicast, sticks, with the tenacity of bark; thither he repairs at early dawn, in the after dreams of coming litigation.1 That any defendant should be Wasps of acquitted, would cost him at least a fever, if not his life. Persuasion S could no more mitigate his severity, than the art of cookery could mollify a stone; not skate nor eels are so dear to him for dinner as a little dish of hot lawsuits. His invocation is to the god of bribery. What character is so enviable, what station so luxurious, as the dicast's? what so gratifying as his power and his privileges? The attentive salutations of the great, their obsequious services, the pressure of some gentle hand which has ere now filled itself from the public treasury, awakening in the dicast a compassionate fellowfeeling, by reminding him of his own past peculations,—the promises which are made and broken,—the entreaties addressed to his pity,the melancholy spectacle of a son's lamentation,—the tempting offer of a daughter's honour, the wit that is employed to disarm his anger, the opportunities, moreover, of altering a will, and thus disposing of an heiress to the highest bidder, the impunity, too, of these proceedings and their daily pay,-the ready money he carries home,—and the caresses,' conjugal and filial, which are bestowed in consequence. Such is the dicast's public importance, and such his domestic happiness. The remainder of the play is in a strain of still broader drollery. The public functionary admits there are some inconveniencies connected with his station, which it is proposed to remedy, by establishing for himself a little court of justice in his own house. There he can officiate and eat lentils at the same time; sickness will not suspend his pay; if he falls asleep during the defendant's speech, his own domestic chanticleer will wake him. The statue of Lycus completes the establishment. The first offender brought before the court is a dog for stealing a cheese; his canine companion prosecutes, and complains loudly that he received no share of the stolen property. With difficulty can the dicast be persuaded" to hear the other side: the witnesses called by the president are, the dish, the pestle, and the cheeseknife. In vain are pleaded the services of the defendant, in watching the house and fold; in vain his puppies are produced in court, weeping and whining to extort compassion. The dicast's habitual severity prevails, and it is only by his unintentionally dropping his vote into the wrong box, that the culprit is acquitted."

8

law.

What now are the dark spots of the Athenian character which are Courts of suffered to appear through this veil of comic raillery,-like things "neither rich nor rare," preserved in transparent amber? They are plainly these that the dicast, while he was discharging an office of 1 Ar. Vesp. 93.

4 Ib. 511.

7 Ib. 606.

2 Ib. 160.

3 Ib. 280.

6 lb. 587.

10 Ib. 919.

11 Xenophon mentions interest, entreaty, and flattery, as customary causes of acquittal by the dicasts. Mem. iv. 4.

The Greek

orators

prove the corruptness of Greek judges.

much solemnity as a moral obligation, and much importance as a civil institution, was habitually swayed by his own interest; the justice or injustice of the case before him, and the truth or falsehood of the testimony adduced, having little influence on its decision. The imputation thus cast upon him by the sportive humour of the stage is justified by the real pleadings of the bar. The remains of the Greek orators are, indeed, the mirror of their age; and if the imag they reflect is unsightly, it is because the very form and features of justice are distorted. They found their audience alive to all the graces of style, and easily swayed by the force of eloquence; and, insteal of employing their transcendent talents to correct public opinion and elevate national character, they fattened on the corruption of both by falsehood and by flattery. They addressed their hearers as the repre sentatives of equity and law, which, nevertheless, they might alter or apply in any way they pleased. "You ought," says Lysias, "to be in this case not only judges, but legislators; for whatever decision you shall pass now will henceforth be a precedent; and I think a good citizen and a just juryman ought to handle the laws in such a way as may hereafter be advantageous to the state." As prosecutors, these pleaders scrupled not to avow the motives of personal resentment, or to produce facts altogether irrelevant to the matter in hand, if they were likely to tell upon the feelings of the audience. As defendants, their apologies related little to the circumstances of the case, turning chiefly on past services to the state, which might establish a claim on the gratitude of the jury, or on promises of such future exertions as may excite their hopes. Or, if it suited their purpose better, they would themselves condemn these artifices; thus recognising their existence, while they disclaim their use. "It is customary," says Lysias,* "to make no defence as to the matter of the prosecution, but they mislead you by narrations respecting other matters of their own; their gallantry as soldiers, or their victories as commanders of galleys, or their skill in gaining the friendship of hostile cities." Again, "Yet we see you, oh judges! if one presents you his children, with tears and lamentation, pitying the disgrace which condemnation would entail on himself and his offspring, and remitting the punishment on their account, though you know not whether, i their manhood, they will prove good citizens or bad." Now, since a is the effect of such pleadings as these, which makes them a faith index of the character of the hearers, it is fit the subject should be first illustrated from the speeches of one who was, when he pleased, In Alcib.

1 Isocrat, de Pace.

We must not forget that all this intemperance of language, all this bitter vective, which occur in the Attic speeches, was not poured out in the wrath excitement of the moment, but was the artful composition of the pleader, calmly reflecting on the circumstances of the case, and judging, from his experience of human nature, what were the topics most advantageous to be urged. Kennedy, Dem. Pref. In Eratosth.

to the cases

among the most successful in their application. The oration' against The pleadings the son of the great Alcibiadēs, exemplifies the open avowal of often motives of personal resentment, where no such feelings ought to have irrelevant found admission, the indiscriminate severity of the penal law of under trial. Athens, and the introduction of matter, totally irrelevant to the merits of the case. 66 'I, oh jurymen!" says the prosecutor, "thinking this man my private enemy, and now having by him been injured-enmity, moreover, having existed formerly between his father and mine,will endeavour, with your assistance, to avenge myself upon him for all his deeds." And what was the cause in question? it related to a point of military discipline, namely, that when the defendant was ordered to serve in the heavy-armed infantry, he joined the cavalry. Upon this, a case apparently so unconnected with any considerations of a personal character, not only are the immoralities of his own life brought forward, but also the political treacheries of his father,—the invasion of Attica by the latter, and the suggesting to the Lacedæmonians the plan of fortifying Decelea,-from all which circumstances, the orator concludes, 66 wherefore, it behoves both you and all future judges to punish any of the family whom you can apprehend." From another speech of Lysias, it appears how little reliance a defendant could safely place on the facts of his case, however favourable, even though the Areopagus were the court in which it was to be tried. The accusation relates to the destruction of a sacred olive-tree: to refute this, not only is the charge shown to be in its details utterly improbable and absurd, but it is proved by the testimony of successive tenants of the land, that the tree or stump named in the indictment never existed at all. But even this fact does not dispense with the necessity of humble supplication. "I should be the most wretched of men if I shall have been unjustly made an exile, childless and solitary,-my family desolate, my mother destitute, and myself deprived, by the basest accusations, of my country, for which I have so often fought by sea and land." Such a suppliant evidently despairs of obtaining from the justice of his judges, that merited acquittal which, by this appeal, he endeavours to procure from their com= passion.

From the character, however, of the Athenian dicast, an address to his pity was not likely to be so effectual as an address to his interest. Accordingly, one accused of bribery and dreading confiscation, having enumerated his various expenses incurred for the state, adds, "You ought to consider this the most certain public income,—the property of those who are willing to undertake the cost of liturgies: you will then take as much care of my property, if you are wise, as of your own, knowing that you will still have the use of it as you have had. I suppose you all know I shall take better care of my fortune for you than those who manage the affairs of the city; if you make me poor, 1 Lysias, Reiske, 519.