pitied rather than to be ruined. They tell me that many women, citizens by birth, have become both nurses and wool-dressers and vintagers, owing to the misfortunes of our country at that period. I have confidence in my case, and I come as an appellant to your tribunal for protection. I know that the courts of law are more powerful not only than my fellow-townsmen, but even than the Council of the popular Assembly; and justly so—for your verdicts are in every respect most righteous."
He concludes his address to the jury with the threat of suicide already mentioned.
One more of these cases must suffice, It is an amusing one—an action, as we should say, for assault and battery. There were, it seems, occasional outbursts of rowdyism even at refined Athens, and the police were not always "on the spot" to repress them. Some of the "fast" young men about town formed themselves into clubs—like the "Mohock Club" of the last century, whose lawless proceedings are the subject of one of the numbers of the 'Spectator.'[1] "An outrageous ambition (as the 'Spectator' says) of doing all possible hurt to their fellow-creatures was the great cement of their assemblies, and the only qualification required in the members." There was a club at Athens which called itself the Triballi, the name of one of the wildest and most savage tribes of Thrace. The members of this delightful fraternity used to commit all manner of horrid and indecent outrages on inoffensive
- ↑ No. 324
