Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/381

CHAKGES AT ATHENS UXDER P£I;1KLES. 357 annually appointed, to one of whom — or to some other citizen adopted by mutual consent of the parties — all private disputes ■were submitted in the first instance. If dissatisfied with the de- cision, either party might afterwards carry the matter before the dikastery : but it appears that in many cases the decision of the arbitrator was acquiesced in without this ultimate resort. I do not here mean to afiirm that there never was any trial by the people before the time of Perikles and Ephialtes : I doubt not that, before their time, the numerous judicial assembly called Heliaea, pronounced upon charges against accountable magistrates as well as upon various other accusations of public importance ; and perhaps in some cases, separate bodies of them may have been drawn by lot for particular trials. But it is not the less true, that the systematic distribution and constant employment of the numerous dikasts of Athens cannot have begun before the age of these two statesmen, since it was only then that the practice of paying them began : for so large a sacrifice of time on the part of poor men, wherein M. Boeckh states,i doubtless in very exagger- ated language, that " nearly one-third of the citizens sat as judges every day," cannot be conceived without an assured remuneration. From and after the time of Perikles, these dikasteries were the exclusive assemblies for trial of all causes, civil as well as criminal, with some special exceptions, such as cases of homicide and a few others : but before his time, the greater number of these causes had been adjudged either by individual magistrates or by the senate of Areopagus. We may therefore conceive how great and important was the revolution wrought by that states- man, when he first organized these dika^ic assemblies into sys- tematic action, and transferred to them nearly all the judicial power which had before been exercised by magistrates and sen- ' Public Economy of the Athenians, book ii, chap, xiv, p. 227. Engl, transl. M. Boeckh must mean that the whole six thousand, or nearly the whole, were employed every day. It appears to me that this supposition greatly overstates both the number of days and the number of men actually em- ployed. For the inference in the text, however, a much smaller number is sufficient. See the more accurate remark of Schomann, Antiquit. Juris Public. GrsECor., sect, bcxi, p. 310.