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368 fflSTORY OF GREECE. members of the Areopagus, after the year of archonship was expired. Instead of their previous unmeasured range of super- vision and interference, they were now deprived of all judicial sanction, beyond that small power of fining, which was still left both to individual magistrates, and to the senate of Five Hundred. But the cognizance of homicide was still expressly reserved to them, — for the procedure, in this latter case, religious not less than judicial, was so thoroughly consecrated by ancient feeling, that no reformer could venture to disturb or remove it.i It was ' Demosthen. cont. Neser. p. 1372 ; cont. Aristokrat. p. 642. Meier (Attischer Prozess, p. 143) thinks that the senate of Areopagus was also deprived of its cognizance of homicide as well as of its other functions, and that this was only restored after the expulsion of the Thirty. He supposes this to be proved by a passage of Lysias which he produces (De Caede Eratosthenis, pp. 31-33). M. Boeckh and O. Miiller adopt the same opinion as Meier, and seem- ingly on the authority of the same passage, (see the Dissertation of O. Miiller on the Eumenides of JEschylus, p. 113, Eng. transl.) But in the first place, this opinion is contradicted by an express statement in the anony- mous biographer of Thncydides, who mentions the trial of Pyrilampes for murder before the Areopagus ; and contradicted also, seemingly, by Xeno- phon (Memorab. iii, 5, 20) ; in the next place, the passage of Lysias appears to me to bear a different meaning. He says : w /cat ■Kurptov ian kol cp' vjiuv ur:o- oidorai. tov (povov rtif diicag dmal^eiv. now — even if we admit the conjectural reading c^' vfiCiv in place of ed>' vjxlv to be correct — still, this restoration of functions to the Areopagus, refers naturally to the restored democracy after the violent interruption occasioned by the oligarchy of Thirty. Consider ing how many persons the Thirty caused to be violently put to death, and the complete subversion of all the laws which they introduced, it seems impossible to suppose that the Areopagus could have continued to hold its sittings and tiy accusations for intentional homicide, under their govern- ment. On the return of the democracy after the Thirty were expelled, the functions of the senate of Areopagus would return also. If the supposition of the eminent authors mentioned above were correct, — if it were true that the Areopagus was deprived not only of its supervis- ing function generally, but also of its cognizance of homicide, during the fifty-five years which elapsed between the motion of Ephialtes and the expulsion of the Thirty, — this senate must have been without any func- tions at all during that long interval ; it must have been for all practical purposes non-existent. But during so long a period of total stispension, the citizens would have lost all their respect for it ; it could not have re- tained so much influence as we know that it actually possessed immedi- ately before the Thirty (Ly.«ias c. Eratosth. c. 11, p. 126); and it would