Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/398

374 fllSTQEY OF GREECE. who contrast them with the unsworn public assembly.' And there can be no doubt that the nomothetse afforded much. greater security than the public assembly, for a proper decision. Tliat security depended upon the same principle as we see to pervade all the constitutional arrangements of Athens i upon a fraction of the people casually taken, but sufiiciently numerous to have the same interest with the whole, — not permanent, but del- egated for the occasion, — assembled under a solemn sanction, and furnished with a full exposition of both sides of the case. The power of passing psephisms, or special decrees, still remained with the public assembly, which was doubtless much more liable to be surprised into hasty or inconsiderate decision than either the dikastery or the nomothetae, — in spite of the necessity of previous authority from the senate of Five Hundred, before any proposition could be submitted to it. As an additional security both to the public assembly and the nomothetae against being entrapped into decisions contrary to existing law, another remarkable provision has yet to be men- • Demosthen. cont. Timokrat. c. 20, pp. 72.5, 726. 'Ap' oiii' ru 6okeI avft- <j>ipeiv Ty -KokzL Toioi/To; vofioc, bg ^Luaarriplov yvuaeuc: avTog Kvpiurepoc earai, Kal rag vnb riJv OfiufioKOTuv yvuiaeig rolg uvu/ioTOic Trpoara^ei 'kveiv ; 'Ev^vncla'de, unb tov diKaarriplov Kal rtjg KarayvCiaeug ol dienfidrjaEv (Timokrates) eirl rbv dfifiov, ek/cAetttwv tov TjdiKTjKora! Compare De- mosthen. cont. Eubulid. c. 15. See, about the nomothetae, Schomann, De Comitiis, eh. vii, p. 248, seqq., and Platner, Prozess und Klagen bey den Attikem, Abschn, ii, 3, 3, p. 33, seqq. Both of them maintain, in my opinion erroneously, that the nomothetaa are an institution of Solon. Demosthenes, indeed, ascribes it to Solon (Schomann, p. 268) : but this counts, in my view, for nothing, when I see that all the laws which he cites for governing the proceedings of the no- mothet£e, bear unequivocal evidence of a time much later. Schomann ad- mits this to a certain extent, and in reference to the style of these laws, — " Hlonim quidem fragmentorum, qu£E in TimokrateA extant, recentiorum Solonis cctate formam atque orationem apertum est.'" But it is not merely the style which proves them to be of post- Solonian date : it is the mention of post-Solonian institutions, such as the ten prytanies into which the year was divided, the ten statues of the eponymi, — all derived from the crea- tion of the ten tribes by Kleisthenes. On the careless employment of the name of Solon by the orators, whenever they desire to make a strong im- pression OTi the dikasts, I have already remarked.