A SATIRE ON ATHENIAN LEGAL METHODS. THE Athenians, a people versatile in character and gifted with extraordi nary quickness of intellect, delighted in the excitement of forensic contests; but this was not the only attraction which rendered the office of dicast, or juror, acceptable to them. Pericles introduced the custom of paying each of them for his attendance, and the demagogue Cleon, whose great object was to ingratiate himself with the populace, trebled the amount; so that the exercise of their judicial functions became, to a large number of the citizens, a means of livelihood as well as of amusement, and they found it more agreeable to meet their gossips on the bench, and listen to the speeches of the suitors or their friends, than devote themselves to the drudgery of their ordinary trades. Hence we find Isocrates complaining that the lower orders at Athens preferred to stay at home and sit as dicasts in the courts, rather than engage in the maritime service of the State. "The real power of the Athenian demus, as he himself knew, lay in the courts of law. There was his throne, there his sceptre. There he found compliment, court, and adu lations rained upon him so thick that his imagination began at last to believe what his flatterers assured him, that he was a god, and not a man. And a god in some sense he was, for to no earthly tribunal lay there an appeal from him; his person was irre sponsible, his decrees irreversible; and if ever there was a despotism complete in it self, ' pure, unsophisticated, dephlegmated, defecated ' despotism, it was that of an Athenian court of judicature." 1 This passionate fondness of the Atheni ans for the exercise of their judicial func tions, which were such an agreeable source of income to the six thousand dicasts who sat as jurymen and judges in the courts, is satirized by Aristophanes in his comedy of 1 Preface to Mitchell's editions of the "Wasps of Aristophanes."
the " Wasps," — one of the most valuable as well as amusing pictures of the character and manners of that remarkable people, which time has spared us. We there see the vices of the people in full bloom, and we cannot but admire the courage of the poet who ventured to bring the subject of " law reform " in such a shape before the sovereign people, and lash the abuses by which the temples of justice at Athens were profaned. He knew well the difficulty of the task he had undertaken, and says: — "'T is more than comic art can do, however sharp and witty, To cure disease thus bred and born, the plaguespot of our city." As the coffers of the State were replen ished by the fines set upon those who were convicted, and a large portion of the money thus obtained was expended upon public shows and festivals, the temptation to give an unfavorable verdict was almost irresist ible, and small was the chance of escape if the accused happened to be wealthy. Thus the chorus of dicast wasps rejoices in the thought that they will soon have Laches be fore them in court, and — that the general is rich. "But hasten, comrades, quickly on! for Laches stands for trial; And he has hived a store of wealth, of that there 's no denial." The plot of this admirable comedy is as follows : Philocleon is an old gentleman who attends the court of Heliaea as one of the dicasts, or jurymen, and his zeal in the discharge of his official duties amounts to a kind of insanity. He cannot sleep for thinking of the bench, and prefers to his comfortable bed at home a shake-down at the door of the court, that he may secure a good seat in the front row when business commences. There, with his staff in his hand, and his judicial cloak on
