Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/541

Rh AREOPAGUS 483 The accuser was required to prove his relationship to the murdered person as giving him the right to prosecute ; he had to take an oath in pledge of his sincerity, and to denounce the accused. A denunciation (irp6ppr](ris) having been publicly made, the accused was regarded as polluted, and durst enter neither temple nor market-place on peril of his life. Some have thought that the practice was to make a formal denunciation three times, first at the grave of the deceased, next in the market-place, and then before the archon as just stated (Schomann, Antiquitates Jur. Pub., p. 289), but it is probable that only the last men tioned, if the others were actually made, was regarded as legal. In the fourth month, after determining that the case was to go before the Areopagus, the archon king in his capacity of president of the court laid the case before it. The court sat on the last three days of every month (Pollux, viii. 18). Of the first part of the proceedings (TrpoStKao-tai) the principal feature was the administration of an oath to the parties and the witnesses ; the ceremony consisting in the sacrifice of a wild boar, an ox, or a ram, before which those who took the oath called on the Erinnyes to destroy them and their family if they failed to speak the truth. When the evidence had been gone through (dva/cptcris) there followed the SIKT/ proper, consisting of the speeches. Each party was allowed 1 o speak twice, once, it is said, on each of the first two days, the third day being reserved for judgment. They were charged to avoid everything irrelevant to the issue. After the first speech, the accused might choose voluntary exile unless the charge against him were that of the murder of a parent. In exile, beyond the boundaries of the Athenian state, he was entitled to the full protection of law, and if himself murdered could be avenged as if he had then been a true Athenian citizen. Should the trial go its full length, he could only be convicted by a majority of the judges. If the votes were equal he was acquitted, and when acquitted he offered a sacrifice to the Erinnyes and the other deities of the lower world. When it happened that the person entitled to prosecute had missed the regular occasions of making his charge, it was still competent for him to take the summary proceedings of an a7ray&amp;gt;y^ &amp;lt;/&amp;gt;ovov, that is, to lay his case before the Eleven who presided over the prisons, and have the case tried by a Heliastic court. But this could not well be done unless the accused had been caught in the act, or failed to give a reasonable account of himself. When the victim survived he himself was the proper prosecutor ; but when in the contrary event the task devolved on his relatives, it was necessary for them to be within the prescribed degree of cousinship (oVe^ior^s), as may be seen from the formula in Pseudo-Demosthenes (Adv. Macartatum, p. 10G9, 57), which again has been strikingly confirmed by the decree (Kohler, Hermes, ii. p. 27), discovered at Athens in 1843, and setting forth part of the laws of Draco in regard to murder. This decree, inscribed on marble and in a very fragmentary condition, bears date 409-8 B.O. A slave having in the eyes of the law no relatives, could not prosecute the murderer of one of his class, but he could appear against the murderer of his master if empowered in writing to do so before the master s death. The master was the lawful accuser when a slave was mur dered, and similarly only the legal patron could appear in the case of a freedman or other who had not the rights of citizenship. The theory of the prosecution being to obtain, as had been the custom from time immemorial, vengeance for the relatives of the deceased, and being therefore more of a religious than political character, it becomes a question whether, in the event of the relatives refusing to prosecute, or of there being no relatives, the state permitted a foul crime to pass unpunished. On this point there is no infor mation. . Besides being a court of justice (SiKacm^iov), the Areo pagus was also a council (povrf), empowered to interfere in matters affecting religion and morals, and, previously to the time of Pericles, in the administration of public affairs. With powers of this order honestly exercised, it is not sin gular that Isocrates (Areopag., 39) in his picture of Athens in the happy times gone by, should point to the action of the Areopagus as one of three great sources of this happiness (cf. Plutarch, Solon, 22 ; Themist., 10; and Bb ckh, Staatshaushaltuny, i. p. 208). Nor is it against the view of Isocrates that Pericles and his party should have been opposed to the Areopagites. The mere fact of their being strongly conservative, and of their having the power of opposing, if not with a veto, at least with enormous official influence, his new schemes of administration, would be sufficient excuse. And it appears certain that the scope of the measure proposed by his friend Ephialtes, and carried during the absence of Cimon the conservative leader, was only to withdraw from the Areopagus this power of interference. Its criminal jurisdiction remained as be fore, though so much would hardly be gathered from the tone of ^Eschylus in the Eumenides, which appeared as a protest, it has usually been thought, at the time. E&amp;lt;&amp;lt;.aA- TTJS p.6va /ca.TeAi.7re TTJ e Aptiov irdyov fiovXfj TO. {nrep TOV crwyuaros, says Philochorus, while Demosthenes (Adv. Aris tocrat., p. 644 66) states that no tyrant, oligarchy or democracy, had ever ventured to withdraw from that court its jurisdiction in high crimes. Only a passage in a speech of Lysias (Eratosth. 30) really favours the opposite view. Among the many other functions which the Areopagites retained after the measure of Ephialtes were (1.) those pertaining to religion. They appointed the lepo-n-otoi for the temple of the Eumenides, and took care of the sacred olives (fjLopiai), which existed partly in large plantations near the academy, and partly on private lands, such trees being the property of the goddess Athene, against whom it was a crime to injure one of them. The Areopagus could oppose the introduction of new deities or foreign rites, as in the case of St Paul, who had to appear before it (Acts xvii. 19, ff.}; but it does not seem that it could, as has been assumed, prohibit such a step if once approved of by a public decree. It saw that no object of public sanctity was violated. (2.) In education and morals little positive is known of its action. It seems to have appointed the masters in the gymnasia, and brought to punishment vagabonds and spendthrifts under the law entitled vo/xos dpyiW (3.) Its business was to see that public spaces were not occupied or built on by private persons, as in the case of Timarchus (^Eschines, Adv. Timarch., 80), who had put it to the public assembly whether the deserted Pnyx might not be built on. Many inscribed bases of statues in Athens, though mostly of a comparatively late date, bear witness that the consent of the Areopagus, if not indispensable, was very frequently obtained for the erection of statues. (4.) It protected the standards of weight and measure from falsification. (5.) It exercised an inquisitorial power, partly siia S2)onte (avrrj TrpoeAo/xen?), and partly by mandate from the public assembly (TOV BTJ/J.OV Trpoo-ra^avTos ai/r). In the latter case it merely investi gated the facts (^rjrtja-Lv iroitlcrOat), and laid them before a Heliastic court. Work of this kind, depending as it did on the public assembly, necessarily varied greatly at different times. From about 350 to 320 B.C. it seems to have been of a very grave character. (6.) The Areopagus re viewed the conduct of magistrates and the administration of the laws, a function which was relegated, probably by the measure of Ephialtes, to the Nomophylaces, who, though they do not become conspicuous till the time of Demetrius of Phaleron (317-307 B.C.), had yet existed doubtless long before. If now it is true that the Areopagites as a criminal court