Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/102

74 at the end of his year, at which any one was entitled to allege against him a breach of the laws. From the tribes also were selected six thousand dicasts each year—five thousand to serve in the law courts, as established by Solon, and one thousand kept in reserve to review the laws from time to time. The Boulè acted as a restraint upon hasty legislation. The representatives sent by the several tribes took their turn for a month in acting as presidents of the assembly, and properly no measure could be presented to it until it had been first passed by the Boulè, which saw that it was correct in form and did not contradict existing laws. It was then called a proboleuma, and when passed by the ecclesia became a binding decree or law.

Another safeguard established by Cleisthenes was the institution of ostracism, which was meant to prevent dangers arising from fierce party contests or rivalries between statesmen. If there appeared to be such a danger any one might move in the Assembly that there should be an ostracism. If the answer was in the affirmative, a day was fixed on which each citizen might write on a shell or piece of a pottery the name of the statesman whom he thought ought to leave the city. If six thousand voted, the man whose name appeared the oftenest had to leave Attica for ten years, though he did not forfeit his citizenship or his property. It was an institution which, under other names, is found elsewhere. Cleisthenes is said to have suffered under this law himself. We know hardly anything else about his life or the time of his death, though he was