Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/93

 TRIAL OF HOMICIDE AT ATHENS. 77 penal legislation had become so much milder, during the two centuries which followed, that these old ordinances appeared to Aristotle intolerably rigorous. Probably neither Drako, nor the Lokrinn Zaleukus, who somewhat preceded him in date, were more rigorous than the sentiment of the age : indeed, the few fragments of the Drakonian tables which have reached us, far from exhibiting indiscriminate cruelty, introduce, for the first time, into the Athenian law, mitigating distinctions in respect to homi- cide ; ] founded on the variety of concomitant circumstances. He is said to have constituted the judges called Ephetre, fifty -one elders belonging to some respected gens or possessing an exalted position, who held their sittings for trial of homicide in thref different spots, according to the difference of the cases submitted to them. If the accused party, admitting the fact, denied any culpable intention and pleaded accident, the case was tried at the place called the palladium ; when found guilty of accidental homicide, he was condemned to a temporary exile, unless he could appease the relatives of the deceased, but his property was left untouched. If, again, admitting the fact, he defended him- self by some valid ground of justification, such as self-defence, or flagrant adultery with his wife on the part of the deceased, the trial took place on ground consecrated to Apollo and Artemis, called the Delphinium. A particular spot called the Phreattys, close to the seashore, was also named for the trial of a person, who, while under sentence of exile for an unintentional homicide, might be charged with a second homicide, committed of course without the limits of the territory : being considered as impure from the effects of the former sentence, he was not permitted to set foot on the soil, but stood his trial on a boat hauled close in shore. At the prytaneium, or government-house itself, sittings were held by the four phylo-basileis, or tribe-kings, to try any inanimate object (a piece of wood or stone, etc.) which had caused death to any one, without the proved intervention of a human hand : the wood or stone, when the fact was verified, was 1 Pausanius, ix, 36, 4. Apuxovrof 'Atfjyvtu'oif deano'd^TnaavToc in ruv faeivov Karfarr; vo/iuv ovf eypaQev em rf/f upxw, uU.uv TE dTroauv tideiiv iivsi xpfj, not 6tj Kal Tifjujpia^ fioi^ov: compare Dcnosthen.cont. Aristocrat p. 637 ; Lysias de Castle Eratosthen. p. 31.