Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/96

 80 HISTORY OF GREECK. ceremonies, or religious feelings, which compelled judges there sitting to condemn every man proved guilty of homicide, and forbade them to take account of extenuating or justifying circum- stances. 1 Drako appointed the ephetie to sit at different places ; and these places are so pointedly marked, and were so unalterably maintained, that we may see in how peculiar a manner those pocial issues, of homicide under particular circumstances, which he assigned to each, were adapted, in Athenian belief, to the new sacred localities chosen, 2 each having its own distinct ceremonial and procedure appointed by the gods themselves. That the religious feelings of the Greeks were associated in the most inti- mate manner with particular localities, has already been often remarked ; and Drako proceeded agreeably to them in his arrangements for mitigating the indiscriminate condemnation of every man found guilty of homicide, which was unavoidable so long as the areopagus remained the only place of trial. The man who either confessed, or was proved to have shed the blood of another, could not be acquitted, or condemned to less than the full penalty (of death or perpetual exile, with confiscation of property) by the judges on the hill of Ares, unntever excuse he might have to offer : but the judges at the palladinm and del phiniam might hear him, and even admit his pl^a, without contracting the taint of irreligion. Drako did not directly meddle with, nor indeed ever mention, the judges sitting in areopagus. In respect to homicide, then, the Drakonian ordinances were partly a reform of the narrowness, partly a mitigation of the rigor, of the old procedure ; and these are all that ha' r e come down to us, having been preserved unchanged from the religious respect of the Athenians for antiquity on this peculiar matter. The rest of his ordinances are said to have been repe?led by Solon, on account of their intolerable severity. So they doubt- less appeared, to the Athenians of a later day, who had ccrne to Read on this subject the maxims laid down by Plato (Legg xii, p 941 ). Nevertheless, Plato copies, to a great degree, the arrangements of the e/thetic tribunals, in hi.5 provisions for homicide (Lcgg. ix. pp. 865-873). eonsccrated each to its own purpose, is so powerfully set forth, as i- J> spee.'h of Camillas ngainst the transfer of Rome to Veii (Livy, v, 52^
 * I know no place in which the special aptitude of particular locaTti'js