Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/159

 THE PEOPLE AS DIKASTS, OR HELLEA. 141 tunclions, being specially convoked and sworn to try pel sons ac- cused of public crimes, and when so employed bearing the name of the heliasa, or heliasts ; private offences and disputes between man and man being still determined by individual magistrates in the city, and a considerable judicial power still residing in the Senate of Areopagus. There is reason to believe that this wa& the state of things established by Kleisthenes, and which after- wards came to be altered by the greater extent of judicial duty gradually accruing to the heliasts, so that it was necessary to subdivide the collective heliaea. According to the subdivision, as practised in the times best known, six thousand citizens above thirty years of age were annually selected by lot out of the whole number, six hundred from each of the ten tribes : five thousand of these citizens were arranged in ten pannels or decuries of five hundred each, the remaining one thousand being reserved to fill up vacancies in case of death or absence among the former. The whole six thousand took a prescribed oath, couched in very striking words, and every man received a ticket inscribed with his own name as well as with a letter designating his decury. When there were causes or crimes ripe for trial, the thesmothets, or six inferior archons, determined by lot, first, which decuries should sit, according to the number wanted, next, in which court, or under the presidency of what magistrate, the decury B or E should sit, so that it could not be known beforehand in what cause each would be judge. In the number of persons who ac- tually attended and sat, however, there seems to have been much variety, and sometimes two decuries sat together. 1 The arrangement here described, we must recollect, is given to us as belonging to those times when the dikasts received a regular pay, after every day's sitting ; and it can hardly have long con- 1 See in particular on this subject the treatise of Schumann, De Sorti- tione Judicum ( Gripswald, 1820), and the work of the same author, Antiq. Jur. Publ. Graec. ch. 49-55, p. 264, s&jq. ; also Heffter, Die Athenaische Genchtsverfassung, part ii, ch. 2, p. 51, seqq. ; Meier und Schumann, Der At- tische Pro/.ess, pp. 127-135. The views of Schomann respecting the sortition of the Athenian jurors have been bitterly attacked, but in no way refuted, by F. V. Fritzsche (De Bortilkme Judicum apud Athenienscs Commentatio, Leipsic, 1835). Tiro or three of these dikastic tickets, marking tbe name and the de