Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/160

 142 HISTORY OF GREECE. tinucd without that condition, which was not realized befcre thfl time of Perikles. Each of these decuries sitting in judicature was called The ffelicea, a name which belongs properly to tho collective assembly of the people ; this collective assembly hav- ing been itself the original judicature. I conceive that the prac- tice of distributing this collective assembly, or helisea, into sec- tions of jurors for judicial duty, may have begun under one form or another soon after the reform of Kleisthenes, since the direct interference of the people in public affairs tended more and more to increase. But it could only have been matured by degrees into that constant and systematic service which the pay of Peri- kles called forth at last in completeness. Under the last-men- tioned system the judicial competence of the archons was annul- led, and the third archon, or polemarch, withdrawn from all military functions. Still, this had not been yet done at the time of the battle of Marathon, in which Kallimachus the polemarch not only commanded along with the strategi, but enjoyed a sort of preeminence over them : nor had it been done during the year after the battle of Marathon, in which Aristeides was archon, for the magisterial decisions of Aristeides formed one of the prin- cipal foundations of his honorable surname, the Just. 1 With this question, as to the comparative extent of judicial power vested by Kleisthenes in the popular dikastery and the archons, are in reality connected two others in Athenian consti- tutional law ; relating, first, to the admissibility of all citizens for the post of archon, next, to the choosing of archons by lot. It is well known that, in the time of Perikles, the archons, and of the citizen, and the letter of the decury to which during that particular year he belonged, have been recently dug up near Athens : A. Atodwpof E. Aemac (Boeckh, Corp. Inscrip.Nos. 207-208 ) Fritzsche (p. 73) considers these to be tickets of senators, not of dikasts, contrary to all probability. For the Heliastic oath, and its remarkable particulars, see Demosthen cent. Timokrat. p. 746. See also Aristophanes, Plutus, 277 (with the val- uable Scholia, though from different hands and not all of equal correctness V And 972 ; Ekklesiazusse, 678, seqq-. 1 Tluta'cli, Arist 7 ; Herodot. vi, 109-111.