Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/378

 354 fflSTOEY OF GREECE. own autLority, disobedient parties : the imperium of the magis- trates, generally, enabled them to enforce their own mandates as well as to decide in cases of doubt whether any private citizen bad or had not been guilty of infringement. Nor was there any appeal from these magisterial judgments ; though the magistrates were subject, under the Kleisthenean constitution, to personal i-e- sponsibility for their general behavior, before the people judicially assembled, at the expiration of their year of office, — and to the farther animadversion of the ekklesia, or public deliberative as- sembly, meeting periodically during the course of that year : in some of which ekklesiae, the question might formally be raised for deposing any magistrate, even before his year was expired.^ Still, in spite of such partial checks, the accumulation, in the same hand, of powers to administer, judge, punish, and decide civil disputes, without any other canon than the few laws then existing, and without any appeal, — must have been painfully felt, and must have often led to corrupt, arbitrary, and oppressive dealing: and if this be true of individual magistrates, exposed t» annual accountability, it is not likely to have been less true of the senate of Areopagus, which, acting collectively, could hardly be rendered accountable, and in which the members sat for life.2 I have already mentioned that shortly after the return of the expatriated Athenians from Salamis, Aristeides had been impel- led, by the strong democratical sentiment which he found among liis countrymen, to propose the abolition of all pecuniary qualifi- cation for magistracies, so as to render every citizen legally eligi- ble. This innovation, however, was chiefly valuable as a victory ' A case of such deposition of an archon by vote of the public assembly, even before the year of office was expired, occurs in Demosthenes, cont. Theokrin. c. 7 : another, the deposition of a strategus, in Demosthen. cont. Timoth. c. 3. 2 ..Sschines (cont. Ktesiphont, c. 9, p. 373) speaks of the senate of Areo- pagus as vTretiiJwof, and so it was doubtless understood to be : but it is diffi- cult to see how accountability could be practically enforced against such a bodv. They could only be responsible in this sense, — that, if any one of their number could be proved to have received a bribe, he would be individ- ually punished. But in this sense the dikasteries themselves would also be responsible : though it is always affirmed of them that they were not re sponsible.