Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/390

 366 HISTORY OF GREECE. cal party, was materially changed by this incident : and in the existing bitterness of political parties, it is not surprising that his opponents should take the opportunity for proposing, soon after- wards, a vote of ostracism,! — a challenge, indeed, which may, per- haps, have been accepted not unwilhngly by Eamon and his party, since they might still fancy themselves the strongest, and suppose that the sentence of banishment would fall upon Ephialtes or Perikles. However, the vote ended in the expulsion of Eamon, a sure proof that his opponents were now in the ascendent. On this occasion, as on the preceding, we see the ostracism invoked to meet a period of intense political conflict, the violence of which it would at least abate, by removing for the time one of the con- tending leaders. It was now that Perikles and Ephialtes carried their important scheme of judicial reform. The senate of Areopagus was de- prived of its discretionary censorial power, as well as of all its judicial competence except that which related to homicide. The individual magistrates, as well as the senate of Five Hundred, were also stripped of their judicial attributes, except the power of imposing a small fine,^ which were transferred to the newly created panels of salaried dikasts, lotted off in ten divisions from the aggregate heliaea. Ephialtes 3 first brought down the laws of Solon from the acropolis to the neighborhood of the market- place, where the dikasteries sat, — a visible proof that the judi- cature was now popularized. In the representations of many authors, the full bearing of this great constitutional change is very inadequately conceived. "What we are commonly told, is, that Perikles was the first to assign a salary to these numerous dikasteries at Athens ; he bribed the Kuvi^ovai (pavspug ixalenatvov, Kal tov Ki/iuva fiiKpdg em'XalSofiEvoi 7rpo<pa(T Eu g k^uaTpuKiaav elg etjj dma. I transcribe this passage as a specimen of the inaccurate manner in which the ostracism is so often described. Plutarch says : " The Athenians took advantage of a slight pretence to ostracize Eamon : " but it was the peculiar characteristic of ostracism that it had no pretence : it was- a judg- ment passed without specific or assigned cause. " Harpokration — '0 nuru^ev vofiog — Pollux, viii, 128.
 * Plutarch, Kimon, c. 17. 01 6e npog bpyfjv une^-dovTe^ fj6rj rot^ Tia-
 * Demosthen. cont. Euerg. et Mnesibul. c. 12.