Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/409

 CHANGES AT ATHENS UNDER PEEIKLES. 385 sembly of citizens, of whom many were poor, some olJ, and all were despised individually by rich accused persons who were brou"-ht before them, — as Aristophanes and Xenophon give us plainly to understand.^ K we except the strict and pecuhar ed- ucational discipHne of Sparta, these numerous dikasteries afforded the only organ which Grecian politics could devise, for getting re- dress against powerful criminals, public as well as private, and for obtaining a sincere and uncorrupt verdict. Taking the general working of the dikasteries, we shall find that they are nothing but jury-trial appUed on a scale broad, sys- tematic, unaided, and uncontrolled, beyond all other historical later times in Ehodes and other Grecian cities, though Ehodes was not democratically constituted, and to have worked satisfactorily. Sallust Bays (in his Oratio ii. ad Csesarem de Republica, ordinanda, p. 561, ed. Cort.) : " Judices <paucis probari regniun est; ex pecunii legi, inhonesttim. Quare onmes prim^ classis judicare placet ; sed numero plures quam judi- cant. Neque Rhodios, neque alias civitates unquam suorum judiciomm pcenituit ; ubi promiscu^ dives et pauper, ut cuique sors tulit, de maximis rebus juxti ac de minimis disceptat." The necessity of a numerous judicature, in a republic where there is no standing army, or official force professionally constituted, as the only means of enforcing public-minded justice against powerful criminals, is insisted upon by Machiavel, Discorsi sopra Tito Livio, lib. i, c. 7. "Potrebbesi ancora allegare, a fortificazione deUa soprascritta conclu- sione, I'accidente seguito pur in Firenze contra Piero Soderini : il quale al tutto segul per non essere in quella republica alctmo modo di accuse contro alia ambizione del potenti cittadini : perch^ lo accusare un potente a otto giudici in una republica, non basta : bisogna che i giudici siano assai, per- ch^ pochi sempre fanno a modo de' pochi," etc. : compare the whole of the same chapter. ' Aristophan. Vesp. 570 ; Xenophon, Eep. Ath. i, 18. We are not to suppose that all the dikasts who tried a cause were very poor : Demosthe- nes would not talk to very poor men, as to " the slave whom each of them might have 'left at home." (Demosthenes cont. Stephan. A. c. 26, p. 1127.) It was criminal by law in the dikasts to receive bribes in the exercise of their functions, as well as in every citizen to give money to them (Demosth- cont. Steph. B. c. 13, p. 1137). And it seems perfectly safe to affirm that in practice the dikasts were never tampered with beforehand : had the fact been otherwise, we must have seen copious allusions to it in the many free- spoken pleadings which remain to us, just as there are in the Eoman ora- tors : whereas, in point of fact, there are hardly any such .illusions. The word Seku^uiv (in Isokrates de Pac. Or. viii, p. 169, sect. 63) docs not allud- to obtaining by corrupt means verdicts of dikasts in the dikasteiy, but tt VOL. V. 17 25oc.