Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/410

 386- HISTORY OF GREECE. experience, and that they therefore exhibit in exaggerated pro- portions both the excellences and the defects characteristic of the jury-system, as compared with decision by trained and profes- sional judges. All the encomiums, which it is customary to pro- nounce upon jury-trial, will be found predicable of the Athenian dikasteries in a still greater degree : all the repi-oaches, which can be addressed on good ground to the dikasteries, will apply to modern juries also, though in a less degree. Nor is the parallel less just, though the dikasteries, as the most democratical feature of democracy itself, have been usually criticized with marked disfavor, — every censure, or sneer, or joke against them, which can be found in ancient authors, comic as well as serious, being accepted as true almost to the letter ; while juries are so popular an institution, that their merits have been over-stated, in England at least, and their defects kept out of sight. The theory of the Athenian dikastery, and the theory of jury-trial, as. it has pre- vailed in England since the revolution of 1 688, are one and the obtaining by such means votes for offices in the public assembly, where the election took place by show of hands. Isokrates says that this was often done in his time, and so perhaps it may have been : but in the case of the dikasteries, much better security was taken against it. The statement of Aristotle (from his Tio^.iTelai, Fragm. xi, p. 69, ed- Neumann : compare Harpokration v, Ae«aC£iv ; Plutarch, Coriolan. c. 14; and Pollux, viii, 121) intimates that Anytus was the first pei'son who taught the art tov dsKd^sLv tcI dLKoar^fyia, a short time before the battle of ..S^gos Potamos. But besides, that the information on this point is to the last degree vague, we may remark that between the defeat of the oligarchy of Pour Hundred and the battle of JEgos Potamos, the financial and politi- cal condition of Athens was so exceedingly embarrassed, that it may well be doubted whether she could maintain the paid dikasteries on the ordinary footing. Both all the personal service of the citizens, and all the public money, must have been put in requisition at that time for defence against the enemy, without leaving any surplus for other purposes : there was not enough even to afi'ord constant pay to the soldiers and sailors (compare Thucyd. vi, 91 ; viii, 69, 71, 76, 86). If therefore, in this time of distress, the dikasteries were rarely convoked, and without any certainty of pay, a powerful accused person might find it more easy to tamper with them be- forehand, than it had been before, or than it came to be afterwards, when the system was regularly in operation. We can hardly reason with safety, therefore, from the period shortly preceding the battle of -^gos Potamos, either to that which preceded the Sicilian expedition, or to that which fol- lowed the subversion of the Thirty,