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 400 HISTORY OF GREECE. fices were esorted to by opposite speakers in each particular trial, nor lis.ve we any means of knowing to what extent they actually perverted the judgment of the hearers.^ Probably, the frequent habit of sitting in dikastery, gave them a penetration in detecting sophistry not often possessed by non-professional citi- zens : nevertheless, it cannot be doubted that, in a considerable proportion of cases, success depended less upon the intrinsic merits of a case, than upon apparent airs of innocence and truth-telling, dexterity of statement, and good general character, in the parties, their witnesses, and the friends who addressed the court on their behalf. The accusatory speeches in Attic oratory, wherein pun- ishment is invoked upon an alleged delinquent, are expressed with a bitterness which is now banished from English criminal judicature, though it was common in the state trials of two centuries ago. Against them may be set the impassioned and emphatic appeals made by defendants and their friends to the commiseration of the dikasts ; appeals the more often successful, because they came last, immediately before decision was pro- nounced. This is true of Rome as well as of Athens.2 be a judge. He should be a stranger to decision, who is a stranger to com- passion. All these matters influence the man, and warp his judgment." This is a description, given by a perfectly honest and unprofessional judge, of his o'mi feelings when on the bench. It will be found illustrated by fre- quent passages in the Attic pleaders, where they address themselves to the feelings here described in the bosom of the dikasts. ' Demosthenes (cont. Phcrmio. p. 913, c. 2) emphatically remarks, how much more cautious witnesses were of giving false testimony before the numerous dikastery, than before the arbitrator. ' Asconius gives an account of the begging off and supplication to the judices at Eome, when sentence was about to be pronounced upon Scau- rus, whom Cicero defended (ad Ciceron. Orat. pro Scauro, p. 28, ed. Orelli) : '• Laudaverunt Scaurum consulares novem — Homm magna pars per tabel las laudaverunt, qui aberant : inter quos Pompeius quoque. Unus praelere^ adolescens laudavit, frater ejus, Faustus Cornelius, Syllse filius. Is in lau datione multa humiliter et cum lacrimis locutus non minus audientes per- inovit. quam Scaurus ipse pcrmoverat. Ad genua judicum, cum "sententias ftr.entur. bifariam se diviserunt qui pro eo rogabant : ab uno latere Scaurus ipse et M. Glabrio. sororis filius, et Paulus, et P. Lentulus, et L. iEmilius Buca, et C. Memmius, supplicaverunt : ex alteri parte Sylla Faustus, frater Scauri, et T. Annius Milo, et T. Peducteus, et C. Cato, et M. Octavius Ltenas." Compare also Cicero, Brutus, c. 23, about the defence of Sergius Galba; Quintilian, I. O. ii, 15