Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/218

 )36 HISTORY OF GREECE. It was htia'd by a large portion of the assembly with well merited indignation. Its enormity consisted in breaking through the established constitutional maxims and judicial practices of the Athenian democracy. It deprived the accused generals of all fair trial ; alleging, with a mere faint pretence of truth which was little better than utter falsehood, that their defence as well as their accusation had been heard in the preceding assembly. Now there has been no people, ancient or modern, in whose view the formalities of judicial trial were habitually more sacred and indispensable than in that of the Athenians; formalities including ample notice beforehand to the accused party, with a measured and sufficient space of time for him to make his defence before the dikasts ; while those dikasts were men who had been sworn beforehand as a body, yet were selected by lot for each occasion as individuals. From all these securities the generals were now to be debarred ; and submitted, for their lives, honors, and for- tunes, to a simple vote of the unsworn public assembly, without hearing 01 defence. Nor was this all. One single vote was to be taken in condemnation or absolution of the eight generals collec- tively. Now there was a rule in Attic judicial procedure, called the psephism of Kannonus, originally adopted, we do not know when, on the proposition of a citizen of that name, as a psephism or decree for some particular case, but since generalized into common practice, and grown into great prescriptive reverence, which peremptorily forbade any such collective trial or sentence, and directed that a separate judicial vote should, in all cases, be taken for or against each accused party. The psephism of Kan- nonus, together with all the other respected maxims of Athenian criminal justice, was here audaciously trampled under foot. 1 1 I cannot concur with the opinion expressed by Dr. Thirhvall in Ap pendix ill, vol. iv, p. 501, of his History, on the subject of the psephism of Kannonus. The view which I give in the text coincides with that of the expositors generally, from whom Dr. Thirlwall dissents. The psephism of Kannonus was the only enactment at Ath<-n S which made it illegal to vote upon the case of two accused persons at once. This had now grown into a practice in the judicial proceedings at Athens ; so that two or more prisoners, who were ostensibly tried under some other law, and not under the psephism of Kannonus, with its various provisions, would yet have the benr 'it of this its particular provision, namely, severance of trial.