Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/322

 800 HISTORY OF GREECE. By these additional enactments, security was taken that tha oroceedings of the courts of justice should be in full conformity with the amnesty recently sworn, and that, neither directly nor indirectly, should any person be molested for wrongs done ante* rior to Eukleides. And, in fact, the amnesty was faithfuiiy observed : the reentering exiles from Peiraeus, and the horsemen with other partisans of the Thirty in Athens, blended again together into one harmonious and equal democracy. Eight years prior to these incidents, we have seen the oligar- chical conspiracy of the Four Hundred for a moment success- ful, and afterwards overthrown ; and we have had occasion to notice, in reference to that event, the wonderful absence of all reactionary violence on the part of the victorious people, at a moment of severe provocation for the past and extreme appre- hension for the future. We noticed that Thucydides, no friend to the Athenian democracy, selected precisely that occasion on which some manifestation of vindictive impulse might have been supposed likely and natural to bestow the most unqual- ified eulogies on their moderate and gentle bearing. Had the historian lived to describe the reign of the Thirty and the restoration which followed it, we cannot doubt that his ex- pressions would have been still warmer and more emphatic in the same sense. Few events in history, either ancient or modern, are more astonishing than the behavior of the Athe- nian people, on recovering their democracy after the overthrow of the Thirty : and when we view it in conjunction with the like phenomenon after the deposition of the Four Hundred, we see that neither the one nor the other arose from peculiar caprice or accident of the moment ; both depended upon permanent attri- tried first, upon that special issue, upon which the defendant is allowed to speak first, before the plaintiff. If the verdict, on this special issue, is given in favor of the defendant, the plaintiff is not only disabled from pro- ceeding further with his action, but is condemned besides to pay to the defendant the forfeit called epobely ; that is, one-sixth part of the sum claimed. But if, on the contrary, the verdict on the special issue be in favor of the plaintiff, he is held entitled to proceed farther with his original action, and to receive besides at once, from the defendant, the like forfeit or epobely. Information on these regulations of procedure in the Attic dikasteries ma} be foand in Meier and Schomann, Attischer Prozess, p. 647 ; Platne*, Pro ress and Klagen, vol. i, pp. 156-162.