Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/376

372 The case against the corn-ring was tried in one of the ten Heliastic (jury) courts, located in the market place at Athens, to the north of the Acropolis and Areopagus, those hills dedicated to religion and homicidal law. These courts of sworn jurymen-judges were higher courts and though apparently no appeal would lie from their decisions, some revisory power did exist, at least in the way of bringing new suit and being allowed a new trial before new jurymen-judges, on discovery of false testimony that had influenced the verdict, excusable defaults, etc.

An apparently large number of cases was settled by private and public arbitrators, the parties in interest ordinarily binding themselves to abide by the decision given. Besides family and friendly arbitrators, whose services were most widely sought and employed, there was a regularly established system of public arbitration, whose officials, chosen annually, by lot, were over fifty years of age. To these officials magistrates could refer any private suit, though from their findings appeal and recourse to a regular jury-trial in the higher court could be claimed. A fee was charged on each party. Criminal and public prosecutions, like the present, would not, from their very nature, come before the arbitrators, but be brought, in regular course, before the Heliastic jury, as noted below. The orators are continually emphasizing their offer of arbitration or criticizing their opponent's lack of it and it appears to have been a legal principle and honored custom to avoid litigation by attempting to settle all possible cases "out of court."

Such procedure would tend to greatly relieve congestion of cases, so that the "Law's delays," so fertile a source of modern criticism, would be reduced to a minimum, which must have become practically nil, when the statute became operative which limited the trial of a case to one day's time. There was, apparently, some fault found with this limitation; for Plato, in the "Apology" (37A), makes his beloved master, Socrates, say: "I don't believe I have intentionally wronged any man, but I am not persuading you of that; for we have been conversing with each other but a short time. But, as I think, if you had a law like other men, that the verdict in capital cases was not required to be given in one day but many days were allowed for the trial, you would have been persuaded."

But such extreme limitation seems no unhealthy prohibition, philosophers to the contrary notwithstanding, especially when we realize that at the preliminary hearing (the anacrisis) before a magistrate, all the evidence that each side had to offer—laws, decrees, documents of all kinds, oral testimony of witnesses, affidavits of commissioners, evidence of slaves given under torture—was reduced to writing and deposited, under seal, by the magistrate, in the "Hedgehog Box" (bristling with documents), to be kept in safety till the sacrifice and