Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/180

156 Every citizen has now not only a right to hold office, and to serve on the Council, but also a very good chance of exercising that right in his turn. Every citizen can take part in the meetings of the general Assembly, which takes place regularly forty times every year, and on many other occasions when special business was to be transacted; and in these assemblies final decisions are taken on every matter which concerned the interest of the State as a whole. Every citizen over thirty years of age can further sit as a judge in one of the large panels of 500 into which those thus qualified by age are now distributed; and before one of these panels almost every case of importance must come, for the judicial functions of even the highest magistrates are now limited to the mere direction of business in the courts, or to the settlement of suits of a petty nature. Lastly, the council of the Areopagus, which Solon retained as a body of experienced men occupying their seats in it for life, in order to place the working of the whole State under a wise and efficient control, has wholly lost this undefined power of supervision; the Athenians are now quite emancipated from any such paternal authority, and commit their interests to no trustees save their yearly elected magistrates, — and to these only in a very limited sense. The people, like the