Note 700 — Chapter XLVI · CONSTITUTIONAL AND JUDICIAL CHANGES AT ATHENS UNDER PERIKLES.

Aristophan. Vesp. 570; Xenophon, Rep. Ath. i, 18. We are not to suppose that all the dikasts who tried a cause were very poor: Demosthenês would not talk to very poor men, as to “the slave whom each of them might have left at home.” (Demosthenês cont. Stephan. A. c. 26, p. 1127.)

It was criminal by law in the dikasts to receive bribes in the exercise of their functions, as well as in every citizen to give money to them (Demosth. cont. Steph. B. c. 13, p. 1137). And it seems perfectly safe to affirm that in practice the dikasts were never tampered with beforehand: had the fact been otherwise, we must have seen copious allusions to it in the many free-spoken pleadings which remain to us, just as there are in the Roman orators: whereas, in point of fact, there are hardly any such allusions. The word δεκάζων (in Isokratês de Pac. Or. viii, p. 169, sect. 63) does not allude to obtaining by corrupt means verdicts of dikasts in the dikastery, but to obtaining by such means votes for offices in the public assembly, where the election took place by show of hands. Isokratês says that this was often done in his time, and so perhaps it may have been: but in the case of the dikasteries, much better security was taken against it.

The statement of Aristotle (from his Πολιτεῖαι, Fragm. xi, p. 69, ed. Neumann: compare Harpokration v. Δεκάζειν; Plutarch, Coriolan. c. 14; and Pollux, viii, 121) intimates that Anytus was the first person who taught the art τοῦ δεκάζειν τὰ δικαστήρια, a short time before the battle of Ægos Potamos. But besides, that the information on this point is to the last degree vague, we may remark that between the defeat of the oligarchy of Four Hundred and the battle of Ægos Potamos, the financial and political condition of Athens was so exceedingly embarrassed, that it may well be doubted whether she could maintain the paid dikasteries on the ordinary footing. Both all the personal service of the citizens, and all the public money, must have been put in requisition at that time for defence against the enemy, without leaving any surplus for other purposes: there was not enough even to afford constant pay to the soldiers and sailors (compare Thucyd. vi, 91; viii, 69, 71, 76, 86). If therefore, in this time of distress, the dikasteries were rarely convoked, and without any certainty of pay, a powerful accused person might find it more easy to tamper with them beforehand, than it had been before, or than it came to be afterwards, when the system was regularly in operation. We can hardly reason with safety, therefore, from the period shortly preceding the battle of Ægos Potamos, either to that which preceded the Sicilian expedition, or to that which followed the subversion of the Thirty.