Note 175 — BOOK IV JUDEA, GREECE, AND INDIA

I do not agree with “hereditary barristers” or “fee-hunting.” The Athenian dicasts were not barristers, but judges: they sat in panels (sometimes a panel of some hundreds) and judged. They had to be paid for attendance as judges (don’t we pay jurymen?) because it took them away from their work as potters, dyers, and stone-masons. Pay was a genuine and good democratic institution; it was just what made possible the ordinary citizen’s co-operation in the life of the state, and stopped its business from being the perquisite of the rich. I feel strongly that the text is unjust to Athens.—E. B.

See Zimmern’s Greek Commonwealth, and Barker’s Greek Political Theory, pp. 29-30.