Not satisfied, however, with having established good laws, the Areopagus was vigilant in watching over their execution. With this view, they divided the into nto quarters, and the country into cantons. They were thus acquainted with the conduct of every citizen, and there was nothing either in private or public which was not submitted to their immediate inspection. Those who had been guilty of any irregularity, were cited be fore the magistrates, and were reprehended or punished in proportion to their misdemeanour.
However absurd many of those customs may appear to those who live under a different mode of government, and however they might dislike that incessant controul, which in the senate and independent communities of Greece the laws exercised over the habits and manners of the citizens, yet it is impossible not to admire the singular sagacity with which these communities were constituted for their own peculiar ends. Considered in this view, they will ever remain the pride and the glory of human legislation. A whole community, bent and fashioned into a particular form by the discipline of the laws ;—all the prejudices, passions, and affections of the people, gained over to the service of the state, are wonderful effects, which cannot be indifferent to those who speculate on human affairs.
The edifice of the Areopagus was extremely simple ; and it remained in its original simplicity till the reign of Augustus. It was afterwards embellished with an altar of Minerva, and two seats of solid silver, on one of which the accuser sat, and the accused on the other. The tomb of Oedipus was another of the ornaments of the Areopagus. The senate assembled in a hall built on the summit of a hill, which was ascended with dif ficulty by the old men bent with age. This inconve nience was submitted to, however, while they only assembled for the three last days of each month. But when public business had increased to such a degree, as to render it necessary to assemble every day, the Areopagites were obliged to remove their sittings to a part of the city called the Royal Portico. When the judges who assembled there in profound silence had taken their seats, they were inclosed by a thread or rather a cord drawn around them. They held their as semblies in the night, that their attention might not be diverted to external objects, and that they might attend only to the argument of the speakers. So far was this principle carried, that in early times the parties them selves stated their cause in asimple manner. The talent of eloquence was thought dangerous, and fit only to disguise crimes. The Areopagus, however, thought fit to relax from this severity, and professional speakers were at length allowed to manage the cause, both for the accu sed and the accuser. This tribunal, however, strictly pro
hibited those warm and picturesque deseriptiofis, which rather tend to seduce than to enlighten the judgment. When all the members of the senate were assembled, a herald enjoined silence, and ordered the people to re tire. As soon as they had departed, the assembly pro ceeded to business ; and, as they deemed the least pre ference a flagrant injustice, the causes which fell to them to determine were. drawn by a kind of lottery, and the same chance which brought them up, distributed them to the different judges, small or great, according to the importance of the several causes. When the votes of the judges were collected, each person gave his in si lence. They voted with a small flint, which they held betwixt the thumb and the two next fingers, and which they put into one of the two urns that stood in the cor ner of.the hall. The one was called the urn of death, the second the urn of compassion. The judges com monly brought their flints to the assembly, and put them into the urn ; but, that all the suffrages might be col lected, the herald took the two urns, and presented them, one after another, to every senator, commanding him, in the name of the republic, no longer to defer his acquittal or condemnation. From this method of giving sentence, the thirty tyrants, to make themselves masters of the decisions of the Areopagus, substituted another, by which they knew exactly the opinion of the judges, for they obliged them to bring their flints publicly, and lay them upon two tables placed before them, the situa tion of which was quite opposite to that of the urns. The first substances with which they gave their suffrages were not small pieces of the bones of a hog, as some authors assert, but sea-shells, for which pieces of brass, of the same form, termed spondyla, were afterwards substituted. The substances with which they voted, were distinguished by their form and colour. Those which condemned were black, and perforated in the mid dle, the others were white, and not perforated. The pre caution of piercing the black ones tends to prove, what we have already observed, that the court of Areopagus sat in the night ; for what end did it serve to pierce the black shells or flints, if the judges could have seen them and the white ones, and consequently have distinguished their colours by the assistance of the light ? But as they passed sentence in the dark, it is evident that a differ ence, besides that of colour, was necessary, to know the black ones from the white.