After the suffrages were collected, they were taken out of the two urns, and put into a third vase of brass. They were then counted, and as the number of white or of black flints was higher or inferior, one of the judges drew with his nail a shorter or longer line on a waxen tablet, on which the result of each cause was marked. The short line expressed acquittal ; the long, condemnation.
With regard to the emoluments of the judges, they were moderate as well as those of the advocates. A process was not enhanced in its expence on account of its length, and when decision was postponed till next day, the committee were only paid an obolus that day. This accounts for the surprise which Mercury is made to express in Lucian, that such sensible old men as the senators of the Areopagus should sell at so low a price the trouble of ascending so high.
The court of Areopagus was obviously instituted for the purpose of preserving that purity of manners, and those strong feelings of patriotism, which are essen tially necessary to the well-being of a democratical go vernment, and it was for a long time eminently useful in repressing immorality and licentiousness. As insti tutions of this kind, however, originate from a general disposition in the community, where they are estab lished, to encourage pure morals, and as they are pre served in full vigour only by the countenance which their decisions receive from the people, they very soon degenerate from their original purity, when the influ ence of luxury and corruption begins to spread around them. Accordingly the prevalence of vice, among the
Athenians, very soon began to infect the constitution of the Areopagus. The severity of this court began to be disliked by the multitude ; and Pericles, with too much success, used all his efforts to weaken its authority, by taking from it the cognizance of many affairs, which had before come under its jurisdiction. The Areopa gus itself hastened its own fall, by admitting members whose conduct was not pure and unexceptionable. Cor ruption, at first secret and timid, grew insensibly open and daring, and the most shameful crimes were soon exhibited on the stage, and they were not copied from the low and abandoned multitude, but from those sena tors, once the venerable and austere censors of idleness and vice. The end of this judicature is in the second century. The term of its subsequent duration is not ascertained, but a writer who lived under the emperors Theodosius the elder and younger, in the fifth ceotury, mentions it as extinct. &)