356 HISTORY OF GREECE. vacancies. The magistrate, instead of deciding causes, or inflicting • punishment by his own authority, was now constrained to impanel a jury, — that is, to submit each particular case, which might call for a penalty greater than the small fine to which he was compe- tent, to the judgment of one or other among these numerous popular dikasteries. Which of the ten he should take, was de- termined by lot, so that no one knew beforehand what dikastery would try any particular cause : he himself presided over it during the trial, and submitted to it the question at issue, with the results of his own preliminary examination, in addition to the speeches of accuser and accused, with the statements of their witnesses. So also the civil judicature, which had before been exercised in con- troversies between man and man by the archons, was withdrawn from them and transferred to these dikasteries under the presi- dence of an archon. It is to be remai'ked, that the system of reference to arbitration for private causes ^ was extensively ap- plied at Athens: a certain number of public arbitrators were
- Respecting the procedure of arbitration at Athens, and the public as
well as private arbitrators, see the instructive treatise of Hudtwalcker, Uber die offentlichen und Privat Schieds-richter (Diaeteten) zu Athen: Jena, 1812. Each arbitrator seems to have sat alone to inquire into and decide dis- putes : he received a small fee of one drachma from both parties : also an additional fee when application was made for delay (p. 16). Parties might bv mutual consent fix upon any citizen to act as arbitrator : but there were a certain number of public arbitrators, elected or drawn by lot from the citizens every year : and a plaintiff might bring his cause before any one of these. They were liable to be punished under eMvvai, at the end of their year of oflBce, if accused and convicted of corruption or unfair dealing. The number of these public disetetse, or arbitrators, was unknown when Iludtwalcker's book was published. An inscription, since discovered by Professor Ross, and published in his work, Uber die Demen von Attika, p. 22, records the names of all the diaetetce for the year of the archon An- tikles, B.C. 323, with the name of the tribe to which each belonged. The total number is one hundred and four : the number in each tribe is une- qual ; the largest number is in Kekropis, which furnishes sixteen ; the smallest in Pandionis, which sends only three. They must have been either elected or drawn by lot from the general body of citizens, without any reference to tribes. The inscription records the names of the diaetetae for this year B.C. ■325, in consequence of their being crowned or receiving a vote of thanks from the people. The fragment of a like inscription for the year B.C. 337. also exists.
