376 HISTORY OF GREECE. interest even of the accused party to name against himself a measure of punishment sufficient to satisfy the sentiment of the dikasts, in order that they might not prefer the more severe proposition of the accuser. At the same time, the accuser him- self, as in other public indictments, was fined in the sum of one thousand drachms, unless the verdict of guilty obtained at least one-fifth of the sufirages of the dikastery. The personal respon- sibility of the mover, however, continued only one year after the introduction of his new law : if the accusation was brought at a greater distance of time than one year, the accuser could invoke no punishment against the mover, and the sentence of the dikasts neither absolved nor condemned anything but the law. Their condemnation of the law, with or without the author, amounted ipso facto to a repeal of it. Such indictment against the author of a law or of a decree, might be preferred either at some stage prior to its final enact- ment, — as after its acceptance simply by the senate, if it was a decree, or after its approval by the public assembly, and prior to its going before the nomothetse, if it was a law, — or after it had reached full completion by the verdict of the nomothetae. In the former case, the indictment stayed its farther progress until sentence had been pronounced by the dikasts. This regulation is framed in a thoroughly conservative spirit, to guard the existing laws against being wholly or partially nul- lified by a new proposition. As, in the procedure of the nomo- thetEe, whenever any proposition was made for distinctly repeal- ing any existing law, it was thought unsafe to intrust the defence of the law so assailed to the chance of some orator gratuitously undertaking it, and paid advocates were appointed for the pur- pose ; so also, when any citizen made a new positive proposition sufficient security was not supposed to be afforded by the chance of opponents rising up at the time ; a,nd a fai'ther guarantee was provided in the personal responsibility of the mover. That the latter, before he proposed a new decree or a new law, should take care that there was nothing in it inconsistent with existing laws, — or, if there were, that he should first formally bring for- ward a direct proposition for the repeal of such preexistent law, — was in no way unreasonable: it imposed upon him an obliga- tion such as he might perfectly well fulfil, — it served as a check
