CHANGES AT ATHENS UNDER PERIKLES. 379 di'ed members, — most generally of five hundred, — and some- times also of one thousand, fifteen hundred, two thousand mem- bers, on important trials.^ Each man received pay from the treasurers, called Kolakreta?, after his day's business was over, of three oboli, or half a drachm : at least this was the amount paid during the early part of the Peloponnesian war. M. Boeckh supposes that the original pay proposed by Perikles was one obolus, afterwards tripled by Kleon ; but his opinion is open to much doubt. It was indispensable to propose a measure of pay sufficient to induce citizens to come, and come frequently, if not regularly : now one obolus seems to have proved afterwards an inadequate temptation even to the ekklesiasts, or citizens who at- tended the public assembly, who were less frequently wanted, and must have had easier sittings, than the dikasts : much less, therefore, would it be sufficient in the case of the latter. I in- cline to the belief that the pay originally awarded was three oboli : 2 the rather, as these new institutions seem to have nearly coincided in point of time with the transportation of the confeder
- See Meier, Attisch. Prozess, p. 139. Andokides mentions a trial under
the indictment of ypa(prj TrapavofKjv, brought by his father Leogoras against a senator named Speusippus, wherein six thousand dikasts sat, — that is, the entire body of heliasts. However, the loose speech so habitual with Andokides, renders this statement very uncertain (Andokides de Mysteriis, p. 3, k 29). See Matthice, De Judiciis Atheniensium, in his Miscellanea Philologica, vol. i, p. 252. Matthite questions the reading of that passage in Demos- thenes (cont. Meideam, p. 585), wherein two hundred dikasts are spoken of as sitting in judgment : he thinks it ought to be TrevraKomovg instead of 6iaKO(jiovc, — but this alteration would be rash. ^ See on this question, Boeckh, Public Econ. of Athens, ch. xv, p. 233 ; K.F. Herrmann, Griech. Staatsalt. § 134. The proof which M. Boeckh brings to show, first, that the original pay was one obolus, — next, that Kleon was the first to introduce the triobolus, — is in both cases veiy inconclusive. Certain passages from the Scholiast, stating that the pay of the dikasts fluctuated (ovk euttikev — dAAore uX^m^ ediSoTo) do not so naturally indi- cate a rise from one obolus to three, as a change backwards and forwards according to circumstances. Now it seems that there were some occasions when the treasury was so very poor that it was doubtful whether the dikasts could be paid : see Lysias, cont. Epiki-at. c. 1 ; cont. Nikomach. c. 22 ; and Aristophan. Equit. 1370. The amount of pay may, therefore, have been Bometimes affected bv this cause.
