The Historians' History of the World 03

The expenditure of so large a sum was, of course, a source of revenue and of great private gain to all manner of contractors, tradesmen, merchants, artisans of various descriptions, etc., concerned in it: in one way or another, it distributed itself over a large portion of the whole city. And it appears that the materials employed for much of the work were designedly of the most costly description, as being most consistent with the reverence due to the gods: marble was rejected as too common for the statue of Athene, and ivory employed in its place; while the gold with which it was surrounded weighed not less than forty talents [£8000 or $40,000]. A large expenditure for such purposes, considered as pious towards the gods, was at the same time imposing in reference to Grecian feeling, which regarded with admiration every variety of public show and magnificence, and repaid with grateful deference the rich men who indulged in it. Pericles knew well that the visible splendour of the city, so new to all his contemporaries, would cause her great power to appear greater still, and would thus procure for her a real, though unacknowledged influence—perhaps even an ascendency—over all cities of the Grecian name. And it is certain that even among those who most hated and feared her, at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, there prevailed a powerful sentiment of involuntary deference.

JUDICIAL REFORMS OF PERICLES

Before Ephialtes advanced his main proposition for abridging the competence of the senate of Areopagus, he appears to have been strenuous in repressing the practical abuse of magisterial authority, by accusations brought against the magistrates at the period of their regular accountability. After repeated efforts to check the practical abuse of these magisterial powers, Ephialtes and Pericles were at last conducted to the proposition of cutting them down permanently, and introducing an altered system.

It was now that Pericles and Ephialtes carried their important scheme of judicial reform. The senate of Areopagus was deprived of its discretionary censorial power, as well as of all its judicial competence, except that which related to homicide. The individual magistrates, as well as the senate of Five Hundred, were also stripped of their judicial attributes (except the power of imposing a small fine), which were transferred to the newly created panels of salaried dicasts, lotted off in ten divisions from the aggregate Heliæa. Ephialtes first brought down the laws of Solon from the Acropolis to the neighbourhood of the market-place, where the dicasteries sat—a visible proof that the judicature was now popularised.

In the representation of many authors, the full bearing of this great constitutional change is very inadequately conceived. What we are commonly told is, that Pericles was the first to assign a salary to these numerous dicasteries at Athens. He bribed the people with the public money (says Plutarch), in order to make head against Cimon, who bribed them out of his own private purse; as if the pay were the main feature in the case, and as if all which Pericles did was, to make himself popular by paying the dicasts for judicial service which they had before rendered gratuitously. The truth is, that this numerous army of dicasts, distributed into ten regiments and summoned to act systematically throughout the year, was now for the first time organised: the commencement of their pay is also the commencement of their regular judicial action. What Pericles really did was, to sever for the first time from the administrative competence of the magistrates that judicial authority which had originally gone along with it. The great men who had been accustomed to hold these offices were lowered both in influence and authority: while on the other hand a new life, habit, and sense of power, sprung up among the poorer citizens. A plaintiff having cause of civil action, or an accuser invoking punishment against citizens guilty of injury either to himself or to the state, had still to address himself to one or other of the archons, but it was only with a view of ultimately arriving before the dicastery by whom the cause was to be tried.

While the magistrates individually were thus restricted to simple administration, they experienced still more serious loss of power in their capacity of members of the Areopagus, after the year of archonship was expired. Instead of their previous unmeasured range of supervision and interference, they were now deprived of all judicial sanction beyond that small power of fining which was still left both to individual magistrates, and to the senate of Five Hundred. But the cognisance of homicide was still expressly reserved to them—for the procedure, in this latter case religious not less than judicial, was so thoroughly consecrated by ancient feeling, that no reformer could venture to disturb or remove it.