The Historians' History of the World 03

This is not the opportunity, however, for trying to distinguish the good from the evil in the working of the sophists and rhetors. At present it is enough that they were the natural product of the age; supplying those wants, and answering to that stimulus, which arose partly from the deliberations of the ecclesia, but still more from the contentions before the dicastery—in which latter a far greater number of citizens took active part, with or without their own consent. The public and frequent dicasteries constituted by Pericles opened to the Athenian mind precisely that career of improvement which was best suited to its natural aptitude. They were essential to the development of that demand out of which grew not only Grecian oratory, but also, as secondary products, the speculative moral and political philosophy, and the didactic analysis of rhetoric and grammar, which long survived after Grecian creative genius had passed away. And it was one of the first measures of the oligarchy of Thirty, to forbid by an express law, any teaching of the art of speaking. Aristophanes derides the Athenians for their love of talk and controversy, as if it had enfeebled their military energy; but in his time, most undoubtedly, that reproach was not true—nor did it become true, even in part, until the crushing misfortunes which marked the close of the Peloponnesian War. During the course of that war, restless and energetic action was the characteristic of Athens even in a greater degree than oratory or political discussion, though before the time of Demosthenes a material alteration had taken place.

The establishment of these paid dicasteries at Athens was thus one of the most important and prolific events in all Grecian history. The pay helped to furnish a maintenance for old citizens, past the age of military service. Elderly men were the best persons for such a service, and were preferred for judicial purposes both at Sparta and, as it seems, in heroic Greece. Nevertheless, we need not suppose that all the dicasts were either old or poor, though a considerable proportion of them were so, and though Aristophanes selects these qualities as among the most suitable subjects for his ridicule. Pericles has been often censured for this institution, as if he had been the first to insure pay to dicasts who before served for nothing, and had thus introduced poor citizens into courts previously composed of citizens above poverty. But in the first place, this supposition is not correct in point of fact, inasmuch as there were no such constant dicasteries previously acting without pay; next, if it had been true, the habitual exclusion of the poor citizens would have nullified the popular working of these bodies, and would have prevented them from answering any longer to the reigning sentiment at Athens. Nor could it be deemed unreasonable to assign a regular pay to those who thus rendered regular service. It was indeed an essential item in the whole scheme and purpose, so that the suppression of the pay of itself seems to have suspended the dicasteries, while the oligarchy of Four Hundred was established—and it can only be discussed in that light. As the fact stands, we may suppose that the six thousand heliasts who filled the dicasteries were composed of the middling and poorer citizens indiscriminately; though there was nothing to exclude the richer, if they chose to serve.b

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