ratic constitution. That is, a man
entered upon a judicial tribunal by taking a political oath!
[222] These courts have been likened to modern juries; but they were
very little bound by the forms and precedents which shackled the
latter. What a jury, even nowadays, a jury of only twelve persons,
would be if left entirely to impulse and party feeling, any lawyer
will readily conceive. How much more capricious, uncertain, and
prejudiced a jury of five hundred, and, in some instances, of one
thousand or fifteen hundred! [By the junction of two or more
divisions, as in cases of Eisangelia. Poll. viii., 53 and 123; also
Tittman.]
[223] "Designed by our ancestors," says Aristotle (Pol., lib. viii,
c. 3) not, as many now consider it, merely for delight, but for
discipline that so the mind might be taught not only how honourably to
pursue business, but how creditably to enjoy leisure; for such
enjoyment is, after all, the end of business and the boundary of
active life.
[224] See Aristot. (Pol., lib. viii., c. 6.)
[225] An anecdote in Gellius, lib. xv., c. 17, refers the date of the
disuse of this instrument to the age of Pericles and during the
boyhood of Alcibiades.
[226] Drawing was subsequently studied as a branch of education
essential to many of the common occupations of life.
[227] Suid.
[228] Hecataeus was also of Miletus.
[229] Pausan., ii., c. 3: Cic. de Orat., ii., c. 53; Aulus Gellius,
xv., c. 23.
[230] Fast. Hell., vol. i.
[231] A brilliant writer in the Edinburgh Review (Mr. Macauley) would
account for the use of dialogue in Herodotus by the childish
simplicity common to an early and artless age--as the boor always
unconsciously resorts to the dramatic form of narration, and relates
his story by a series of "says he's" and "says I's." But does not Mr.
Macauley, in common with many others, insist far too much on the
artlessness of the age and the unstudied simplicity of the writer?
Though history itself was young, art was already at its zenith. It
was the age of Sophocles, Phidias, and Pericles. It was from the
Athenians, in their most polished period, that Herodotus received the
most rapturous applause. Do not all accounts of Herodotus, as a
writer, assure us that he spent the greater part of a long life in
composing, polishing, and perfecting his history; and is it not more
in conformity with the characteristic spirit of the times, and the
masterly effects which Herod
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