the
jealousy and power of factions, to preserve their judgment unbiased by
personal fear, and the abolition of which, we shall see hereafter, was
among the causes that crushed for a while the liberties of Athens. A
brazen urn received the suffrages of condemnation--one of wood those
of acquittal. Such was the character and constitution of the
AREOPAGUS. [210]

XIII. The second legislative council ordained or revived by Solon,
consisted of a senate, composed, first of four hundred, and many years
afterward of five hundred members. To this council all, save the
lowest and most numerous class, were eligible, provided they had
passed or attained the age of thirty. It was rather a chance assembly
than a representative one. The manner of its election appears not
more elaborate than clumsy. To every ward there was a president,
called phylarchus. This magistrate, on a certain day in the year,
gave in the names of all the persons within his district entitled to
the honour of serving in the council, and desirous of enjoying it.
These names were inscribed on brazen tablets, and cast into a certain
vessel. In another vessel was placed an equal number of beans;
supposing the number of candidates to be returned by each tribe to be
(as it at first was) a hundred, there were one hundred white beans put
into the vessel--the rest were black. Then the names of the
candidates and the beans were drawn out one by one; and each candidate
who had the good fortune to have his name drawn out together with a
white bean, became a member of the senate. Thus the constitution of
each succeeding senate might differ from the last--might, so far from
representing the people, contradict their wishes--was utterly a matter
of hazard and chance; and when Mr. Mitford informs us that the
assembly of the people was the great foundation of evil in the
Athenian constitution, it appears that to the capricious and
unsatisfactory election of this council we may safely impute many of
the inconsistencies and changes which that historian attributes
entirely to the more popular assembly [211]. To this council were
intrusted powers less extensive in theory than those of the Areopagus,
but far more actively exerted. Its members inspected the fleet (when
a fleet was afterward established)--they appointed jailers of prisons
--they examined the accounts of magistrates at the termination of
their office; these were minor duties; to them was allotted also an
au