dified both public
and private Athenian life, drew to itself the undivided reverence and
submission of the people, and by degrees rendered the single
magistracies essentially subordinate functions. The popular assembly, as
constituted by Solon, appearing in modified efficiency and trained to
the office of reviewing and judging the general conduct of a past
magistrate--forms the intermediate stage between the passive Homeric
agora and those omnipotent assemblies and dicasteries which listened to
Pericles or Demosthenes. Compared with these last, it has in it but a
faint streak of democracy--and so it naturally appeared to Aristotle,
who wrote with a practical experience of Athens in the time of the
orators; but compared with the first, or with the ante-Solonian
constitution of Attica, it must doubtless have appeared a concession
eminently democratical. To impose upon the Eupatrid archon the necessity
of being elected, or put upon his trial of after-accountability, by the
_rabble_ of freemen (such would be the phrase in Eupatrid society),
would be a bitter humiliation to those among whom it was first
introduced; for we must recollect that this was the most extensive
scheme of constitutional reform yet propounded in Greece, and that
despots and oligarchies shared between them at that time the whole
Grecian world. As it appears that Solon, while constituting the popular
assembly with its pro-bouleutic senate, had no jealousy of the senate of
Areopagus, and indeed, even enlarged its powers, we may infer that his
grand object was, not to weaken the oligarchy generally, but to improve
the administration and to repress the misconduct and irregularities of
the individual archons; and that, too, not by diminishing their powers,
but by making some degree of popularity the condition both of their
entry into office, and of their safety or honor after it.

It is, in my judgment, a mistake to suppose that Solon transferred the
judicial power of the archons to a popular dicastery. These magistrates
still continued self-acting judges, deciding and condemning without
appeal--not mere presidents of an assembled jury, as they afterward came
to be during the next century. For the general exercise of such power
they were accountable after their year of office. Such accountability
was the security against abuse--a very insufficient security, yet not
wholly inoperative. It will be seen, however, presently that these
archons, though strong to c