me he magnifies and brings
into prominence the Nocturnal Council (which is in many respects a
reflection of the Areopagus), but does not make it the governing body of
the state.

Between the judicial system of the Laws and that of Athens there was
very great similarity, and a difference almost equally great. Plato not
unfrequently adopts the details when he rejects the principle. At
Athens any citizen might be a judge and member of the great court of
the Heliaea. This was ordinarily subdivided into a number of inferior
courts, but an occasion is recorded on which the whole body, in
number six thousand, met in a single court (Andoc. de Myst.). Plato
significantly remarks that a few judges, if they are good, are better
than a great number. He also, at least in capital cases, confines the
plaintiff and defendant to a single speech each, instead of allowing two
apiece, as was the common practice at Athens. On the other hand, in all
private suits he gives two appeals, from the arbiters to the courts of
the tribes, and from the courts of the tribes to the final or supreme
court. There was nothing answering to this at Athens. The three courts
were appointed in the following manner:--the arbiters were to be agreed
upon by the parties to the cause; the judges of the tribes to be elected
by lot; the highest tribunal to be chosen at the end of each year by the
great officers of state out of their own number--they were to serve for
a year, to undergo a scrutiny, and, unlike the Athenian judges, to vote
openly. Plato does not dwell upon methods of procedure: these are the
lesser matters which he leaves to the younger legislators. In cases of
murder and some other capital offences, the cause was to be tried by a
special tribunal, as was the custom at Athens: military offences, too,
as at Athens, were decided by the soldiers. Public causes in the Laws,
as sometimes at Athens, were voted upon by the whole people: because, as
Plato remarks, they are all equally concerned in them. They were to
be previously investigated by three of the principal magistrates. He
believes also that in private suits all should take part; 'for he who
has no share in the administration of justice is apt to imagine that he
has no share in the state at all.' The wardens of the country, like the
Forty at Athens, also exercised judicial power in small matters, as
well as the wardens of the agora and city. The department of justice is
better organized in Plato tha