ge as an ingenious
means for obtaining true testimony. "Torture," says the orator Isaeus,
"is the surest means of proof; and so when you wish to clear up a
contested question, you do not address yourselves to freemen, but,
placing the slaves to the torture, you seek to discover the truth."

=Foreigners.=--The name Metics was applied to people of foreign origin
who were established in Athens. To become a citizen of Athens it was
not enough, as with us, to be born in the country; one must be the son
of a citizen. It might be that some aliens had resided in Attica for
several generations and yet their family not become Athenian. The
metics could take no part in the government, could not marry a
citizen, nor acquire land. But they were personally free, they had the
right of commerce by sea, of banking and of trade on condition that
they take a patron to represent them in the courts. There were in
Athens more than ten thousand families of metics, the majority of them
bankers or merchants.

=The Citizens.=--To be a citizen of Athens it was necessary that both
parents should be citizens. The young Athenian, come to maturity at
about eighteen years of age, appeared before the popular assembly,
received the arms which he was to bear and took the following oath: "I
swear never to dishonor these sacred arms, not to quit my post, to
obey the magistrates and the laws, to honor the religion of my
country." He became simultaneously citizen and soldier. Thereafter he
owed military service until he was sixty years of age. With this he
had the right to sit in the assembly and to fulfil the functions of
the state.

Once in a while the Athenians consented to receive into the
citizenship a man who was not the son of a citizen, but this was rare
and a sign of great favor. The assembly had to vote the stranger into
its membership, and then nine days after six thousand citizens had to
vote for him on a secret ballot. The Athenian people was like a closed
circle; no new members were admitted except those pleasing to the old
members, and they admitted few beside their sons.

THE GOVERNMENT OF ATHENS

=The Assembly.=--The Athenians called their government a democracy (a
government by the people). But this people was not, as with us, the
mass of inhabitants, but the body of citizens, a true aristocracy of
15,000 to 20,000 men who governed the whole nation as masters. This
body had absolute power, and was the true sovereign of Athens. It
a