Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

The Public Sphere 225
sibility of the injured party to bring the action. In cases of homicide,
the relatives of the victim were required to prosecute the killer.
A preliminary hearing called an anakrisis took place before a magistrate.
Oaths were exchanged by the plaintiff and the defendant, the
former swearing that his accusation was genuine, the latter either
admitting guilt or swearing that he was innocent. The defendant was
free at this time to enter a counterplea. The case was then assigned
to a particular court on a particular date. All trials, irrespective of
the severity of the charges, were confined in scope to the space of a
single day. Only a limited amount of cross-examination took place.
The testimony of slaves could be obtained only under torture.
Trial Procedure
Although magistrates presided over trials, they did not serve as
judges in the modern sense of the term. They gave neither advice nor
directions to the jury, nor did they sentence those who were found
guilty. They merely supervised the proceedings. The dikastêria, or
law courts, were served by panels of jurors, drawn from a pool of
6,000 citizens, annually selected from all those who applied. The only
qualification was that a juror had to be over 30 years of age. Juries
were often extremely large because it was believed that this reduced
the likelihood of bribery. The more serious the charge, the larger
was the number of jurors. One jury is said to have numbered 1,501.
As we have seen, Perikles was the first to introduce pay for jurors.
Although it was less than a day’s wage for a laborer, it was no doubt
much appreciated by the poor, the elderly, and the infirm. Given the
advanced age of many jurors, scholars suspect that they tended to be
rather conservative. Aristophanes’ comic play Wasps (produced 422
b.c.e. ), which takes its name from a chorus of elderly jurors dressed as
wasps, lends support to this view, as the jurors are portrayed as taking
malicious delight in delivering harsh judgments. Because leading
politicians and indeed prominent individuals in general were in
constant danger of being prosecuted, jurors who were assigned to
important cases exercised considerable power and influence.
First the prosecution spoke and then the defense. The length of their
speeches depended on the seriousness of the charge. Even a capital
case, however, was over in a single day. Witnesses were not called,
though their sworn testimonies were read out in court. A water-clock
ensured that both the prosecution and the defense had exactly the
same amount of time to present their cases. Once the defense had spoken,
the jurors voted without deliberation. In the fifth century b.c.e. ,