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402

DICASTES.

the Ilissus, but in after times at some other spot, of which we are not informed. In the time of Demosthenes the oath (which is given at full length in Dem. c. Timoc. p. 746) asserted the qualification of the dicast, and a solemn engage­ment by him to discharge his office faithfully and incorruptibly in general, as well as in certain spe­cified cases which bore reference to the appoint­ment of magistrates, a matter in no small degree under the control of the dicast, inasmuch as few could enter upon any office without having had their election submitted to a court for its approba­tion [docimasia] ; and besides these, it con­tained a general promise to support the existing constitution, which the dicast would of course be peculiarly enabled to do, when persons were ac­cused before him of attempting its subversion. This oath being taken, and the divisions made as above mentioned, it remained to assign the courts to the several sections of dicasts in which they were to sit. This was not, like the first, an appoint­ment intended to last during the year, but took place under the conduct of the thesmothetae, de novo, every time that it was necessary to impanel a number of dicasts. In ordinary cases, when one, two, or more sections of 500 made itp the comple­ment of judges appropriated to trying the particular kind of cause in hand, the process was extremely simple. Two urns or caskets (/cA^pcorT^na) were produced, one containing tickets inscribed with the distinctive letters of the sections ; the other fur­nished, in like manner, with similar tickets to in­dicate the courts in which the sittings were to be held. If the cause was to be tried by a single section, a ticket would be drawn simultaneously from each urn, and the result announced, that sec­tion B, for instance, was to sit in court F ; if a thousand dicasts were requisite, two tablets would, in like manner, be drawn from the itrn that re­presented the sections, while one was drawn from the other as above mentioned, and the announce­ment might run that sections A and B were to sit in court F, and the like. A more complicated system must have been adopted when fractional parts of the section sat by themselves, or were added to other whole sections : but what this might have been we can only conjecture, and it is ob­vious that some other process of selection must have prevailed upon all those occasions when judges of a peculiar qualification were required; as, for instance, in the trial of violators of the mys­teries, when the initiated only were allowed to judge ; and in that of military offenders who were left to the justice of those only whose comrades they were, or should have been at the time when the offence was alleged to have been committed. It is pretty clear that the allotment of the dicasts to their several courts for the day, took place in the manner above-mentioned, in the market place, and that it was conducted in all cases, except one, by the thesmothetae ; in that one, which was when the magistrates and public officers rendered an ac­count of their conduct at the expiration of their term of office, and defended themselves against all charges of malversation in it [euthyne], the logistae were the officiating personages. As soon as the allotment had taken place, each dicast received a staff, on which was painted the letter and colour of the court awarded him, which might serve both as c, ticket to procure admittance, and also to dis­tinguish him from any loiterer that might endea-

DIKE.

vour clandestinely to obtain a sitting after business had begun.

The dicasts received a fee for their attendance (rb SiK.cLffTiK.6v or fJiiffOos SutacrriKos). This pay­ment is said to have been first instituted by Pe­ricles (Aristot. Polit. ii. 9. p. 67, ed. Gottling ; Plut. Per. 9 ; Plat. Gorg. p. 515) ; and it is generally supposed from Aristophanes (Nub. 840), who makes Strepsiades say that for the first obolus he ever received as a dicast, he bought a toy for his son, that it was at first only one obolus. Accord­ing to the Scholiast on Aristophanes (Ran. 140) the pay was subsequently increased to two oboli, but this seems to be merely an erroneous inference from the passage of his author. Three oboli or the triobolon (rpidoSoov) occurs as early as B. c. 425 in the comedies of Aristophanes, and is afterwards mentioned frequently. (Aristoph. Eq. 51, 255, Vesp. 584, 654, 660, Ran. 1540, &c.) Bockh has inferred from these passages that the triobolon was introduced by Cleon about b. c. 421 ; butG. Her­mann (Praef. ad Aristoph. Nub. p. 1, &c. 2nd edit.) has disputed this opinion, at least so far as it is founded upon Aristophanes, and thinks that the pay of three oboli for the dicasts existed before that time. However this may be, thus much is certain, that the pay of the dicasts was not the same at all times, although it is improbable that it should ever have been two oboli. (Aristot. ap. Schol. ad Aristoph. Vesp. 682 ; Hesych. s. v. §i/ca-(TTiKov ; Suid. s. v. ^Atatrrai.) The payment was made after every assembly of a court of heliastae by the Colacretae (Lucian, Bis accusat. 12, 15) in the following manner. After a citizen had been appointed by lot to act as judge in a particular court, he received on entering the court together with the staff (jSa/crrjpta or pd€Sos) a tablet or ticket ((TvpGoXov). After the business of the court was over, the dicast, on going out, delivered his ticket to the prytaneis, and received his fee in re­turn. (Schol. ad Aristoph. Plut. 277 ; Suid. s. v. fiaKTiipia; Etymol. M. s. v. ffi>^€oov; Pollux, viii. 16.) Those who had come too late had no claim to the triobolon. (Aristoph. Vesp. 660.) The an­nual amount of these fees is reckoned by Aristo­phanes (Vesp. 560, &c. with the Schol.) at ]50 talents, a sum which is very high and can perhaps only be applied to the most flourishing times of Athens. (Bockh, PuU. Econ. of Athens^ p. 227, 2nd ed. ; Meier, Att. Proc. p. 125, &c. [J.S.M.] DICASTICON (Swown/coV). [dicastes.] DIKE7 (Si/o?), signifies generally any proceed­ings at law by one party directly or mediately against others. (Harpocrat. s. v. ; Pollux, viii. 40, 41.) The object of all such actions is to protect the body politic, or one or more of its individual members, from injury and aggression ; a distinc­tion which has in most countries suggested the division of all causes into two great classes, the public and the private, and assigned to each its peculiar form and treatment. At Athens the first of these was implied by the terms public 8i/cou, or o/ywj/es, or still more peculiarly by ypatyai: causes of the other class were termed private Si/cat or dywves, or simply Siicai in its limited sense. There is a still further subdivision of ypa<pai into stj/uoo-icu and VSiou,, of which the former is somewhat analo­gous to impeachments for offences directly against the state ; the latter, to criminal prosecutions, in which the state appears as a party mediately in­jured in the violence or other wrong done to indi-