burlesque to assume that it was so. No doubt the pay was an object to some of the poorer citizens; and so far the influence of such a regulation was bad, inasmuch as it led to the juries being too often struck from an inferior class, less independent and less intelligent. Nor need we be so uncharitable as the historian Mitford, and calculate that "besides the pay, which was small, there was the hope of bribes, which might be large." It is not probable that bribery could often be applied to so numerous a body. But the sense of dignity and personal importance which attaches to the right of giving a judicial decision, and the interest and excitement which are aroused by legal or criminal questions, especially in those who have to investigate them, are feelings perfectly well understood in our days, as well as in those of Aristophanes. Such feelings are not only natural, but have their use, more especially when the cause to be decided is, as it so often was at Athens, of a public character. Plato considered that a citizen who took no interest in these duties made himself a kind of alien in the state, and we Englishmen hold very much the same doctrine. But the passion for hearing and deciding questions, judicial or political, was carried to great excess among the Athenians at this date. Their own historians and orators are full of references to this national peculiarity, and Aristophanes is not the only satirist who has taken advantage of it. Lucian, in one of his very amusing dialogues, represents Menippus as looking down from the moon upon the earth below, and watching the various pursuits of the inhabitants. The northern
