HEREDITARY DESCENT IN ANCIENT GREECE. 13 



The structure of the Athenian law courts obliged 

 every accused citizen to defend himself by a speech 

 before a jury, and thus made oratory indispensable 

 to success in any prominent career. An Athenian 

 jury often contained five hundred men. Every free 

 citizen needed as much to know how to make a 

 speech as how to bear arms. George Grote says 

 that the Athenian law which required every accused 

 citizen to defend himselt before juries made it as 

 necessary for rhetoric to be taught to the free man as 

 for strategy in war to be learned by the military por- 

 tion of the population. You remember that Socrates 

 defended himself before the jury-court which tried 

 him. It was a political and social necessity for 

 Athens to have teachers of rhetoric, logic, and poli- 

 tics. Great schools sprang up in rhetoric ; and the 

 free men, who were obliged to know how to speak in 

 public for themselves, made good audiences for the 

 orators and poets and philosophers. Little by little, 

 as there were good hearers, there came to be good 

 speakers. " It is the audience that makes the ora- 

 tor," Demosthenes used to say. The free men had 

 little on their hands but their civil duties. They 

 were aristocrats. There was a great population of 

 slaves ; and of course we abhor Athenian customs 

 in this particular. But unless a man had ability, as 

 well as a certain amount of wealth, it was difficult 

 for him to hold a position in ancient Athens. He 

 dropped easily into the artisan class. Emigrants 

 were called in, but they were sifted as fast as they 

 came. All of the average, and the lower than aver* 



