AEBITRATION IN THE GREEK WORLD. 



285 



become strained ; this might be done before the occurrence of 

 hostilities between them, or else arbitration might be resorted to 

 as a means of bringing to a conclusion a war which had already 

 broken out. Finally, as I have already said, the Greeks might, 

 and frequently did, make a compact to refer to arbitration 

 disputes which might arise in the future, thus pledging 

 themselves beforehand to the employment of a peaceful and 

 equitable means of settling their differences. 



Let us suppose that a feud has arisen between two states 

 which cannot be settled by the ordinary means of diplomatic 

 negotiation : how is arbitration called into play ? The preliminary 

 step is an agreement concluded between the two contending 

 parties, by which they bind themselves to ask for the decision 

 of some neutral person or body, and to abide loyally by the 

 award when given. Such an agreement may, of course, be 

 reached, without the intervention of any third party, on the 

 initiative of the states themselves ; frequently, however, it was 

 made at the suggestion of some friendly power, which stepped 

 in to counsel the adoption of this means to avoid, or to cut short, 

 war ; or, again, the states might be members of a League which, 

 in its very constitution, provided for the arbitral settlement of 

 all disputes between its members, or some superior power might 

 use compulsion or the threat of force to make the states settle 

 their disputes in this way. In any case, the necessary 

 preliminary of a valid arbitration is the consent of the two 

 states involved, embodied in a formal agreement. A number of 

 these have come down to us and show us that they always 

 dealt with three questions : the matter to be submitted to 

 arbitration, the choice of the arbitrator, and the validity of the 

 award : in some cases they went on to determine the date of the 

 trial, the nature of the tribunal, the way in which the award 

 was to be reached and published, and the penalties attending 

 any contravention of it. When these points were not settled 

 in the preliminary agreement, they were left, we may conclude, 

 to the discretion of the arbitrator. 



The next step was to approach the proposed arbitrator and 

 ask his acceptance of the task, which, being at the same time a 

 high honour, was seldom, if ever, refused. What determined 

 the choice of arbitrator we are often unable to discover, as on 

 this question the records are usually silent, or speak in quite 

 general terms. Neutrality was, of course, a sine qua non : 

 friendliness and " kinship " to the two disputing states are 

 frequently referred to, and in some cases the state which 

 intervened to bring about the agreement to refer the question 



