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The Jury-courts are elected by lot by the Nine Archons by tribes, and the Clerk of the Lawgivers from the tenth tribe. [2] The courts have ten entrances, one for each tribe, twenty rooms, two for each tribe, in which courts are allotted to jurors, a hundred small boxes, ten for each tribe,1 and other boxes into which the tickets of the jurymen drawn by lot are thrown, and two urns. Staves are placed at each entrance, as many as there are jurymen, and acorns to the same number as the staves are thrown into the urn, and on the acorns are written the letters of the alphabet, starting with the eleventh, lambda, as many as the courts that are going to be filled. [3] Right to sit on juries belongs to all those over thirty years old who are not in debt to the Treasury or disfranchised. If any unqualified person sits on a jury, information is laid against him and he is brought before the jury-court, and if convicted the jurymen assess against him whatever punishment or fine he is thought to deserve; and if given a money fine, he has to go to prison until he has paid both the former debt, for which the information was laid, and whatever additional sum has been imposed on him as a fine by the court. [4] Each juryman has one box-wood ticket, with his own name and that of his father and deme written on it, and one letter of the alphabet as far as kappa; for the jurymen of each tribe are divided into ten sections, approximately an equal number under each letter. [5] As soon as the Lawgiver has drawn by lot the letters to be assigned to the courts, the attendant immediately takes them and affixes to each court its allotted letter.2
1 'The dicasts in each tribe are distributed over all the 10 divisions into which all the dicasts are divided. In each tribe all the tickets (πινάκια) bearing the names of the dicasts in the division A are placed in the first κιβώτιον, those of division B in the second, and so on for all the 10 divisions. According to the number of dicasts required, an equal number of tickets is drawn by lot from each of the 100 κιβώτια. Each ticket so drawn has a court assigned to it by lot; and the tickets are now all placed in the second set of 10 κιβώτια, all tickets assigned to dicasts of any special court being placed in the κιβώτιον which bears the letter corresponding to that court. The names of all the dicasts selected to serve are thus distributed over the several courts that are to sit on the day in question' (Sandys). See further Aristot. Ath. Pol. 64.
2 Only fragments of the remaining pages of the MS. survive, much defaced. The most legible passages are here appended, gaps having been filled in without note where the restoration is generally accepted or is very probable.
Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 20, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1952.
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