146
Let me give you a proof that my account of the matter is correct. It would not have been lawfuli.e. if, as Timocrates contends, imprisonment was repugnant to the spirit of Athenian law, the law would not have given you the option of imposing corporal or pecuniary punishment. for you, gentlemen of the jury, to assess any penalty, corporal or pecuniary,for imprisonment is a corporal punishment, and therefore you could not have inflicted it as a penalty, nor could it have been provided by statute, in cases where information is laid or summary arrest is allowed, that the Eleven shall put in the stocks any man against whom information is laid, or who has been arrested, if it had been unlawful to imprison any offenders other than those who conspire to betray the commonwealth, or to overthrow popular government, or tax-farmers who do not satisfy their contract.
147
But as matters stand you must accept these facts as proving that imprisonment is lawful, otherwise penal sentences would at once have been entirely inoperative. In the second place, gentlemen of the jury, the formula, I will not imprison any Athenian citizen, is not in itself a statute; it is merely a phrase in the written oath taken by the Council, to prevent politicians who are in the Council from caballing to commit any citizen to prison.
148
Solon therefore, wishing to deprive the Council of authority to imprison, included this formula in the Councillors’ oath; but he did not include it in the judicial oath. He thought it right that a Court of Justice should have unlimited authority, and that the convicted criminal should submit to any punishment ordered by the court. To make good this view the clerk will read the judicial oath of the Court of Heliaea. Read.
149
The Oath of the Heliasts
