a sovereign tribunal at Athens, famous for the justice and impartiality of its decrees, to which the gods themselves are said to have submitted their differences.

Authors are not agreed about the number of judges that composed this august court; some reckon thirty-one; others, fifty-one; and others, five hundred. In effect, their number seems not to have been fixed, but to have been more or less in different years. At first, this tribunal consisted only of nine persons, who had all discharged the office of Archons, had acquitted themselves with honour in that trust, and had likewise given an account of their administration before the Logistae, and undergone a rigorous examination. Their salary was equal, and paid out of the treasury of the republic; they had three oboli for each cause. The Areopagites were judges for life; they never sat in judgment but in the open air, and that in the nighttime, to the intent that their minds might be the more present and attentive, and that no object of pity or aversion might make any impression on them; and all the pleadings before them were to be in the simplest and most naked terms. At first they took cognizance of criminal causes only, but in course of time their jurisdiction became of great extent.

Mr Spon, who examined the antiquities of that illustrious city, found some remains of the Areopagus still existing in the middle of the temple of Theseus, which was heretofore in the middle of the city, but is now without the walls. The foundation of the Areopagus is a semicircle, with an esplanade of 140 paces round it, which properly made the hall of the Areopagus. There is a tribunal cut in the middle of a rock, with seats on each side of it, where the Areopagites sat exposed to the open air. It is very uncertain when this court was instituted, since Demosthenes himself is at a loss upon the point: Some think that it was instituted by Solon; but others carry it much higher, and assert it to have been established by Cecrops, about the time that Aaron died.