Grecian antiquity, were magistrates appointed after the death of Codrus. They were chosen from the most illustrious families, till the time of Aristides, who got a law passed, by which it was enacted, that, in electing these magistrates, less regard should be paid to birth than to merit.

The tribunal of the archons was composed of nine officers. The first was properly the archon; by whose name the year of his administration was distinguished. The title of the second was king; that of the third, polemarchus; to these were added six thespiarchi. These magistrates, elected by the scrutiny of beans, were obliged to prove, before their respective tribes, that they had sprung, both in their father's and their mother's side, for three descents, from citizens of Athens. They were likewise to prove that they were attached to the worship of Apollo, the tutelary god of their country; that they had in their house an altar consecrated to Apollo; and that they had been respectfully obedient to their parents; an important and sacred part of their character, which promised that they would be faithful servants to their country. They were likewise to prove, that they had served in a military capacity the number of years which the republic required of every citizen: and this qualification gave the state experienced officers; for they were not allowed to quit the army till they were forty years old. Their fortune too, of which they were to inform those before whom they were examined, was a warrant for their fidelity.

After the commissioners, who were appointed to inquire into their character and other requisites, had made a report of them, they were then to swear that they would maintain the laws; which obligation if they neglected, they engaged to send to Delphi a statue of the weight of their bodies. According to a law of Solon, if an archon got drunk, he was condemned to pay a heavy fine, and sometimes even punished with death. Such magistrates as the Athenian archons were well entitled to respect. Hence it was eternal infamy to insult them; and hence Demosthenes observed, that to treat the thesmothetze with disrespect, was to show disrespect to the republic.

Another qualification indispensably required of the second officer of this tribunal, who was called the king, was, that he had married the daughter of an Athenian citizen, and that he had espoused her a virgin. This was exacted of him, says Demosthenes, because part of his duty was to sacrifice to the gods, jointly with his wife, who, instead of appeasing, would have irritated them, if she had not possessed both those honours.

The inquiry into the private title of the nine archons was very severe; and this attention was the more necessary, as they had a right to take a seat in the Areopagus, after they had quitted their office, and given an account of their administration.

When any obscurity occurred in the laws, relative to religion and the worship of the gods, the interpretation was submitted to the tribunal of the archons.

Aristotle observes, that Solon, whose aim was to make his people happy, and who found their government in his time aristocratical, by the election of the nine archons, who were annual magistrates, tempered their power, by establishing the privilege of appealing from them to the people, called by lot to give their suffrage, after having taken the oath of the Heliaxæ, in a place near the panathenæum, where Hippias had formerly calmed a sedition of the people, and bound them to peace by an oath.

The archons were the principal officers, not only in civil, but likewise in sacred matters, and especially in the mysteries of Bacchus. The archons, however, who were surnamed *eponymi*, were chiefly employed in civil affairs; yet they presided at the great feasts, and held the first rank there. Hence they are sometimes called *priests*.