[217] Lysias cont. Theomnest. A. c. 5, p. 357, who gives ἐὰν μὴ προστιμήσῃ ἡ Ἡλίαια as a Solonian phrase; though we are led to doubt whether Solon can ever have employed it, when we find Pollux (vii, 5, 22) distinctly stating that Solon used the word ἐπαίτια to signify what the orators called προστιμήματα.
The original and proper meaning of the word Ἡλίαια is, the public assembly (see Tittmann, Griech. Staatsverfass. pp. 215-216); in subsequent times we find it signifying at Athens—1. The aggregate of six thousand dikasts chosen by lot annually and sworn, or the assembled people considered as exercising judicial functions; 2. Each of the separate fractions into which this aggregate body was in practice subdivided for actual judicial business. Ἐκκλησία became the term for the public deliberative assembly properly so called, which could never be held on the same day that the dikasteries sat (Dêmosthen. cont. Timokrat. c. 21, p. 726): every dikastery is in fact always addressed as if it were the assembled people engaged in a specific duty.
I imagine the term Ἡλίαια in the time of Solon to have been used in its original meaning,—the public assembly, perhaps with a connotation of employment in judicial proceeding. The fixed number of six thousand does not date before the time of Kleisthenês, because it is essentially connected with the ten tribes; while the subdivision of this body of six thousand into various bodies of jurors for different courts and purposes did not commence, probably, until after the first reforms of Kleisthenês. I shall revert to this point when I touch upon the latter, and his times.
It is, in my judgment, a mistake to suppose that Solon transferred the judicial power of the archons to a popular dikastery; these magistrates still continued self-acting judges, deciding and condemning without appeal,—not mere presidents of an assembled jury, as they afterwards came to be during the next century.[218] For the general exercise of such power they were accountable after their year of office; and this accountability was the security against abuse,—a very insufficient security, yet not wholly inoperative. It will be seen, however, presently, that these archons, though strong to coerce, and perhaps to oppress, small and poor men,—had no means of keeping down rebellious nobles of their own rank, such as Peisistratus, Lykurgus, and Megaklês, each with his armed followers. When we compare the drawn swords of these ambitious competitors, ending in the despotism of one of them, with the vehement parliamentary strife between Themistoklês and Aristeidês afterwards, peaceably decided by the vote of the sovereign people, and never disturbing the public tranquillity,—we shall see that the democracy of the ensuing century fulfilled the conditions of order, as well as of progress, better than the Solonian constitution.