Morning journal and courier., 1880-01-23
Kent Club Lectures.


 Coming of Age-The Juries of Greece
 Their Court SyDtem.
 The third in the course Of Yale Kent Club l lectures was delivered last evening at the cus- tomary place, the Common Pleas Court room, being ex-President Woolsey, and his subject ssThe suits of Demosthenes, on coming of age, against his guardians" Despite pour ing rain, there was quite large assembly in attendance, including 8 considerable sprink- liep of ladies and various noted men at the
 bar, in Yale and in other circles of promi- hence in the city. Announcement was made that the next lecture would be given next Thursday evening by Prof. A. M. Wheeler of Yale, and the subject s'Niebuhr." Ex-Presi-
 dent Woolsey stated before commencing his
 next week Wednesday, the 2sth, the Rev. H.
 G. Spaulding would lecture in this city on
 sRome and Pompeii," and that from the re-
 ception he had met with elsewhere, he had no
 doubt that he would interest and gratify
 those who attended it. In opening his
 lecture, he defined the values of various
 kinds of money in use in Greece at the time
 of Demostnenes for the purposes of the lec-
 ture. Demosthenes was the son of an Athe-
 nian of the same name, and his grandfather
 was one who had been entrusted with for
 tress or fortified town in what is now the
 Crimea, which he had the misfortune to sur
 render to a Scythian, and hence was exiled
 He married daughter of Scythian magnate
 by whom he received considerable property.
 His grandfather had two sons, and there arose
 the property question that as the grand noth-
 CT was of foreign extraction, the marriage
 was in violation of the law, but this was prob
 ably untrue, as the law requiring the father
 and mother to be Athenian born was not
 passed until after that marriage. Demosthenes
 the elder was @ manufacturer and had two
 shops, in one of which sabres were made and 22 or 23 slaves employed; in the other sofas or beds, where 20 hired slaves were employed. The wife of this Demosthenes brought him about $1, ,OOO. The father died apparently early in life and left daughter. Demos themes was then between and years old. He appointed three guardians, one Apius who became conspicuous as the party against whom these suits were brought, being one of them, and being sisters son. In order to
 better secure his fidelity he gave him the pa ternal residence and other valuable considera- tions until the son reached his majority. In addition to this the provisions of the will of | the testator bequeathed, as will seem strange to us, his own wife to Apius, but this was | in accord with the Greek custom. The story of the embezzlements of this guardian and
 the consequent bringing of the suits by the ranaat- ed. Tho law allowed the guardian thus hay | ing wife placed at his disposal to decline her | without forfeiting the guardianship. At | Athens the female never reached legal ma | iority, and was therefore incapable of man aging her own property. Apius, if he &C., l cepted, had only to divorce himself from his l wife and take the new one if he chose. The
 laws of divorce were easy. Apius did not decline the wife, especially as she brought
 him property and property rights, nor De- ! mosthenes the lady who had been offered him
 when she arrived at proper age. The guardians
 had their option to manage or lease the estate and take the profits. They were neglectful of | their trust and their neglect of duty became l town talk
 Things went on so for ten years. Demosthenes on attaining his majority brought the suits | and made speeches in the progress of the ! trials. Whether those that have come down to us were his own or the composition of | others, or his own in later years, is not mat | ter agreed upon. The lecturer now divided his subject under appropriate heads. The first related to the speeches against the guard | ians. The third was the attempt on the part
 of wealthy Athenian to prevent the cause | from coming into court. The fourth was the courts themselves. The fifth, the charge of | falsestestimony brought against Apius. The | sixth, the suit against the citizen Onetor, who
 was charged by Demosthenes with fraudulent | ly making the claim that land of Apius had been mortgaged to him to defeat Demosthenes in his suit The property left by Demosthenes was worth 16 talents or about $16, 900. He asked 12 per cent, the legal rate of interest, | and might have charged IS, but did not. In | all, the property was adjudged to be worth 8 | sum equal to about $50, 900 in these days. He | did not greatly overestimate the property left | by his father, as was shown by the speaker | from the assessed value of the property, | judged from circumstance related | The courts were now alluded to. | Demosthenes first resorted to the intervention of his friends without success and also to ar | bitration, which Apius acceded to till he | found the case would go against him. The case then went to the courts. There was one chief among the public arbitrators of whom there were forty in all. His decision was not final. The record of the proceedings before l the arbitrator was sealed up in an earthen ves- | sel, so that if the case went up higher the | same testimony would not have to be taken again, but new testimony could be taken. | The cause was decided before this | magistrate or arbitrator in favor of Demosthenes. Apius then carried it up | to the court properly so- called. He refused
 to abide by the arbitrator's decision, and so placed Demosthenes in the attitude of com | plainant again. When he got rid of the grip | of the law he took the remarkable step of | antithesis, a proceeding in relation to an ex- change of property. This proceeding was detailed by the speaker, and the efforts and
 pluck of the young Demosthenes and his bravery in fighting the battle single handed
 and almost unsupported by friends. The de- cision of causes by jurors, system akin to our jury system, was alluded to. There were, moreover, no such persons as lawyers in those days but the speaker thought if they had had | lawyers it would have been better for them | and probably suits would have been less nu- l merous than they were. The wealthier citi- l zens and those engaged in prominent affairs
 shirked jury duty, and it fell into the hands | of the poorer classes. For this service mem- bers of the jury received ten cents a day, a | small sum, but sufficient to support free citizen of Greece. These jurymen were sworn to vote according to the laws; to vote | neither for tyranny nor an oligarchy, nor for | any one trying to put down democracy, nor
 to speak or give their voice to that object,
 nor for the confscation of private estates; for, continued the speaker, the Athenians were hon
 est you'see and paid their debts as far as juries
 were concerned. The juryman, moreover, must
 be at least thirty years of age and must swear that he will hear the accused and the accuser | impartially. All the preliminary proceedings
 as to place of meeting. etc., were arranged by the courts and the accused compelled to ap- | pear before the jury. Oral testimony was | occasionally admitted as well as written. The presiding officer, if such he might be called counted the votes of the jury, but gave no
 opinion in the case, except now and then upon
 the oral testimony. In criminal cases, or others, which involved pecuniary loss, the prisoner sometimes brought his family before the jury to excite their sympathy in his be- half. Sometimes attempts were made to get the prosecutor to lower his demands. The pleas at this time could be made by deputy or friend could perform that office. There
 were in those days also practiced writers who
 wrote pleas which speakers committed to memory and delivered. This naturally increased the interest in cases before the courts and brought out listeners. Thus ora tory grew into one of the fine arts. Some of tbeca oYaf0rica1 efforts hv othara hesidas