NOTE TO PAGE 24. ON A PRETENDED POWER OF THE AREOPAGUS.

Some readers may perhaps be surprised to find no mention made here of a prerogative, which they may have seen elsewhere attributed to the Areopagus, and which it is said to have retained even to the time of the change effected by Pericles and Ephialtes. Till that time, we have been informed by a modern historian, the Areopagus directed all issues from the public treasury. The assertion is one of those—very numerous in the work where it occurs — which have owed their success neither to the force of testimony nor of reasoning, but simply to the placid assurance with which they are advanced. We have seen indeed (Vol. II. p. 296.) an extraordinary case, in which the Areopagus seems to have assumed such a power. But if any one thinks this a sufficient proof of the general assertion, we could only reply by the old Greek jest, of the simpleton who carried a brick about as a sample of a house, or by the Roman story, of the youth who finding a fragment of a boat on the beach, was seized with the desire of building a ship. It is one of those statements which can hardly be refuted until some attempt has been made to prove them. But we may observe that the very fact of Aristotle's mentioning the report on this subject for which Plutarch cites his authority — and after all it was no more than a report, and Clidemus (Plut. Them. 10.) gave a different account of the matter — raises the strongest presumption that, if true, it was an extraordinary case.