year, and they chose their president by lot every day, so that any
worthy man at Athens had a chance to be president for a day and a
night.

[Illustration: A DECREE OF THE COUNCIL--ABOUT 450 B.C.]

Many citizens also served in the courts, for there were six thousand
judges, and in deciding important cases as many as a thousand and one,
or even fifteen hundred and one, took part. Before such large courts
and assemblies it was necessary to be a good speaker to be able to win
a case or persuade the citizens. Some of the greatest orators of the
world were Athenians, the best known being Demosthenes.

SOCRATES. The Athenians were not always just, although so many of them
acted as judges. One court, composed of five hundred and one judges,
condemned to death Socrates, the wisest man of the Greeks and one of
the wisest in the world. He did not make speeches, or write books, or
teach in school. He went about, in the market place, at the gymnasium,
and on the streets, asking men, young and old, questions about what
interested him most, that is, What is the true way to live? If people
did not give him an answer which seemed good, he asked more questions,
until sometimes they went away angry. Many of them thought because he
asked questions about everything that he did not believe in anything,
not even in the religion of his city.

[Illustration: SOCRATES After the marble bust in the Vatican]

THE DEATH OF SOCRATES, 399 B.C. After a while the enemies of Socrates
accused him of being a wicked man who persuaded young men to be
wicked. He was tried by an Athenian court, which made the terrible