Book of the Magistrates of the Athenians

a hand, an eye, or a similar other member of the body. And thus the portion was observed according to the damage to the body. To the mute, to orphans, to the tongue-tied, the Podestà chief magistrate helps in matters to be estimated according to the condition, and thus in the name of those, he punishes the defendant either with death or in money. Whence, just as the Areopagites used great diligence in judging, so rarely did they have these burdens; they judged only three days of the month. Furthermore, they did not assemble unless the necessity of some important business required it, which is very similar to the council of the Venetians, which assembles once every eight days to elect magistrates. Of this Senate, and of many others like the Romans, the French, and the Greeks, Guillaume Budé has written fully in his first annotations on the Pandectae Digests of Roman law, which things I will refer from the authors from whom he extracted them. Therefore, he says from the words of Lucian that the Areopagites were accustomed to give their judgments at night and in silence so that they would not be taken by the art of those who, speaking in the presence of many, used it, and after so that the judgments and orations would not be interrupted by others while they were listening. And from here it is born that it is said the silent Areopagites. Nor was their taciturnity without reason, because they stood more attentively to listen to the defendant, nor were they ever accustomed to manifest the secrets of the judgments, and they placed the sentences in writing so that they would not depart from the opinion of those who were greater in both knowledge and age, or that they would answer the same.

THE VENETIAN LORDS.

are similar to the Athenians in this, that they do not