Book of the Magistrates of the Athenians

bring the sentences and secrets of the judgments to light, truly a very well-made thing. Because their authority can never be diminished, while their opinion cannot be slandered nor cut by other magistrates or by the plebeians. After the Greeks, one must see what the Latins have written of the Areopagites. Valerius Maximus, writing of them, said thus:

In the same City was the sacrosanct Council of the Areopagus, which was accustomed to take care of what each Athenian did, and from what gain he sustained himself, that men were honest, and that they remembered that they had to render an account of their life. The same Senate wanted good citizens to be adorned with a crown, and they put this into custom. Because the nourishment of virtue is honor.

Having found this in the writings, it is to be believed that they, in the time when they did not judge, scrutinized the deeds of others. But however the matter may be, it is a clear and manifest thing that they were prudent and almost divine. For which Cicero, a man of greatest judgment, wanted to compare that Senate more to God, the governor of the world, than to the Roman Senate. Because he says:

To deny that this world is governed without providence is as if one said that Athens is governed without the council of the Areopagites.

What Pliny says in the seventh book of his Natural Histories, that the first capital judgment was made in the Areopagus, does not seem very likely to me. Because it is seen through all the Greek authors that Solon was the one who ordered such a Magistrate, almost moderating the severity of the Ephetae ancient judges, as was said. But it is manifest that Draco