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Dicasterion
(δικαστήριον). A word which indicates both the aggregate judges that sat in court and the place itself in which they held their sittings. For an account of the former, the reader is referred to the article crossDicastes; with respect to the latter, our information is very imperfect. In the earlier ages there were five celebrated places at Athens set apart for the sittings of the judges who had cognizance of the graver causes in which the loss of human life was avenged or expiated— viz., the Areopagites and the Ephetae. These places were on the Areopagus; in the Palladium, a sacred place in the southeastern part of the city; in the Delphinium, a place sacred to the Delphian Apollo in the same district; in the Prytaneum, the ancient sacred hearth of the State, to the northeast of the Acropolis; and finally at Phreatto or Phreattys in the Piraeus, at the inlet of Zea (Schömann, Antiq. i. 465, Eng. trans.; and the great passage in Demosth. c. Aristocr. pp. 641-646). The antiquity of these last four is sufficiently vouched for by the archaic character of the division of the causes that were appropriated to each: in the first we are told that accidental deaths were discussed, in the second, homicides confessed, but justified; in the third there were quasi-trials of inanimate things, which, by falling and the like, had occasioned a loss of human life (see Apsychon Dike); in the fourth, homicides who had returned from exile and committed a fresh manslaughter were appointed to be tried. With respect to these ancient institutions, of which little more than the name remained when the historical age commenced, it will be sufficient to observe that in accordance with the ancient Greek feeling respecting homicide—viz. that it involved ceremonial pollution in all cases, irrespective of the degree of criminality— the presiding judge was invariably the king archon, the Athenian rex sacrorum; and that the places in which the trials were held were open to the sky, to avoid the contamination which the judges might incur by being under the same roof with a murderer ( de Caed. Her. 11; cf. Phonou Dike).
The Heliaea properly so called, and probably, also, the majority of the Heliastic courts, were situated in the Agora; others in various parts of the city. The statement that there were not more than ten of these is probably erroneous. Besides the Heliaea, the first in numbers and importance, the following are named: the Parabyston (παράβυστον), in which the Eleven presided, and which is said to have received its name from its position in a remote quarter of the city; the Dicasterion of Metiochus, or Metichus, and that of Calleas (τὸ Κάλλειον), probably named after their builders; the Green Court (Βατραχιοῦν) and the Red Court (Φοινικιοῦν), the Middle Court (Μέσον), the Greater Court (Μεῖζον), the New Court (Καινόν), the Triangular Court (Τρίγωνον), and the Dicasterion at the holy place of Lycus (ἐπὶ Λύκῳ), probably near the Lyceum without the city. Dicasteries near the walls and in the street of the Hermoglyphi are mentioned with no further indication of their name. The Odeum, too, a building erected by Pericles and properly destined for musical performances, was used for the sittings of Heliastic courts; and so, probably, were other places of which no mention is found. The dicasts sat upon wooden benches, which were covered with rugs or matting (ψιαθία), and there were elevations or tribunes (βήματα), upon which the antagonist advocates stood during their address to the court. The space occupied by the persons engaged in the trial was protected by a railing (δρύφακτοι) from the intrusion of the bystanders; but in causes which bore upon the violation of the Mysteries, a further space of fifty feet all round was enclosed by a rope, and the security of this barrier guaranteed by the presence of the public slaves. See Demosii.
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