Archons

But I do ask you to preside over our speeches in a fair and impartial manner, and one and all to act as Archons.

Then, after obtaining a dowry such as no Greek had ever obtained before, he behaved in so profligate a fashion, bringing mistresses, slave and free, into the bridal house, that he drove his wife, who was a decent woman, to present herself before the Archon, as she was legally entitled to do, and divorce him.

Of festivals, then, he takes charge of these.

the archon exacts it from the owners of the lands in which the sacred olives are, three half-pints from each stump.

He takes charge also of the orphans and the heiresses and the women who, when the husband has died, claim to be pregnant.

Guide the Archons to him, and they will do the rest.

Debarred by every right that holds good in Athens, by the decisions of three tribunals, by the registers of the archons and of the collectors of taxes, by the indictment for wrongful entry in which you yourself are the plaintiff, curbed, I might almost say, by chains of steel, you wriggle and force your way through all and imagine that by weaving excuses and trumping up false charges you can overt …

And suits concerning these matters shall be brought before the archons, according as they severally have jurisdiction.

Let the archon take charge of orphans and of heiresses and of families that are becoming extinct, and of all women who remain in the houses of their deceased husbands, declaring that they are pregnant.

What is the counter-plea in the custody of the archons?

The primitive penal law of Athens entrusted the castigation of offences partly to the Archons, who seem to have punished them as torts, and partly to the Senate of Areopagus, which punished them as sins.

And there is not merely a personal feeling in favor of this course, but the state has taken public measures to secure that it shall be followed, since by law it entrusts the archon with the duty of preventing families from being extinguished.