The fact that every citizen who had a case in the law courts of Athens was obliged to plead his cause in person before a court consisting of about 500 jurors, gave a great impetus to the cultivation of oratory. Not only was the preparation of the speeches often entrusted to professional rhetoricians, but their services as teachers of elocution were also called into requisition by those who were anxious to do justice to their cause by means of an effective delivery. The general Assembly offered a still larger field for the practice of [Illustration: THE PNYX; OR, PLACE OF ASSEMBLY OF THE ATHENIAN PEOPLE At the junction of the converging lines of scarped rock is the _bēma_, or altar, of the Pnyx, with a platform in front, from which, it is believed, the orators addressed the people. It will be seen that the steps, at the side of the cubical mass of rock, which has been called an altar, ascend right up to the top of it; and it seems probable that we have here rather the basis of the altar than the altar itself. The latter may very well have been movable. Above the _bēma_ will be seen the remains of a semicircular row of seats, apparently the seats of the Prytanes, facing the people. In the middle distance of the drawing the Acropolis rises majestically, and is finely opposed by the long line of Mount Hymettos.] eloquence, on the part of those who were ambitious of a political career, and it was open to all citizens who chose to attend. The result was that the Athenians became as pre-eminent in their power of expression in language as in the visible forms of art. One of the most interesting spots in Athens is the Pnyx, where the Assembly usually met--“that angry, waspish, intractable, little old man, Demos of Pnyx”--to quote the words of Aristophanes. The place of meeting was a semicircular space on the face of a low rocky hill, a quarter of a mile west of the Acropolis. Where the diameter of the circle would be, but forming an obtuse angle, is a wall of hewn rock, fifteen feet high at its central part, but getting lower towards the sides. In front of this wall, about where the centre of the circle would be, there is a block of stone eleven feet long and as many broad, resting on a platform of three steps about thirty feet wide at its front base, cut out of the natural rock. This is believed to have been the _bēma_ (“stone in the Pnyx”) from which the speakers in the Assembly sometimes addressed 6000 or 7000 citizens chiefly resident in Athens or the immediate neighbourhood and belonging to the middle or lower classes. Round part of the semicircle, retaining-walls can still be traced, which appear to have been originally much higher, so that the enclosure would slope down towards the _bema_ or platform, and thus bring the speaker within sight and hearing of the whole Assembly.