To preserve that favour it was necessary that the present administration should not be eclipsed by the splendour and beneficence of the preceding one. But the means of the leaders were far inferior; nor from their private fortunes could they feed the hungry, and provide splendid places of resort for the tenants of hovels, as their magnificent predecessor had done. The only resource was to bribe the public with its own money; and with this view a law was proposed, by which the issues from the treasury, which hitherto had been controlled by the court of Areopagus, were placed under the immediate command of the people. The next step was to allow pay for attendance at the general assemblies and in the courts of justice, in each of which a considerable number of _dicasts_[77] sat, taken indiscriminately from the citizens. This measure was introduced and carried by Pericles, or, according to another statement, there was before a small sum allowed for these services, which was increased by him. The total number of persons who thus derived no small part of their subsistence from the public funds was very considerable; for in one alone of the courts fifty persons was the smallest number that ever sat, and the usual number was from two to five hundred. Sometimes two or more courts were consolidated, and then from one to two thousand persons sat in judgment at once. The effect of this law was twofold: it secured the popularity of those who had procured such a boon for the poor; it secured also a large attendance of the poor in the general assembly, for attendance there secured a sufficient provision for the wants of the day; and as stated assemblies occurred four times in thirty–five days, the payments for these and other extraordinary attendances, with public feasts, and sacrifices, and duty in the courts, formed nearly a subsistence for those who had neither property nor employment.