There was a smaller council of five hundred which decided less important questions without laying them before the general assembly. This body was chosen by lot just as our juries are, but members of the council whose term had ended had a right to object to any new member as an unworthy citizen A tenth of the council ruled for a tenth of the year, and they chose their president by lot every day, so that any worthy man at Athens had a chance to be president for a day and a night. [Illustration: A DECREE OF THE COUNCIL--ABOUT 450 B.C.] Many citizens also served in the courts, for there were six thousand judges, and in deciding important cases as many as a thousand and one, or even fifteen hundred and one, took part. Before such large courts and assemblies it was necessary to be a good speaker to be able to win a case or persuade the citizens. Some of the greatest orators of the world were Athenians, the best known being Demosthenes. SOCRATES. The Athenians were not always just, although so many of them acted as judges. One court, composed of five hundred and one judges, condemned to death Socrates, the wisest man of the Greeks and one of the wisest in the world. He did not make speeches, or write books, or teach in school. He went about, in the market place, at the gymnasium, and on the streets, asking men, young and old, questions about what interested him most, that is, What is the true way to live? If people did not give him an answer which seemed good, he asked more questions, until sometimes they went away angry. Many of them thought because he asked questions about everything that he did not believe in anything, not even in the religion of his city. [Illustration: SOCRATES After the marble bust in the Vatican] THE DEATH OF SOCRATES, 399 B.C. After a while the enemies of Socrates accused him of being a wicked man who persuaded young men to be wicked. He was tried by an Athenian court, which made the terrible blunder of finding him guilty and condemning him to death. According to the Athenian custom he was obliged to drink a cup of poisonous hemlock. This he did, after talking to his friends cheerily about how a good man should live. As he wrote no books we have learned about him from his friends. The most famous of these was Plato, who is also counted among the wisest men that ever lived. The story of the lives of these men is another gift which the Greeks made to all who were to live after them, and it is quite as valuable as are the ways of building, artistic skill, or great poems and plays. QUESTIONS 1. Why do we wish to know how the Greeks lived? 2. What was an Acropolis? How does the Acropolis at Athens look? 3. On the picture of the Parthenon point out the pediment. Show where the frieze was placed. Find on a map Paestum.