Trials were held in the great temple of Ebabbarim, at Sippara, where copies of his code had been set up by Hammurabi, at the temple of Merodach in Babylon, at the temple of Sin, at Larsa, or the temple of Ishhara. Witnesses, it seems, were sworn, before God and the King, to swear to the truth, touching the controversy, and documentary evidence was used, much as it is today, to establish a right or title by written evidence, or the agreement of the parties.[10] Having ascertained where the right resided, it was the peculiar province of the judge to “cause them to receive judgment”; the strife was accordingly quieted and the judgment passed into an irrevocable decree, which the judge himself could not set aside, without thereby working his own disgrace and recall.[11] The decision was drawn up by the scribe and placed upon a tablet, sealed by the judge and some of these irrevocable tablets, as imperishable conclusions of these ancient law-suits have come to us, after thousands of years, to tell their tale.[12] This recipient of the wisdom of the sun-god, Hammurabi, did not stop with humiliating and degrading the upright judge, who, to right a wrong judgment was willing to admit his error to the advantage of a wronged litigant, by granting a new trial, but in keeping with such a mistaken standard, the Code of this ancient ruler of the Babylonians also punished the unsuccessful surgeon, by removing the hand that performed an unsuccessful operation;[13] by penalizing the unsuccessful veterinarian, who lost his neighbor’s cattle or horse;[14] the builder was made liable for all damages resulting from the fall of a building he had erected[15] and, in general, it was the policy of this strict king, to raise the standards of public duty, by punishing the incumbents of public office and penalizing the members of the learned professions and vocations, rather than cultivating the higher standards of the professions, by the elimination of the unskilled therefrom. The ancient Greeks also practiced the recall and ostracism of their most eminent judges and other powerful public officials, who incurred the ill-will of the populace, because of some unpopular decision, or the envy of any considerable number of citizens, because of some alleged undemocratic performance. This ostracism, or recall, in Greece, is said to have been established by Cleisthenes after the expulsion of the Peisistratidae[16] and the nature and object of the recall, as then obtaining, is thus explained by the philosopher Aristotle: “Democratical states _used to_ ostracise and remove from the city for a definite time, those who appeared to be preeminent above their fellow citizens, by reason of their wealth, the number of their friends, or any other means of influence.”[17]