which Aeschylus shows to be in harmony with the original nature of the court. This view receives some support from the fact that the alliance with Argos to which the oligarchic party was opposed is also shown by Aeschylus (727 _et seq._) to be in harmony with tradition, myth, and religion.’[43] Verrall takes up a similar attitude to this problem[44]: ‘It is clear,’ he says, ‘from the tone of the final scene and it is generally recognised that Aeschylus did not intend to appear at least as a partisan, that he supposed himself to be a peacemaker and to have advanced only what would be generally approved. He justifies trial by jury: he extols the Areopagus as a court of crime: he leaves room, but in vague terms, for a larger execution of its vigilant protection.... He is for the middle way, “neither tyranny nor anarchy.”... But the attitude of the poet is not that of a practical politician. Religion, always first with him, in the _Eumenides_ covers the whole field.’ We do not agree with Verrall’s view that Aeschylus justifies ‘trial by jury,’ if Verrall means by this phrase trial by popular juries such as the Heliasts of the post-Solonian age. The Areopagus was never invaded by the Heliasts. Its procedure was fundamentally different from that of Heliastic courts. Its personnel was composed of archons and ex-archons. It is to such judges that Athene refers when she says that she will select, for the trial, the best of her citizens.[45] There was for the Areopagus no election by lot, such as characterised the popular juries,[46] nor is there in the phrase ἀστῶν τῶν ἐμῶν τὰ βέλτατα any reference to the Ephetae, the aristocracy of birth. Aeschylus either never knew, or he has forgotten, or he has perhaps deliberately ignored the aristocratic character of the pre-Solonian Ephetae-Areopagus.[47] It is the plutocratic Solonian Areopagus of the sixth century and of his own day that he puts before us. When Verrall says that ‘Aeschylus leaves room ... for a larger execution of its vigilant protection,’ he implies that Aeschylus opposed the reform of Ephialtes. As this view commits Aeschylus to the exaltation of plutocracy, we prefer, with the scholiast, to give a narrower interpretation to the phrase εὑδόντων ὕπερ ἐγρηγορὸς φρούρημα[48] and we translate it: ‘the vigilant custodian of vengeance for the slain,’ whereas Verrall takes the ‘sleepers’ to mean ‘the citizens when they are asleep at night.’