Besides its grand political function, the ἀγορὴ is, as we have seen, in part a judicial body. But the great safeguard of publicity attends the conduct of trials, as well as the discussion of political affairs. The partialities of people who manifest their feelings by visible signs is thus prevented, on the one hand, by the cultivation of habitual self-respect, from passing into fury, and on the other hand, from degenerating into baseness. It is perhaps worthy of notice, as assisting to indicate the substantive and active nature of the popular interest in public affairs, that where parties were formed in the Assemblies, those who thought together sat together. Such appears to be the intimation of the line in the Eighteenth Iliad (502), λαοὶ δ’ ἀμφοτέροισιν ἐπήπυον, ἀμφὶς ἀρωγοί. As the ἀμφὶς ἀρωγοὶ expresses their sentiments, ἀμφοτέρωθεν can hardly signify any thing other than that they sat separately on each side of the Assembly. A similar arrangement seems to be conveyed in the Twenty-fourth Odyssey, where we find that the party of the Suitors remained in a mass (τοὶ δ’ ἀθρόοι αὐτόθι μίμνον, v. 464.) I think this circumstance by no means an unimportant one, as illustrative of the capacity, in which the people attended at the Assemblies for either political or judicial purposes. ~_Judicial functions of the Assembly._~ The place of Assemblies is also the place of judicature. But the supremacy of the political function is indicated by this, that the word ἀγορὴ, which means the Assembly for debate, thus gives its own designation to the place where both functions were conducted. At the same time, we have in the word Themis a clear indication that the original province of government was judicial. For that word in Homer signifies the principles of law, though they were not yet reduced to the fixed forms of after-times; but on the other hand Themis was also a goddess, and she had in that capacity the office of summoning and of dissolving Assemblies[274]. Thus the older function, as often happens, came in time to be the weaker, and had to yield the precedence to its more vigorous competitor. [274] Od. ii. 68, 9. But in Homer’s time, though they were distinguished, they were not yet divided. On the Shield of Achilles, the work of Themis[275] is done in full Assembly: and this probably signifies the custom of the time. But in the Eleventh Iliad, Patroclus passes by the ships of Ulysses[276], [275] Il. xviii. 497. [276] Il. xi. 807. ἵνα σφ’ ἀγορή τε θέμις τε ἤην. And, in the description of the Cyclopes, the line is yet more clearly drawn; for it is said[277], [277] Od. ix. 112-15. τοῖσιν δ’ οὔτ’ ἀγοραὶ βουληφόροι, οὔτε θέμιστες.