One of the most prominent traits of the Greek, and especially of the Athenian, character was litigiousness. Inasmuch as from the time of Pericles citizens of Attica received a slight stipend for serving upon juries, which ranged from 201 to 2,500 in membership and sometimes reached an aggregate of 6,000, there was scarcely an Athenian but was personally acquainted with courtroom procedure and not a few practically supported themselves in this way. Moreover, this situation was intensified by the fact that the fifth century witnessed the rise of formal oratory at Athens and its exploitation by numerous rhetorical and sophistic teachers. It is hardly possible that all these influences should have allowed contemporaneous drama to escape unscathed. Their first effect is seen in the actual introduction of a courtroom scene, as in Aeschylus’ _Eumenides_, in which Orestes is put on trial before the Council of the Areopagus for having murdered his mother. Athena is the presiding judge, Apollo the attorney for the defense, and the chorus of Furies conducts the prosecution. Aristophanes satirized the Athenian weakness in his _Wasps_, the chorus of which appeared in the guise of those quarrelsome insects; and that inveterate juryman, Philocleon, was provided with a domestic court wherein one dog was duly arraigned by another for having pilfered a round of Sicilian cheese! Again, certain scenes in other plays, though not ostensibly placed in the courtroom, are practically treated as if they were. For example, in Euripides’ _Trojan Women_, Menelaus meets his truant wife for the first time since her elopement. Will he pardon or slay her? Helen herself naturally hopes to be forgiven and restored to her husband’s favor; but the Trojan women, who hold her responsible for their country’s downfall, wish condign punishment to be meted out to her. Consequently the play degenerates into a quasi-trial in which Menelaus presides as judge, Hecabe, ex-queen of Troy, represents the prosecution, and Helen pleads her own cause. In the third place, when a court scene was out of the question a debate of some kind was often dragged in. Of course “struggle” is of the essence of drama and a formal “agon” was by derivation almost indispensable in Old Comedy (see pp. 42-44), but I am now referring to something different. Perhaps the most glaring instance is found in Euripides’ _Madness of Heracles_ (vss. 158 ff.). Lycus has resolved upon Amphitryon’s speedy death, yet they both stop to argue whether it be better to fight with the spear or the bow! Finally, since in the law courts the addresses of the contending parties were equalized by means of the “water-clock” (the _clepsydra_), it is not surprising that the speeches of sharply contrasted characters in tragedy are occasionally made of exactly the same length. The best example occurs in Euripides’ _Hecabe_, where Polymestor’s speech of fifty-one lines is exactly balanced by that of the Trojan queen (cf. vss.