He likewise instituted a single final court of appeal, to
which all causes seeming to have been improperly decided might be
referred; this court he formed of elders chosen for the purpose. He
was further of opinion that the decisions of the courts ought not to
be given by the use of a voting pebble, but that every one should have
a tablet on which he might not only write a simple condemnation, or
leave the tablet blank for a simple acquittal; but, if he partly
acquitted and partly condemned, he was to distinguish accordingly.
To the existing law he objected that it obliged the judges to be
guilty of perjury, whichever way they voted. He also enacted that
those who discovered anything for the good of the state should be
honored; and he provided that the children of citizens who died in
battle should be maintained at the public expense, as if such an
enactment had never been heard of before, yet it actually exists at
Athens and in other places. As to the magistrates, he would have
them all elected by the people, that is, by the three classes
already mentioned, and those who were elected were to watch over the
interests of the public, of strangers, and of orphans. These are the
most striking points in the constitution of Hippodamus. There is not
much else.
The first of these proposals to which objection may be taken is
the threefold division of the citizens.
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