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This is apparent from the fact that those who in the beginning brought charges of homicide, and desired to settle their mutual differences by reason and not by violence, tried their cases under our laws.1 Yes, and the arts also, both those which are useful in producing the necessities of life and those which have been devised to give us pleasure, she has either invented or stamped with her approval, and has then presented them to the rest of the world to enjoy.2
1 There is no evidence to bear out a literal interpretaion of this statement, but the tradition is probably right which regarded the Areopagus in Athens as the first court set up in Greece for the trial of cases of homicide. It was believed that this court was first convened to ty the case of Orestes, an alien. See Aesch. Eum. 684; Dem. 23.65 ff.
2 So Isoc. 12.202. Pliny Nat. Hist. 7.194, catalogues many Athenian discoveries in art. Cf. Milton, Par. Reg. iv. 240: “Athens the eye of Greece, mother of arts and eloquence.”
Isocrates. Isocrates with an English Translation in three volumes, by George Norlin, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1980.
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