on the contrary, they saw to it that each and everyone should look upon it as his duty to
 debar all such men from giving counsel to the public, and not only such men, but those
 also who assert that the possessions of the rest of the world belong to the state but do
 not scruple to plunder and rob the state of its legitimate property, who pretend to love
 the people but cause them to be hated by all the rest of mankind, and who in words express anxiety for the welfare of the Hellenes but in fact outrage and
 blackmail and make them so bitter against us Cf. Isoc. 15.318 . that some of our states when pressed by
 war would sooner and more gladly open their gates to the besiegers than to a relief force
 from Athens. But one would grow weary of writing were he to attempt to go through the
 whole catalogue of iniquities and depravities. Abhorring these iniquities and the men who practise them, our forefathers set up as
 counsellors and leaders of the state, not any and everyone, but those who were the wisest
 and the best and who had lived the noblest lives among them, and they chose these same men
 as their generals in the field Cf. Isoc. 8.54 . and sent them forth as ambassadors, wherever any need
 arose, and they gave over to them the entire guidance of the state, believing that those
 who desired and were able to give the best counsel from the platform would, when by
 themselves, no matter in what regions of the world or on what enterprise engaged, be of
 the same way of thinking. And in this they were justified by events. For because they followed this principle they
 saw their code of laws completely written down in a few days—laws, not like those which
 are established to-day, nor full of so much confusion and of so many contradictions that
 no one can distinguish between the useful and the useless, but, in the first place, few in
 number, though adequate for those who were to use them and easy to comprehend; and, in the
 next place, just and profitable and consonant with each other; those laws, moreover, which
 had to do with their common ways of life having been thought out with greater pains than
 those which had to do with private contracts, as indeed they should be in well regulated
 states. See Isoc.
 7.39 . 
 At the same time they appointed to the magistracies those who had been selected
 beforehand by the members of their respective tribes Aristotle ( Aristot. Ath. Pol. 8 ) states that
 Solon enacted that the election to the offices should be by lot from candidates selected
 by each of the tribes. For example, each tribe selected then candidates for the nine
 archonships, and among these the lot was cast. Cf. Isoc.
 7.22 . and townships, The numerous “demes”
 into which Attica was divided. having
 made of the offices, not prizes to fight for or to tempt ambition, See Isoc. 7.24-25 and notes. but
 responsibilities much more comparable to the liturgies, See
 Introduction to the Antidosis . which are burdensome to those to
 whom they are assigned, although conferring upon them a kind of distinction. For the men
 who had been elected to office were required to neglect their own possessions and at the
 same time to abstain no less from the gratuities which are wont to be given to the offices
 than from the treasures of the gods. (Who under the present dispensation would submit to
 such restrictions?)