Editing Jury trial (section)

===Greece===
[[History of Athens|Ancient Athens]] had a mechanism, called ''dikastaí'', to assure that no one could select jurors for their own trial. For normal cases, the courts were made up of ''dikastai'' of up to 500 citizens.<ref>{{cite book|last=Samons|first=Loren J.|title=The Cambridge companion to the Age of Pericles|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QAePZ_Z1WkC&pg=PA244 |access-date=2010-12-08|year=2007|publisher=Cambridge University Press|pages=244, 246|isbn=978-0-521-80793-7}}</ref> For capital cases—those that involved death, loss of liberty, exile, loss of civil rights, or seizure of property—the trial was before a jury of 1,001 to 1,501 ''[[Dikastes|dikastai]]''. In such large juries, they rule by majority. Juries were appointed by lot. Jurists cast a ceramic disk with an axle in its middle: the axle was either hollow or solid. Thus the way they voted was kept secret because the jurists would hold their disk by the axle by thumb and forefinger, thus hiding whether its axle was hollow or solid. Since Periclean times, jurists were compensated for their sitting in court, with the amount of one day's wages.

The institution of trial by jury was ritually depicted by [[Aeschylus]] in ''[[The Eumenides]]'', the third and final play of his ''[[Oresteia]]'' trilogy. In the play, the innovation is brought about by the goddess [[Athena]], who summons twelve citizens to sit as jury. The god [[Apollo]] takes part in the trial as the advocate for the defendant [[Orestes]] and the [[Erinyes|Furies]] as prosecutors for the slain [[Clytemnestra]]. In the event the jury is [[hung jury|split six to six]], Athena dictates that the verdict should henceforth be for acquittal.