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The Wasps And The Athenian Jury System

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In Aristophanes’ comedy, The Wasps, Conracleon criticizes the Athenian jury system by saying that the leaders of the court are corrupt and treat the jurors as slaves without them realizing. He does this by explaining how the court’s leaders have instituted an unequal pay between themselves and the jurors and emphasizing the overall corruption found in the courts. The greatest evidence for this argument can be found in Contracleon’s statements on pages 174 to 177 of the script. A specific point Contracleon emphasizes against the jury comes when he reveals how they are being duped into taking a much smaller pay than the archons and other high members in the court system. After Procleon attempts to add up a rough estimate all of the money Athens collects from its people upon his son’s request, he realizes that the pay for each of Athens’ “six thousand jurors” collectively “doesn’t even amount to ten percent” of what Athens makes (Pg. 175 Ln. 663). Contracleon then reveals to him that the Judiciary’s leaders have been and are holding out on the jurors and squandering the excess wealth elsewhere. He uses this information to point out the fact that this extremely large mass of jurors have been tricked by the same group of people for years without realizing it, and he stresses the fact that this is sill going to convey his view that the members of the jury have been and still are being used as cheap labor by the higher-ups of the courts. Contracleon then proceeds to further

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