gave their votes in private, lest the power and greatness of the
persons accused should lay a restraint upon them, and cause them to
act contrary to their judgments and inclinations.

The manner of voting privately was by casting pebbles into vessels or
urns. Before the use of pebbles, they voted with beans: the beans were
of two sorts, black and white. In the Senate of Five Hundred, when all
had done speaking, the business designed to be passed into a decree
was drawn up in writing by any of the prytanes, or other senators, and
repeated openly in the house; after which, leave being given by the
epistata, or prytanes, the senators proceeded to vote, which they did
privately, by casting beans in a vessel placed there for that purpose.
If the number of black beans was found to be the greatest, the
proposal was rejected; if white, it was enacted into a decree, then
agreed upon in the senate, and afterwards propounded to an assembly of
the people, that it might receive from them a farther ratification,
without which it could not be passed into a law, nor have any force or
obligatory power, after the end of that year, which was the time that
the senators, and almost all the other magistrates, laid down their
commissions.

In the reign of Cecrops, women were said to have been allowed voices
in the popular assembly; where Minerva contending with Neptune which
of the two should be declared Protector of Athens, and gaining the
women to her party, was reported by their voices, which were more
numerous than those of the men, to have obtained the victory.

P.T.W.

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