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Solon retained the magistracy of the nine archons, but with abridged powers; and, as a guard against democratical extravagance on the one hand, and a check to undue assumptions of power on the other, he instituted a Senate of Four Hundred, and founded or remodeled the court of the Areop'agus.
Clisthenes widened its basis from property to population; and it was also Clisthenes, in all probability, who weakened the more illicit and oppressive influences of wealth by establishing the ballot of secret suffrage, instead of the open voting which was common in the time of Solon. The Areop'agus was designed by Solon as the aristocratic balance to the popular assembly.
A short distance to the north-west of the Acropolis, and separated from it only by some hollow ground, was the small eminence called Areop'agus, or Hill of Mars, at the eastern extremity of which was situated the celebrated court of Areopagus.
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