Classical applied games theory
In those penal cases at Athens, where the punishment was not fixed beforehand by the terms of the law,
if the person accused was found guilty, it was customary to submit to the jurors subsequently and
separately, the question as to the amount of punishment. First, the accuser named the penalty which
he thought suitable; next, the accused person was called upon to name an amount of penalty for himself,
and the jurors were constrained to take their choice between these two; no third gradation of penalty being
admissible for consideration. Of course, under such circumstances, it was the
interest of the accused party to name, even in his own case, some real and serious penalty, something
which the jurors might be likely to deem not wholly inadequate to his crime just proved; for if he
proposed some penalty only trifling, he drove them to far the heavier sentence recommended by his opponent.
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