Areopagite
Areop'agite (Α᾿ρεοπαγίτης), a member (Ac 17:34) of the court of AREOPAGUS SEE AREOPAGUS (q.v.). This, as constituted by Solon, consisted of the nine archons (chief magistrates) for the year, and the ex-archons. The latter became members for life; but before their admission, they were submitted, at the close of their annual magistracy, to a rigid scrutiny into their conduct in office and their private morals. Proof of criminal or unbecoming conduct was sufficient also afterward to expel them. Various accounts are given of the number to which the Areopagites were limited. If there was any fixed number, admission to the council could not have been a necessary consequence of honorable discharge from the archonship. But it is more probable that the accounts which limit the number are applicable only to the earlier period of its existence (see the anonymous argument to Demosthenes' Oration against Androtion). Lysias expressly states that the acting archons had a seat in it (Areop. p. 110, § 16-20).
