 At the pre-trial examination, Meletus paid no court fees because it was considered a public duty to prosecute irreverence. To discourage frivolous suits, however, Athenian law imposed a heavy fine on plaintiffs who failed to obtain at least one fifth of the jury’s votes, as Socrates later points out (Apology 36a–b). Unlike closely timed jury trials, pre-trial examinations encouraged questions to and by the litigants, to make the legal issues more precise. This procedure had become essential because of the susceptibility of juries to bribery and misrepresentation. Originally intended to be a microcosm of the citizen body, juries by Socrates’s time were manned by elderly, disabled, and impoverished volunteers who needed the meager three-obol pay.