of initiation completed, and were very good friends to the freshmen ever after'. The pages of the Greek orators abound in references to house-breaking and highway robbery, to street-brawls and other disorderly acts imperilling the public security; and in the present speech we find that the plaintiff could not take a quiet walk along the market-place of Athens, beneath the rock of the Acropolis, past the temple erected as a memorial of the patriotic self-sacrifice of the daughters of an ancient king of Attica, and by the very scene where the tyrant Hipparchus was slain, without finding himself the victim of a brutal and outrageous assault. In times such as these at Athens, one who was tempted to take an evening stroll with a friend, if invited in language like that of Sebastian in Twelfth Night, I pray you, let us satisfy our eyes With the memorials and the things of fame might have replied, with Antonio, Would you'd pardon me, I do not without danger walk these streets. 1 Gregor. Nazianzen, Or. 43 in laudem Basilii magni c. 16, who describes the initiation as τοῖς ἀγνοοῦσι λίαν φοβερὸν καὶ ἀνήμερον τοῖς δὲ προειδόσι καὶ μάλα ἡδὺ καὶ φιλάνθρωπον. Gregory's young friend Basil was one of the few who were spared the ordeal on coming into residence (in A.D. 351). 2 e. g. (Dem.) Or. 47, κar' Εὐέργου καὶ Μνησιβούλου, Lysias Or. 3, Tpos Ziuwva and fragm. 75 (ed. Scheibe), a long passage quoted by Dionysius as a parallel to the Conon (as already stated, p. lix). Cf. Becker's Charicles, Sc. v, note 9, and Mahaffy's Social Life in Greece p. 319. INTRODUCTION TO OR. LV ΠΡΟΣ ΚΑΛΛΙΚΛΕΑ ΠΕΡΙ ΧΩΡΙΟΥ. THIS is a speech on the side of the defence in an action for damages alleged to have been incurred by the plaintiff, Callicles, by reason of a wall having been built on the defendant's property to the obstruction of a water-course carrying off the drainage of the surrounding hills. The farms of the plaintiff and defendant lay in a hilly district of Attica, separated from one another by a public road; and the defendant's father, Tisias, on coming into possession of his farm and finding that the water which flowed from the high ground had made an inroad into his property and was cutting itself a regular channel, built a stone-wall round it to prevent the water from making any further encroachment. No protest was raised on the part of the plaintiff's family either at the time or for many years subsequently; Tisias lived fifteen years after building the enclosure, and, after his death, a mountain-torrent caused by a heavy shower of rain overthrew an old wall on the plaintiff's land, flooded his property and damaged some of his stores. Thereupon the plaintiff brought an action for damages, alleging that the flood was due to the stream being diverted to his own side of the road by the proper water-course having 1 Tepi xwplov Blaßns is the title given by Harpocration, in one of his articles (s.v. xλndos Or. 55 § 22). But cf. § 18. been blocked up by the building of the wall on the defendant's property. The speech for the defence opens by casting on the plaintiff the imputation of bringing the action with a view to getting possession of the defendant's property (§ 1). The speaker, a son of Tisias, whose name is not given, pleads that the wall was built by his father fifteen years before his death, without any objection on the part of the plaintiff's family, and challenges the other side to prove the existence of the water-course alleged to be obstructed by the wall (§§ 3-7); he had offered to refer the dispute to the arbitration of impartial persons familiar with the neighbourhood, but the plaintiff had refused the offer (§§ 8, 9); he then describes carefully the position of the two properties on the opposite sides of the public way, and accounts for the building of the wall (S$ 10, 11). He next calls evidence to prove that the alleged water-course was part of his private ground, as it contained an old burial-place, and an orchard besides (§§ 12-15); he further shews that, as the water would naturally flow down the public way, there was no occasion for such a water-course (§§ 16—18), and that there was no such channel immediately above or below his own property (§ 19). The plaintiff's loss was due to his own carelessness and he was most inconsistent in bringing this action (§ 20); the other neighbours who had suffered severely made no complaint, whereas the plaintiff had lost nothing worth mentioning (§§ 21, 23-25). Again, his opponents had themselves advanced their wall (and thus encroached on public property); they had also raised the level of the road (and thus led to the water being liable to be diverted from the road itself to the lands adjacent). After once more referring to the plaintiff's interested motive in bringing the action, he states in conclusion that, though the plaintiff had refused his offer, he had been ready to take the legally recognised oath and to swear that he had not caused the damage alleged, feeling that that would be the strongest argument with a jury who were themselves on their solemn oath. The general style of the Callicles, as indeed that of the Conon, is not unlike that of Lysias, and speeches on similar subjects, one on a water-conduit and another on a disputed boundary, are known to have been composed by the orator Hyperides', but the genuineness of the speech before us can hardly be seriously contested, though it has been suggested that it was written by Demosthenes in his younger days. It is quoted without hesitation by Harpocration and the rhetoricians alike, as the work of Demosthenes himself. The narrow limits of the speech and the somewhat trivial nature of the subject will account for the exordium not being succeeded, as elsewhere, by any formal narrative or statement of the case; instead of this, the narrative of the facts is only incidentally included in the course of the speech, and is blended and interwoven with the thread of the argument. Here and there the argument is brightened by a touch of quiet humour, as in the passage where the speaker, arguing on the supposition of his allowing the rain-water to make an inroad into his property, after exhausting several alternatives of dealing with the stream when once it was there, exclaims in conclusion, 'What am I to do with it? for I presume the plaintiff won't compel me to drink it up! 1 περὶ ὀχετοῦ and περὶ τῶν opiwv p. 88 (ed. Blass) fragm. 134 ὅπως τὸ ἀνώμαλον τοῦ χωρίου τῇ τῶν ἀνδήρων καὶ ὀχετών ἀφαιροῖτο κατασκεύῃ. fragm. 158, οχετόκρανα (=αἱ τῶν ὀχετῶν ἀρχαί). 2 A. Bekker however in his Leipsig ed. 1855 considers it doubtful, (cf. Sigg, Apoll. p. 401 note). 3 A. Schaefer, u. s., III. 2. 256. In the course of the speech we have also several indications of the provisions of Athenian law respecting those rights of water, with the Roman law of which we are far better acquainted. We gather that the inferior tenant held his land subject to the limiting obligation, or servitus as Roman lawyers would have called it, of giving free passage into his own land for the water, in particular the rain-water, flowing from the superior tenement; and in a passage of Plato's Laws we find provisions suggested for regulating the relations between neighbours in rights of this description and requiring the superior proprietor to do everything in his power to relieve the inferior proprietor from unnecessary inconvenience'. Again, the law did not allow the diversion of the natural and regular channel of the water by the building of a wall or by any similar construction. Callicles appears to have had no case, as his property did not immediately adjoin that of the defendant but was separated from it by a public way which provided sufficiently for carrying off the water. In some instances, but (as the defendant contends) not in the present, a regularly recognised water-course, or ditch, traversed several successive properties, and it is clear that no individual proprietor could intercept this. It also appears that the proprietor of any land bordering on a public way generally turned his drainage on to the road (§ 26). The legal issue in the Callicles appears to turn in a great measure on the nature of the water-course, the existence of which is maintained by the plaintiff and denied by the defendant. The encroachment made by the floods, before the defendant's father became the pro 1 p. 844, quoted in note on § 19. 2 Cf. M. Caillemer's article on Aqua in Dict. des Antiquités, |