after, possibly a year subsequent to the partition, a new lease of the bank was granted to certain persons, who jointly paid each of the two brothers a talent a year (£486 in all), a sum less by two-thirds of a talent (£163) than the rent paid by Phormio'. This second lease was granted not by Pasicles alone, but by Apollodorus acting in conjunction with his younger brother, either to protect his inexperience, or (it is to be feared) to take advantage of it, since we observe that though the bank belonged to the younger brother, the elder had his reward in the receipt of half the rent paid by the new lessees3.

Phormio, meanwhile, being quit of his trust as guardian, and of his lease of the bank and manufactory, established a banking business on his own account, and, like his former master, Pasion, obtained a recognition of the general esteem in which he was held, by being presented with the citizenship. The date of this event was B.C. 3613. In the year B. c. 360, after a protracted service as trierarch in the northern Aegean and the neighbouring waters, Apollodorus returned to Athens to find his mother at death's door; she died six days after; but not before she had seen and recognised her son, though according to his own account she was unable to make such provision for him as she had intended*.

The mother's death was the signal for a fresh outbreak of the differences between Apollodorus and his step-father Phormio. The step-son put in a claim for 3000 drachmae (about £120), which was submitted to arbitrators, who established the claim and induced Phormio for quietness' sake to pay it to Apollodorus. The latter then gave Phormio a second release from all claims.

1 Or. 36 § 51 and 38.

2 Or. 36 §§ 12, 13, 37.

3 Οr. 46 § 13, ἐπὶ Νικοφήμου

ἄρχοντος, Ο1. 104, 4.

P. S. D. II.

4 Or. 50 § 60 quoted in note

on Or. 36 § 14.

5 Or. 36 §§ 15-17.

Phormio, however, had not yet seen the last of his litigious step-son; the latter, after numerous lawsuits with his father's debtors, in which he succeeded in recovering no less than 20 talents (£4860)', was at last prompted, by pecuniary exigencies due to his extravagance, and by feelings of envy at Phormio's prosperity, to put in a claim about twenty years after the father's death for another sum of 20 talents, alleged to have been transferred to Phormio by the father as part of the working capital (apopun) of the business.

The defendant expected that Apollodorus' contention, that Phormio must have received such capital, would be supported by presumptive proofs alone. He would argue that, without such a fund, it was incredible that Phormio, who was merely a liberated slave, should have managed the business and risen to opulence, while he himself, a rich man's son, had been reduced to penury (§ 43). To give stronger proof than these a priori probabilities had been made impossible, he would assert, by Phormio's having induced his wife to destroy Pasion's papers (§ 18); he would also denounce the lease and the will as forgeries, and would make out that it was only while Phormio promised him a high rent, that he kept silence on his claim, but as he had not fulfilled these promises, he was compelled to bring the case before the court (§ 33).

The arguments here anticipated by the defendant appear again in the first speech against Stephanus (Or. 45), a speech arising out of the present lawsuit. The case

1 Or. 36 § 36.

2 Why twenty talents were claimed does not appear, but we may conjecture that that amount arose out of the eleven talents mentioned in Or. 36 § 11, with the addition of interest. Phormio's lease lasted

for 8 years; 11 talents, at say 10 per cent. simple interest (not an uncommon rate at Athens), would with the interest amount to exactly 20 talents in 8 years (and a fraction of a year over, 11).

came in the first instance before an arbitrator, Tisias' by name, but was left undecided by him, and was accordingly brought before a public tribunal. The writer of the Greek argument, generally supposed to be Libanius, calls the suit a díkη apopμns, though it has been doubted whether there is any ancient authority for the existence of such a suit under that designation. However, the phrase apopμnv eykaλeiv occurs in the speech itself (§ 12), referring to the plaintiff's claim to the capital of the bank.

To meet this claim, Phormio, instead of waiting for the plaintiff to bring his case before the court and then confronting his opponent with a direct denial and joining issue on the merits, preferred putting in a special plea in bar of action, a plea technically known in Greek law as a παραγραφή, shewing cause on the part of the defendant why the case should not be allowed to come on for trial at all. The two pleas urged on the defendant's behalf are (1) that the plaintiff had given him a discharge from the original lease of the bank and manufactory, and also a second discharge from a subsequent claim settled by arbitration (§§ 23-25); (2) that the plaintiff's suit contravened the statute of limitations, in which the term of five years was fixed as a sufficient time for injured parties to recover their dues, whereas the plaintiff was putting in a claim after the lapse of more than twenty years from the date of the lease (§ 26). To maintain these pleas is the object of the speech pro Phormione, though it is only a small portion of it that is directly concerned with them, such technical pleadings being naturally unpopular with juries, who regarded them as mere makeshifts, to gain

1 Or. 45 § 10.

2 Dareste, les plaidoyers civils de Dem. 11. 145: Est-il vrai que les Athéniens eussent créé une action spéciale pour les affaires de ce genre? But cf. Caille

mer, le contrat de prêt à Athènes, p. 28-31, where δίκη ἀφορμῆς is distinguished from δίκη ἀρο γυρίου, δίκη χρέους and other terms, and accepted without suspicion as a term of Attic law.

time and evade the ends of justice. Hence a large part of the speech is devoted to arguing on the case itself, thus proving that the defendant's resort to special pleading was not due to any fear of meeting the plaintiff on the main issue. All this was of course irrelevant to the real question before the court, and counsel would hardly be permitted by any judge now-a-days to travel so widely out of the 'record.' In such a case, the defendant spoke first'; thus, while he was under the slight disadvantage of the onus probandi, he had on the other hand the benefit of the first hearing, and might at once produce a favourable impression of the strength of his case, which would put a stop to further litigation.

Phormio, being of foreign extraction and unpractised in public speaking, does not address the court in person ($1); his friends speak in his stead, and the case is opened on his behalf in an oration composed but almost certainly not spoken by Demosthenes, which forms the first of the selections included in the present volume3.

1 See note on Or. 36 Arg. line 25 ad fin. The writer of the life of Demosthenes in the Orations on the Crown published by the Clarendon Press appears to have overlooked this in stating: 'it is clear that in the speech to which Demosthenes, in behalf of Phormion, composed a reply, Apollodorus had dwelt much on the fact of Phormion having been his father's slave' (p. xxxiii). Apollodorus did not address the court at all; he could not speak before the case for the special plea had been opened on the side of the defendant, and the jury would not listen to him after.

2 The contrary might be in

ferred from the language of Deinarchus contra Dem. § 111, (Δημοσθένους) λογογράφου καὶ μισθοῦ τὰς δίκας λέγοντος ὑπὲρ Κτησίππου καὶ Φορμίωνος (Cf. p. xxxviii). But the authority of Aeschines, in a speech delivered only seven years after the pro Phormione, supports the opinion expressed in the text, de fals. leg. § 185, ἔγραψας λόγον Φορμίωνι (cf. Οr. 46 § 1 οἱ γρά φοντες καὶ οἱ συμβουλεύοντες Vπèρ Þoрμíwvos). Lortzing, Apoll. p. 14, who agrees with A. Schaefer, Dem. u. s. Zeit, p. 169.

3 It is unnecessary in this place to give a detailed account of the speech itself, as its contents are analysed in the italicised abstracts printed at con

The speech contains several notes of time which approximately determine the date of its delivery. In § 26 we are told that 'more than twenty years' have elapsed since the lease granted by Pasion; in § 19 we find that eighteen years' have passed since the partition of the property effected by the guardians in consequence of the extravagance of Apollodorus; and in § 38 the same period is described in general terms as 'about twenty years.' Pasion died in B. c. 370 and the above indications point to the year B. C. 350 as the probable date of the speech. As we have already observed, the lease would be granted to Phormio before B. C. 370, and probably after B.C. 372, i.e. in B.C. 371. Thus 21 years would have passed since the grant of the lease. At first sight the term of eighteen years above mentioned might seem to point to B. C. 352', but it appears certain that the partition of property was not effected immediately after the death of Pasion; as some allowance must be made for the time during which the extravagance of Apollodorus was running its course (§ 8), before the guardians came to the conclusion that a partition of the property was inevitable; and the term of eighteen years is reckoned, it will be observed, not from the death of Pasion but from the division of his estate.

Again, the speech of Apollodorus against Nicostratus, § 13, shews that after his return from his Sicilian trierarchy which on independent grounds may be placed in B. C. 368, he was not yet in possession of his share of the estate, as he was compelled to raise money on the security

venient intervals in the course of the commentary. The reader who desires a general view of the drift of the argument may do well to read all the abstracts consecutively before settling down to the perusal of the

Greek.

1 This date is accepted by Droysen (Zeitschrift für d. Alterthumswissenschaft 1839 p. 930), Hornbostel (Apoll. p. 20), and A. Schaefer (u. s., p. 168 -9).