responsibility is limited to two points only, (1) Phormio's giving the challenge, and (2) the plaintiff's refusal of it, the plaintiff insists on binding the defendant to the exact terms of his testimony ($$ 43-46). He further submits that, if in the reply any attempt is made to denounce his original action as fraudulent, all such reference to the past must be suppressed by the court as irrelevant to the issue before it (S$ 47-50). If the defendant urged it was not his own evidence, bearing as it did on the main issue, but that of those who gave witness to the special plea, that was fatal to the plaintiff in the former trial; the answer was, that the evidence on the main issue crippled his case. on the special plea (§§ 51-52).

At this point the speaker passes off into petty personalities of a curious description, denouncing the defendant for giving false evidence against him, regardless of the family tie of Apollodorus' marriage with a first cousin of Stephanus, and thus transgressing what he calls by a rhetorical flourish the unwritten laws of natural affection (S$ 53-56); he declares and very inadequately proves, that a legal document on which he had relied in the former trial had been stolen by Stephanus (§§ 57-62); denounces him for truckling to prosperity, for selfishly disregarding the rights of the poor and the claims of the public on his ample resources (§§ 63-67), for his sour and sullen unsociability, and for his merciless extortion as a miserable money-lender (S$ 68-70).

Turning then from the nominal defendant Stephanus to his principal, Phormio, who is the real opponent in the present as in the previous lawsuit, he launches out into a vigorous invective against him, for his gross ingratitude towards the speaker's family who were the very founders of his fortunes ($$ 71-76), contrasts his own orderly life and public services with his opponent's immorality (§§ 77-80), charges him with appropriating money that

belonged to Pasion, from whom all his wealth had originally come. Born a barbarian and sold as a slave, he had yet had the audacity to criticize the antecedents of the plaintiff's family (S$ 80-82).

After an ungenerous and gratuitous insinuation, to account for his younger brother Pasicles taking Phormio's part (§§ 83-84), he turns to the jury, reminds them of his father's benefactions to the state, implores them to protect him from one who was once a slave to his family, and from that slave's creature Stephanus; and, while reminding them incidentally of some of the points on which he relied, concludes by claiming a verdict against the man who, by his false evidence for Phormio, had robbed him of his revenge in the previous trial (§§ 85—88).

The defendant Stephanus replied at considerable length'. The purport of his defence appears to have been very much what the plaintiff had anticipated in S$ 43-46. In particular, he contended that he was responsible for attesting to the challenge alone and not for any further details incidentally included in his evidence. The existence of the will had been attested by other witnesses than himself, and the court's acceptance of Phormio's special plea was due to their evidence on the main issue, and also to the evidence given by others on the plea itself, proving the original lease and the subsequent discharge.

1 Or. 46 § 1.

INTRODUCTION TO

OR. XLVI

ΚΑΤΑ ΣΤΕΦΑΝΟΥ

ΨΕΥΔΟΜΑΡΤΥΡΙΩΝ Β.

THE reply of Stephanus is followed by a second speech on the part of the plaintiff, Apollodorus, in which, in contrast to the presumptive proofs and the passionate declamation of his former effort, we find, in a far less lengthy and less ambitious form, little more than a series of technical arguments supported by quotations from such parts of the Athenian code as appeared to bear, however remotely, on the case in question.

He charges the defendant with having given 'hearsay evidence' and cites the law against it (§§ 6-8); declares that Phormio, under the mask of the defendant's deposition, has given evidence in his own cause, which is illegal (9-10); he even deduces the falsehood of the deposition from the material on which it was inscribed; instead of being written hurriedly on an ordinary waxtablet to attest on the spot a bona fide challenge, it was drawn up in a more permanent form implying a deliberately fraudulent design (11). He attempts to prove that his father made no will at all, and quotes a law forbidding a man's making a will if he had male issue lawfully begotten (14), and further urges that his father was disabled from disposing of his property by his 'adoption' as an Athenian citizen-a legal quibble arising from the ambiguity of the term relating to adoption, which really refers to the family and not to the state, as the

plaintiff disingenuously implies; he also insinuates that his father was debarred from making a will by being under undue influence and of unsound mind (15-17); he further contends that his mother was technically an 'heiress,' and by law held in ward by her nearest relative, namely himself; that her marriage was therefore invalid, being made in his absence, without his consent and without any legal adjudication, and that Pasion's disposal of his wife by will was thus illegal (18-23); that the father's 'will,' if ever made, was vitiated by the fact that there were sons of full age now surviving (24); and that the defendant and Phormio had conspired to defeat the ends of justice (25-26). After a parting sally on Phormio for his disregard of the laws, and a final thrust at the defendant, defying him to shew how he could possibly have known that the document attached to his challenge was a copy of Pasion's will, which he had never seen, and after also asserting that no one ever had a copy made of his own will', but kept it by him till his death, he concludes by asking the court to grant him the redress demanded by the claims of justice and the laws of Athens (27-29).

Thus the plaintiff assigns four legal reasons in support of the plea that Pasion's will was a forgery: (1) he was a citizen by 'adoption'; (2) his widow was an 'heiress' legally at the disposal of her son and not her deceased busband; (3) he had legitimate sons, both of whom were now grown up and their coming of age would invalidate any will on the part of the father; (4) he was of unsound mind. On these four points we have only to remark that the first rests on a verbal quibble. (2) There is no indication elsewhere in other

1 See Becker's Charicles, Scene Ix, note 37.

2 See note on § 14, and M.

Dareste les plaidoyers civils de Dem. 11. and p. 307-8, where the law is briefly discussed.

speeches of Apollodorus that his mother was technically an 'heiress,' indeed there is reason to suspect that she was not even a native of Athens at all (§ 23); besides, as regards the alleged invalidity of his mother's second marriage, the plaintiff had already in his former speech expressed his acquiescence (Or. 45 § 4). (3) The intention of the law was that if a father, having legitimate male issue, made a will independent of their interests, the terms of the will as affecting other persons were to become valid in the event of the male children dying before they came of age. Thus a father could not disinherit his lawful heir, but he was not prevented from making a will in which the rights of the heir were duly regarded'; and indeed, we find that Apollodorus and his younger brother had divided their father's estate between them, and that the former in particular had succeeded to a dwelling-house which was once his father's property. (4) The suggestion of lunacy is inconsistent with Apollodorus' own description of his father's last illness in another speech, by which it appears that he was then clear-headed enough to give his son a particular account of all the sums due to him from his numerous creditors.

On the whole it is obvious that the plaintiff must have been conscious of having a very bad case indeed, and that to maintain it he was compelled to resort to the most contemptible subterfuges3.

The date of the two speeches must be placed shortly after that of the speech in the suit between Apollodorus and Phormio, i. e. very soon after B. C. 351 or 350.

Lortzing, Apoll. p. 82-3; Dareste, u. s., II. p. 293.

2 Or. 49 (Timoth.) § 42. 3 Beide reden, ganz besonders aber die zweite, sind voll

bloszer sophismen und spiegelfechtereien so handgreiflicher und oft fast lächerlicher art, dasz u. s. w. Sigg, Apoll. p. 412 and A. Schaefer, u. s., p. 177.