were having their meal measured out to them by the gallon,1 and treading upon one another's heels. To prove the truth of my statements, please to take the deposition and the law.

[The Deposition. The Law.]

38 It is by the aid of this man as his accomplice and witness, that Phormio thinks proper to defraud us of our money—us, who have never ceased bringing our corn to your port, and who in three critical periods of your commonwealth, in which you proved the men who were useful to the people, have each time behaved ourselves worthily of the occasion. First, when Alexander marched to Thebes, we made you a present of a talent in money. Again, when corn rose in price the time before, and had got to sixteen drachms, we imported more than ten thousand medimns of wheat, and measured it out among you at the average price, five drachms the medimn, and you all know that you received this distribution in the Pompeum.2 And last year my brother and I gave a donation of a talent to purchase corn for the people. me the depositions in proof of these statements.

[The Depositions.]

Read

If any further inference may be drawn from these facts, it was not very likely that we should make donations of such large sums in order to acquire a good name with you, and should make a false charge against Phormio, in order to throw away the honourable character which we had established. It is right therefore that you should give us redress, men of the jury. I have shown you that the defendant in the beginning did not ship goods equivalent to the loans which he had obtained at Athens, and that out of the goods which were sold at Bosporus he with difficulty satisfied the creditors who lent on the voyage out. I have further shown that he was neither well-off, nor so simple-minded as to pay thirty-nine minas instead of two thousand six hundred drachms. Besides this, I have shown that, when he says he paid the money to Lampis, he did not invite either my servant or my partner (who was in Bosporus) to be present. Again, Lampis himself

1 The ἡμίεκτον was the twelfth part of a μέδιμνος, which was nearly a bushel and a half.

2 This was a public building at Athens, in which the sacred utensils were kept.

is shown to have been a witness for me that he had not received the money, before he was corrupted by the defendant. Really, if Phormio could thus prove his case point by point, I don't know how he could possibly have made a better defence. As to the action being maintainable, the law itself bears witness in my favour, when it declares that mercantile actions shall lie upon contracts made at Athens and to the Athenian port, and not only those at Athens, but those also which are made for the purpose of a voyage to Athens. Please to take the laws.

[The Laws.]

That the contract has been entered into between me and Phormio at Athens, even they themselves do not deny; but they put in a special plea alleging that the action is not maintainable. To what tribunal could we bring our case, men of the jury, except to the tribunal of Athens, where we entered into the contract? It would be strange indeed that, if a wrong had been done me in relation only to a voyage to Athens, I should be able to obtain justice from Phormio before you, and yet, when the contract has been made on your exchange, these men should not submit to your jurisdiction. And, when he referred to the arbitration of Theodotus, they admitted that my action against them was maintainable; but now they assert the opposite to what they have themselves before conceded, as if it were proper that they should be tried before Theodotus the denizen without a special plea, but, when we enter the court of the Athenian state, the action is no longer maintainable. I am thinking, what in the world he would have inserted in his plea, if Theodotus had dismissed the suit, when, Theodotus having desired us to go to the court, he says that the action is not maintainable before you, to whom Theodotus sent the case. I should indeed be most cruelly treated, if, when the laws declare that actions upon contracts made at Athens shall be brought before the Judges, you, who have sworn to decide according to the laws, should dismiss the suit.

That I lent the money is proved, you see, both by the agreement and by the defendant himself; that he has paid me is testified by no one besides Lampis his accomplice. And the defendant vouches no one but Lampis to prove the

payment; I vouch both Lampis himself and those who heard him, to prove that he denied having received the money. Phormio then is at liberty to bring my witnesses to trial, if he disputes the truth of their testimony; but I have no means of dealing with his witnesses, who say they know that Lampis testified to having received the money. If the deposition of Lampis had been put in the box, these men might have said perhaps, that I ought to proceed against him for false testimony; as it is, however, I have not this deposition, and the defendant thinks fit to secure his own impunity, by leaving no pledge for the verdict which he urges you to pronounce. Would it not be absurd, when Phormio himself confesses to have borrowed and pretends to have paid, that you should make a nullity of what he himself confesses, and give effect to what he disputes? and when Lampis, on whose testimony the defendant relies, after originally denying that he had received the money, now gives evidence to the contrary; that you, who know that he has never received payment, should not be witnesses to the fact? and that you should not accept for proof what he spoke truly, but rather place reliance upon the false statements which he made after he was corrupted? It is far more just, men of Athens, to draw your conclusions from the statements made in the first instance, than from those fabricated afterwards. The former he made not designedly, but under the impulse of truth; the later are fictions devised for his own advantage.

Remember, O Athenians, that Lampis himself never denied having said that he had not received the money, but, while he admitted that he said it, declared that he was not in his right senses at the time. It would be out of reason that you should credit that part of his testimony which favours the cheat, and refuse credence to that which favours the party cheated. I implore you, men of the jury, not to act thus. You are the same persons who punished with death, after his impeachment before the popular assembly, a man who had obtained fresh loans 1 to a large amount upon your

1 I.e. new loans on the security of property already pledged. This was considered at Athens to be a fraud upon the prior, as well as the subsequent lender; for it increased the risk to both. And it was com monly provided against by express stipulation. See the agreement in the case against Lacritus; and see what Demosthenes says, with

exchange and did not provide for his creditors their securities, although he was a citizen of Athens and the son of a man who had been a General. For you hold that persons of that kind not only injure those who chance to deal with them, but do a public damage to your place of trade; and you hold thus with justice. For the trading community thrive not so much by the borrowers as by the lenders of money, and neither ship nor shipowner nor passenger can put to sea without the assistance of the lenders. The laws have many excellent regulations for their protection. It is your duty to come forward in aid of the laws, and give no encouragement to roguish people, so that you may derive the utmost advantage from your trade-market. You will do so, if you protect the persons who risk their money, and do not suffer them to be defrauded by such monsters as these.

I have said all that was in my power to say, and I will call another of my friends, if you desire it.

THE ORATION AGAINST LACRITUS.

THE ARGUMENT.

THE present case arose out of a written agreement entered into between Androcles, an Athenian, and Nausicrates, of Carystus in Euboea, of the one part; and Artemo and Apollodorus, both of Phaselis in Pamphylia, and brothers of the defendant Lacritus, of the other part. It was an agreement of loan on a mercantile adventure, upon the terms following: Androcles and Nausicrates lend thirty minas to Artemo and Apollodorus, on condition that they should sail in a certain vessel from Athens to Mende or Scione (towns in the peninsula of Pallene), and there purchase three thousand casks of Mendæan wine; from thence proceed to the Thracian Bosporus, or, if they pleased, along the left coast of the Euxine as far as the mouth of the Borysthenes (or Dnieper); and, after selling their cargo of wine, purchase a returncargo, to be brought in the same vessel to Athens. The loan was to be repaid with interest, in case the cargo was brought safe to

reference to a pledge actually deposited, in the speech against Aphobus (ante, page 100). But the securities given on these maritime adventures were not like pledges accompanied with possession, or mortgages with delivery of title-deeds. They afforded but scanty protection against bad faith and neglect of duty.

Athens, within twenty days after its arrival, the interest to be twenty-two and a half per cent. unless they returned from the Euxine to Hierum in Bithynia after the rise of Arcturus (early in September), in which case it was to be thirty per cent. No abatement was to be allowed except for jettison made with the consent of all the passengers, or for compulsory payments made to enemies, The return-cargo was to be delivered as security to the lenders, to be held by them until payment of all that was due; and in default of payment, they were to be at liberty, both or either of them, not only to sell the security, but to recover any deficiency by distraining the other property of the borrowers. If, instead of entering the Euxine sea, they remained in the Hellespont for ten days after the rise of the Dog-star, (at the end of July,) and there discharged their cargo, which they were at liberty to do in any friendly port, it was agreed that they should pay the lower rate of interest. There was the usual declaration by the borrowers, that the security which they gave was not encumbered with any previous hypothecation, and an engagement that they would not take up any further loan upon it. It is stated by Androcles, the speaker, that this agreement was violated in several ways by the borrowers; that they failed to ship the stipulated quantity of wine; that they took up a further loan upon the security given to himself and his partner; that they did not purchase a sufficient return-cargo; that, instead of entering into the regular port of Athens, they put into a creek used only by thieves or smugglers; and, when the creditors demanded their money, they and their brother Lacritus falsely represented that the vessel had been wrecked.

Artemo having died shortly after this, and Lacritus having (as the plaintiff asserts) inherited his property, and therefore succeeded to his obligations, Androcles, either on his own behalf or on behalf of himself and partner, commences an action against Lacritus, as heir to his brother, to recover what was due to him under the agreement. This is the principal, but not the only ground, on which the plaintiff founds his claim against Lacritus; for he alleges also that Lacritus guaranteed the performance of the agreement by his brothers, and asserts that he joined in the sealing of it.

Lacritus puts in a special plea, objecting that there was no contract, or at least no contract in writing between the plaintiff and himself. There does not appear to have been any law at Athens, as there is with us, requiring guarantees to be in writing; but the defendant relied upon the law concerning mercantile actions, of which an account has already been given in the argument to the case of Zenothemis. (See ante, p. 150.) Whether the plea would be available in such a case as this is very doubtful. One would rather suppose that the heir or the surety of the contracting party would be liable to the same sort of action as the deceased or the principal.

It is observable that the evidence produced by the plaintiff is confined entirely to the proceedings of Artemo and Apollodorus, the original parties to the agreement, and not a particle of evidence is offered to fix Lacritus with liability either as heir or surety. Lacritus has already spoken; he has admitted that he was his brother's heir, but