defiance of the will and the imprecations pronounced therein by your father, harass, persecute, and calumniate him. My good sir-if one can thus address you-will you not be quiet -will you not understand that to be honest is a more profitable thing than a heap of gold? Your own is a case in point, if you tell the truth; for, after receiving all this money, you have lost it all, as you say: but, if you had been a soberminded man, you would not have spent it. By Jupiter and the Gods! Looking at the matter in every point of view, I can see no reason why you should prevail upon the jury to give a verdict against Phormio. Is this the ground-that your charge comes soon after the offence? No; you are accusing him years and years after. Or because during the interval you were not a litigious person? Why, who does not know how incessantly you have been engaged in litigation, not only prosecuting private suits of no less importance than the present, but trumping up public charges. and bringing people to trial? Did you not accuse Timomachus? Did you not accuse Callippus who is now in Sicily? Again, did you not accuse Menon-Autocles-Timotheusand many others? But is it credible that such a person as you, Apollodorus, would demand satisfaction for public wrongs, a portion of which only pertained to yourself, sooner than for the private wrongs of which you now complain, especially when they were so serious as you now pretend? How came it that you accused those men and let Phormio alone? You were not wronged, I presume; and your present claim is false and vexatious. I consider then, men of Athens, that it will be eminently to the purpose to produce witnesses to these facts; for what can one expect now from a person who is always making groundless charges? And in truth, men of Athens, I think that whatever serves for an index of Phormio's character, and a proof of his rectitude and humanity, is a relevant matter to bring before you. For a man who is dishonest on all occasions might possibly have wronged the plaintiff, among others; but a man who has never wronged any one-who, on the contrary, has rendered services spontaneously to many-how is it likely that he should have wronged the plaintiff alone of all mankind? When you have heard these depositions, you will know the character of each. [The Depositions.] Now for those to prove the baseness of Apollodorus. [The Depositions.] Consider if this man is like the other. Read. [The Depositions.] Now read the account of the public services which the defendant has done to the state. [The Depositions.] Phormio, men of Athens, who has rendered such signal services to the state and to many of her citizens, who has never done harm to any one either publicly or privately, and is guilty of no offence to Apollodorus the plaintiff, begs and beseeches and implores you to save him, and we his friends join in the same petition to you. Another thing too you must hear. It has been read to you, men of Athens, that he has acquired such a heap of money as neither he nor any one else possesses. Yet Phormio has credit with those that know him for this and for a greater amount, and by means of such credit he benefits both himself and you. Do not give this away from him; do not suffer this odious man to destroy it; do not establish a disgraceful precedent, that the property of men in business, who live respectable lives, may be obtained from you by miscreants and pettifoggers: indeed it is much more useful to you while it remains in the defendant's possession; for you see yourselves and you hear from the witnesses, how he behaves to those who need his assistance. And he has not done any of these acts for the sake of pecuniary advantage, but all out of humanity and goodness of heart. It is not right, men of Athens, that you should abandon such a man to the mercy of the plaintiff. You must not pity him at a time when it will be of no advantage to him, but now, when you have it in your power to save him; for I see no fitter opportunity than this to lend him assistance. The mass of what Apollodorus will say you should regard as mere talk and calumny; but bid him show you, either that his father did not make this will, or that there is another lease than the one which we produce, or that he did not after stating an account release Phormio from all the claims which his father-in-law decided with the plaintiff's own concurrence, or that the laws allow people to bring actions for matters which have been so settled-bid him show something of the kind, at all events. If, for lack of argument, he resorts to calumny and foul language and abuse, do not attend to him; do not let his clamour and impudence deceive you; but keep in mind and remember all that you have heard from us. If you act in this manner, you will at the same time satisfy your own consciences and preserve the defendant, as justice requires, and as, by Jupiter and all the Gods, he deserves. Take and read them the law and these depositions. [The Law. The Depositions.] I see no reason for detaining you any longer; as nothing that I have said has escaped you, I believe. Pour out the water. THE ORATION AGAINST PANTÆNETUS. THE ARGUMENT. THE present speech was delivered in a mining cause, and, in order to understand it fully, the reader must know something about the Athenian law relating to mining property. The silver mines of Laurium, which in ancient times contributed so greatly to the prosperity of the Athenian republic, comprised a hilly district not far from the promontory of Sunium, and stretching from coast to coast in a line of about sixty stadia, from Anaphlystus in the south-west to Thoricus or the north-east sea. The district was populous, including the village of Laurium and several others, inhabited chiefly by mining labourers. Mining is said to have been carried on from an early period, though the scarcity of silver in Solon's age proves that no good system of working had then been adopted. In the time of Themistocles the mines had become very productive, and the Athenians, under the advice of that statesman, applied the revenues obtained from them (amounting annually to thirty or forty talents), to the fitting out of a large fleet for the Æginetan war. In the age of Socrates, though a greater number of labourers was employed by the mine-owners, the public revenue, and therefore the quantity of silver obtained from the mines, had diminished. In the age of Demosthenes the profits had considerably fallen off; and before that of Strabo (who wrote in the first century of the Christian era) the mines had been almost entirely exhausted. The mines were worked either by shafts or adits, and sometimes by the removal of large masses, pillars being left for the support of the overlying rock. The removal of the ore appears to have been effected partly by men and partly by machines. The stamping at the foundries, to facilitate its separation from the useless mass, was commonly performed with the pestle and mortar. With respect to the processes of smelting or fusion in the Attic foundries, we have little direct information from ancient authors; the treatises of Theophrastus and others upon this subject having been lost. It is the opinion of Boeckh, from whose Dissertation on the silver-mines of Laurium we derive most of our information, that the smelting processes used by the Athenians were pretty much the same as those employed in other ancient mines. A few extracts from Boeckh, relating to these matters, will be found among the notes to this oration. What the reader however is more immediately concerned with is, to understand the tenure of mining property at Athens, and the laws and regulations regarding it. To these I proceed to draw his attention. The mines were the property of the Athenian state; which however did not work them at the public cost and risk, but granted them out on perpetual leases to various private speculators, in consideration of a premium, and a reserved rent of a twenty-fourth part of the gross produce, which was paid in bullion. A certain share or district was assigned to each tenant, or company of tenants, the boundaries being described as accurately as possible in the conveyance. Upon payment of the premium or purchase-money, the tenant was regarded as virtual owner, subject to the payment of his rent; and his title was transmissible by descent or purchase. No alien however was capable of holding property in the mines. Whoever wished to open a new mine and obtain a grant of it, applied to the Poleta, who superintended the sales of all public property. It is likely enough, as Boeckh thinks, that the immediate payment of the premium was not always insisted upon, but that the applicant for a mine was sometimes allowed to dig in an unopened part of the mountain, to ascertain whether a profitable ore was likely to be found, before he took his lease, or before he paid his purchase-money. The premiums were paid directly into the state treasury; the rents were paid to a farmergeneral. The number of mine proprietors was very considerable in the flourishing times. The shares, into which the mine district was divided, were unequal in extent and value, but not greatly unequal; the ordinary price of one is said to have been a talent. Sometimes a mine was worked by two or more persons in partnership; and sometimes a company was formed for opening new works, who afterwards, if they were fortunate enough to find plenty of ore, divided the space into different compartments, which they worked independently, each taking a separate share. Thus they ran the risk in common until such time only as they found a remunerative vein of metal. Such a plan was first suggested by Xenophon in his treatise on the Revenue, and it appears to have been acted upon. The labour of mining, like most other productive labour among the Athenians, was performed by slaves, either belonging to the proprietors, or (which was less usual) hired for the purpose. Mining slaves were of inferior quality, and their labour was therefore cheaply procured; but it is manifest that the employment of such persons was unfavourable to great success or improvement in mining art. Nicias, the celebrated general, who was a large mine owner, employed a thousand slaves; Hipponicus, six hundred; and they are said to have let their mines and slaves to contractors, Nicias receiving a mina and two-thirds per day. The mines being a regular source of income to the state, though the amount was continually fluctuating, depending on the greater or less number of mines that were taken, upon the quality of the ores, and the greater or less activity and success with which they were worked; it was important for the Athenians to make careful regulations to preserve the property, and render it as productive as possible. Special laws were passed relating to them, as well to protect the republic against frauds, as to encourage mining speculations among respectable capitalists, and to secure the tenants in the peaceful occupation of their allotments. The clandestine opening of a mine, without the permission of the Poletæ, and without the name of the party opening being entered in the public register, subjected him to criminal proceedings: this being regarded as a political offence, the charge was brought by Probole before the popular assembly, to obtain its sanction for the prosecution. If the purchase-money of a mine was not paid into the treasury by the appointed time, the tenant became liable to pay the double amount, and to the other penal consequences which fell upon state-debtors. If he failed to pay his rent, the farmer general was empowered to proceed against him; but the extreme penalty in this case was the forfeiture of his mine to the state, unless the default was attended with aggravating circumstances. For other public offences relating to the mines a Phasis might be preferred, upon which the punishment was discretionary with the court. For private mining causes the law provided a special method of trial, in the same manner as it did for mercantile causes, appointing them to be tried within a month before the Thesmothetæ. This had been one of the suggestions made by Xenophon in the treatise already referred to. Demosthenes in this oration mentions four cases to which the privilege extended: 1. Ejectment of a mine-owner from his occupation: 2. Incendiarism: 3. An attack with arms : 4. Cutting into another owner's boundaries. I am disposed to think, as Meier seems to have thought, that Demosthenes has not exhausted all the cases comprised in the law which he cites to the jury; but that either the law itself put these by way of example only, and contained also a general clause including other offences ejusdem generis; or that the orator only cited an extract, which was sufficient for his own purpose. The intention of the law must have been, to provide a speedy remedy for all injuries which prevented the beneficial working of the mines, which concerned the public as well as the party wronged. Such would be not merely the burning of a mine, or of its chambering and supports, but any other act of destruction or mischief -such would be not only the absolute ejectment of a tenant, but any obstruction or interference continued for a length of time; again, any injury to a neighbouring proprietor, whether by armed |