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cases; but surely I have done nothing of this sort to you and yours, unless you regard people who get back the money which they have rashly lent you as making an armed attack. If that is your belief, you have a mining action against everybody who parts with his money to you. But that is hardly just. For example-shall any man who purchases a mine from the state be allowed to sue in a mining court, disregarding the general laws, according to which all people are bound both to render and to obtain justice? How, if one man borrows money from another? How, if a man be slandered? if he receives blows? if he makes a charge of theft? if he does not get back an advance for property-tax? if anything else, in short, should occur? shall he sue in the mining court? I hardly think so. I take it that mining actions lie against persons who have shares in mines,1 persons who bore through a strange mine, and get into their neighbours' boundaries; and generally, against persons engaged in mining operations, who do any of the things mentioned in the statute: but a man who has lent money to Pantænetus, and has had the utmost difficulty and trouble to get it back from him, is not to have the further infliction of being made defendant in a mining cause; most decidedly not.

That I have done no wrong to the plaintiff, and that the action by the laws is not maintainable, is easy to be seen from what I have already stated. As the plaintiff had no ground whatever to support his charges, as he had inserted falsehoods in his plaint, and was suing for claims of which he had given a release, last month, men of Athens, when I was about to come into court, just as the jurors had been assigned by lot, he came up and surrounded me with his friends, (the gang of persons who are in league with him,) and does a most atrocious thing.2 He reads to me a long challenge, requiring

1 Böckh supposes the word Kowvwvoûσ to designate partners in mines. And so Pabst translates it-"welche gemeinschaftlich Bergwerke besitzen." I am not clear that it means anything more than "concerned in mines or mining business."

2 The defendant complains that the following trick was played him by his adversary. Just before the trial was coming on, Pantænetus, the plaintiff, brings him a challenge, drawn up in writing in the usual way, and reads it out, but does not show it to him. The terms which it proposed were, that the defendant should give up a slave to the torture; that, if the slave admitted the truth of the plaintiff's assertions, the

that a certain slave, who, he said, was acquainted with the facts, should be put to the question, and that, if the facts which he alleged were true, I should be bound to pay him his damages without assessment; if they were false, the questioner, Mnesicles, should estimate the value of the slave. After he had received sureties to the agreement from me, and after I had sealed the challenge-(not that I thought it was fair; for how could it be fair, that upon the body and life of a servant it should depend, whether I should be condemned to pay two talents, or the pettifogging plaintiff escape with impunity? but I, desiring to prevail by a great preponderance of justice, gave my consent)-after that, he summons me in the action again, as soon as he had taken back the deposits;1 making it thus plain at the outset, that he would not abide even by terms of his own arranging. When we had come before the questioner, instead of opening the challenge, showing the defendant should pay the two talents, the damages laid in the plaint; if not, he (the plaintiff) would pay for the injury done to the slave, according to the valuation of Mnesicles, who was to apply the torture and superintend the examination. Nicobulus accepted this challenge, disadvantageous as it was for him; seals the paper containing the terms, which thus became an agreement between the parties; and gave sureties (as was usual) for its performance. Notwithstanding this, the plaintiff immediately gives him a new summons in an action, apparently for the same cause, and in violation of the agreement, which had put an end to the original action; for the whole cause was staked upon the questioning of the slave. This was the beginning of the fraud. Afterwards, when they went before Mnesicles to examine the slave, Pantænetus produces a challenge containing different terms from those which he had read to the defendant; different at least in this respect, that it authorised the plaintiff himself to apply the torture, instead of Mnesicles. He had been enabled to play this trick by the hurry and confusion in which the challenge had been made and accepted, Nicobulus not having had time to see or make a copy or an extract from it. Nicobulus says that he submitted even to this artifice, and offered to deliver up his slave.

The account of this transaction, like the rest of the case, is exceedingly obscure.

"Nam, si quæstiones processissent, judicio nihil fuisset opus. Sed mirum licuisse pecuniam semel depositam tollere." Wolf.

"Scilicet toto in negotio Pantænetus ex libidine utque sycophantam agnosceres egit. Itaque res supra dicitur πрâyμа пúνdeivov." Schäfer. Whether these Tapakaтaßoλal were sums deposited as caution-money, or merely the ordinary court-fees, is uncertain. See Meier and Schömann, Att. Proc. 620, and Appendix IX., page 377, to Vol. iii. of this work.

contents, and then proceeding according to its terms to do what seemed right; (for, owing to the bustle on that occasion and the cause being about to be called on, it was done in this manner I offer you this challenge-I accept-where's your ring?here it is-who's the surety?-this person hereand I took no copy nor anything else of the kind;) instead of proceeding in the way that I mention, he had brought another challenge, and insisted upon applying the torture to the man himself, and laid hold of him and began to pull him about, and misbehaved himself most grossly. And I reflected in my own mind, men of the jury, what an immense advantage it is to intimidate people by your style of conduct.2 For it seemed to me, that I was suffering these indignities because I lived in a plain and straightforward manner, and that I was paying an enormous penalty for submitting to such treatment. However, as I should have been compelled, contrary to my views of propriety, to give a counter-challenge, I offered even to deliver up the slave.

To prove the truth of these my statements, read the challenge.

[The Challenge.]

After having declined these terms—after having declined the challenge which he himself gave in the first instance-I wonder what he can possibly have to say to you. That you may know who the person is, from whom he pretends to have suffered such dreadful injuries-behold him!3 This is the

man who expelled Pantænetus; this is the man who was too strong for the friends of Pantænetus and the laws. For I myself was not in the country, and the plaintiff does not charge me with having been.

I wish to explain to you the trick by which he misled the former jury and obtained his verdict against Euergus, that

1 The ring was for sealing the challenge; not for a pledge, as Hudtwalcker supposed. See Meier and Schömann, Att. Proc. 680.

I follow Schäfer's interpretation-" quantum sit lucrum sycophantæ ita vivere, ut alii metu ejus percellantur."

Pabst, who reads with Reiske, ur kataπeñλî×0αι, translates thus"welch ein grosser Vorzug es sey, wenn man in den Lebensverhältnissen nicht allzu furchtsam ist."

3 He exhibits to the jury the slave, Antigenes, a feeble old man, not likely to have committed the outrages complained of.

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you may see he'll not stick at any sort of falsehood or impudence on the present occasion. Besides, you will find that the causes of action for which he now sues me have the same justification; which is the clearest proof, that Euergus has on the former occasion been the victim of fraud. The plaintiff, in addition to the rest of his charges, alleged that Euergus came to his house in the country and intruded into the apartments of his daughters (who were heiresses) and his mother; and he brought the laws concerning heiresses to the court. Not to this day has he ever appeared before the Archon, whom the laws appoint to attend to such matters, and before whom the offender is in peril either of corporal punishment or pecuniary fine, while the prosecutor seeks redress without any risk to himself; nor has he impeached either me or Euergus of any offence of this kind, but he made the accusation in court and got a verdict for two talents. It would have been easy, I take it, for Euergus, had he been aware beforehand (as by the laws he should have been) of the charge on which he was tried, to show the real justice of the case and obtain an acquittal; but in a mining cause, when accused of things which he could never have expected, it was difficult on the spur of the moment to clear himself of the calumny; and the indignation of the jurors, who were deceived by the plaintiff, found him guilty of the charge upon which they sat in judgment. Do you suppose that the man who deceived those jurors will hesitate to deceive you ?—or that he comes into court relying upon the facts, and not rather upon his words and the witnesses who are leagued with him, (that dirty blackguard Procles, the tall fellow, and Stratocles, that most smooth-tongued and basest of mankind,) and on the whining face and the tears that he can assume so recklessly and so impudently? You, however, are so far from deserving any compassion, that you ought above all men to be detested for your proceedings-you who, after owing a hundred and five minas and not being able to pay the money, and then finding persons to lend it and enable you to satisfy your original creditors, have not only broken your engagements to them in relation to the loan itself, but seek even to deprive them of their civic franchise! In general, one may observe the borrowers of money giving up their property: in your case the creditor is in this condition; having lent a

talent, he has been condemned to pay two talents at the suit of a pettifogger. And I, who have lent forty minas, am defendant in this action for two talents. And upon a property, on which you have never been able to borrow more than a hundred minas, and which you have sold out and out for three talents and twenty minas, you have sustained damage, as it appears, to the amount of four talents. From whom? From my servant! that's what he means to say! Why, what citizen would give up possession of his property to a servant? Who would contend that my slave ought to be responsible for acts, for which the plaintiff has brought an action against Euergus and obtained a verdict? And besides -the plaintiff has himself released him from all charges of this kind. For the proper course was, not to bring such charges forward now, nor to insert them in the challenge in which he demanded him for the torture, but to commence the action against him and carry it on against me as his guardian. As it is, he has commenced the action against me, and accuses the slave. The laws however do not allow this; for who ever commenced an action against the master, and charged the facts against the slave, as if he were his own guardian? 52. When any one asks him—" What case shall you be able to make out against Nicobulus?"—he says, "The Athenians hate money-lenders; Nicobulus is an odious person; he walks fast, talks loud, and carries a stick all these things" (says he) "are in my favour." And he is not ashamed to talk in this style, and imagines his hearers don't understand that this is the reasoning not of an injured party, but of a false accuser. my part, I don't look upon a money-lender as a wrongdoer, though I think you may fairly regard with displeasure certain persons of that class, who make a trade of it, and who care neither for humanity nor anything else but the lust of gain. For, as I have often borrowed money as well as lent it

3

For

1 For what the slave did by command of his master, of course the master would be responsible in his own name. For what the slave did without such authority, Demosthenes says he ought to be sued in his own name, though the master would have to be joined as his Kópios, that is, his guardian and representative in law. We have but little information on this point, and cannot be certain whether Demosthenes states the law correctly, or whether, supposing him to state it correctly, the point is a technical or a substantial one. The reader may refer to what is said by Schömann in the Attic Process, page 572.