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 loans1 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 commonly 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 Laeritus 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

has denied that he succeeded to any property, that he had any assets (as we should say). The plaintiff asserts that he actually took possession of his brother's estate, and administered it, and only pretended to renounce the inheritance when a demand was made on him by creditors. But of this important fact, on which, perhaps, the whole case turned, no proof is offered. The guaranty also rests upon loose assertion. The speech is altogether rather abusive than argumentative. It has been surmised that Demosthenes may have been severe upon Lacritus because he was an orator and pupil of Isocrates. He is probably the same person whom Plutarch mentions in the Life of Demosthenes, as having been the instructor of that Archias who was employed by Antipater to capture the Athenian orators. I have taken it for granted that Nausicrates, the joint-creditor mentioned in the agreement, was not a co-plaintiff with Androcles, as it is nowhere stated that he was so; and I think it by no means clear that the joint-debtor Apollodorus was sued with Lacritus, notwithstanding one passage in the oration which seems to indicate the contrary. If the reader should think this strange, let him remember that by the terms of the agreement it appears that the contract, between the parties was joint and several; it was competent for either or both of the lenders to take legal proceedings against either or both of the borrowers; and therefore it may be inferred that either or both of the lenders might sue the surety of the borrowers, or the heirs of either.

A full explanation of the agreement will be found in Böckh's Public Economy of Athens, and a compendium, taken from Böckh, in the Archæological Dictionary, title Fenus. Some information illustrative of the subject will be found in Appendix V.

From this and the foregoing cases the reader may perceive what risk was run by the Athenian capitalist who lent his money on maritime speculations, and how little dependence could be placed on such persons as Protus, Phormio, Artemo, and Apollodorus, who traded on borrowed money, with little or no property of their own to fall back upon.

THE Phaselites are doing nothing new, men of Athens, but only what they are in the habit of doing. They are famous people for borrowing money on your exchange, but, when they have got it and drawn up a maritime contract, they immediately forget both their contract and the laws, and also that it is their duty to repay what they have had, and consider that, if they pay their debts, it is like losing something of their own, and, instead of paying, they invent artifices and pleadings and excuses, and are the greatest rogues and rascals in the world. Here is the proof. Out of the multitude of persons, Greeks and barbarians, who frequent your exchange, the Phaselites alone have more lawsuits year after year than all the rest put together. So much for their

character. I, men of the jury, having lent money to Artemo, the defendant's brother, according to the commercial laws, on an adventure from Athens to Pontus and back, as he died without having repaid me the money, have brought the present action, according to those same laws under which I entered into the contract, against the defendant, as being brother of Artemo and having possession of all his property, both what he left here and what he had at Phaselis, and as being heir to his whole estate; and because the defendant can show no law which enables him to keep possession of his brother's property and to have administered it as he pleased, and yet to refuse payment of what is due to other persons, and to say now that he is not heir but renounces the inheritance. Such is the base conduct of Lacritus the defendant. I entreat you, men of the jury, to give me a fair hearing upon this matter; and, if I prove that he has wronged us his creditors and you as well, to give us the redress that we are entitled to.

I myself, men of the jury, had not the least knowledge of these men; but Thrasymedes, the son of Diophantus, the Sphettian, and Melanopus, his brother, are friends of mine, and we are as intimate as it is possible to be: they came to me with Lacritus, the defendant, having become acquainted with him some way or other (I don't know how), and asked me to lend a sum of money upon an adventure to Pontus to Artemo, the defendant's brother, and Apollodorus, so that they might be profitably employed; Thrasymedes, men of the jury, knowing nothing of the roguery of these persons, but thinking that they were honest men and what they pretended and professed to be, and supposing that they would do all that Lacritus, the defendant, promised and undertook that they should do. He was completely deceived, and had no idea with what monsters he was associating. I, by the persuasion of Thrasymedes and his brother, and, upon an undertaking being given to me by the defendant Lacritus, that his brothers would do all that was right, in conjunction with a certain friend of mine, a Carystian, lent thirty minas in money. I wish you, men of the jury, first to hear the agreement, which contains the terms on which we lent the money, and the witnesses who were present when it was lent; after that, I will proceed to the other parts of the case, and