No More Learning

Even with us and all our restrictions, advocates contrive
occasionally to indulge in considerable licence, and did
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? DEMOSTHENES AT THE BAR. 157
so formerly to a much greater extent ; and it is, perhaps,
a question whether some of the most offensive passages
in Demosthenes and Aischines might not be paralleled
from English pleadings.
Another evil of the Athenian judicial system was the
division of responsibility. One out of 500 or 1000
jurors might very well shelter himself under the excuse,
that if he decided wrongly from carelessness or parti-
alit , the result would not be muchyaffectcd. On the
other hand, there were advantages which will occur to
the minds of those who are acquainted with the history
of free institutions. Corruption and bribery cannot have
been particularly easy. Nor, again, could anything like
ixitir'nidation be well practised. The fact, too, that rich
and poor were brought together to discharge an import-
ant public function, would have a salutary effect. It
would make them feel that they were members of one
commonwealth, and inspire them with a respect for its
laws. It would call out many of their best sentiments,
as well as sharpen their intellects. Their decisions
may have sometimes been such as we with our modern
ideas cannot approve; but, on the whole, it may be
assumed that they commanded the confidence of the
people. The Athenian may have had a perverse fond-
ness for listening to the wranglings of rival plead-
ers ; but he did his best generally to hear both sides
fairly, and to decide rightly. The jury system, with all
its accompaniments of trained oratory and carefully-
composed speeches, was contemporaneous with the
marvellous development of Athenian literature in the
age of Pericles. To it we are certainly indebted
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? 158 DEMOSTHENES.
for some of the most splendid monuments of hmiran'
genius.
Such numerous juries could hardly have been fit to
deal with cases involving a multitude of intricate de-
tails connected with money accounts or valuations of
property. Matters of this kind were usually referred,
as with us, to a court of arbitration--public arbitra-
tors being annually appointed. Of these we hear con-
tinually in the forensic speeches of the Athenian
orators, and we may take it for granted that much of
the law business was disposed of by them. Indeed,
it was the regular practice to submit ordinary private
disputes to arbitrators in the first instance; but,
as might have been expected in a democratic state,
there was always an appeal from their decisions to a
jury.
On the whole, it is not unlikely that justice was
fairly well administered in the Athenian courts. Such,
at all events, seems to have been the opinion of the
Greek world; and we can hardly suppose that that
opinion was without foundation. Some of the draw-
backs of the system have been already noted, and they
were no doubt considerable. A clerrer and unscrupulous
advocate might have had a better chance at Athensthan
he would have with us. It is, of course, an immense
advantage that atrained lawyer should preside over a
court, and sum up the case, and point out to the jury
the general principles by which they should be guided.
It is probable that the want of this was often felt
at Athens, and led occasionally to unfortunate results.
Still, we may be sure that the average Athenian was
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? DEMOSTHENES AT THE BAR. 159
a man of intelligence, and perfectly open to reason.
Practice, too, made him tolerably well acquainted with
his country's laws. It is the greatest mistake to con-
ceive of Athens as " a fierce democracy. " Her citizens
were for the most part moderately-cultivated persons,
of a tolerant temper, and willing to obey the laws and
the constitution. A successful Athenian advocate must
have come up to a rather high standard ;_ and if
his invective was sometimes coarse and offensively
personal, it must have been set off by a certain
amount of wit, and have been accompanied with acute
reasoning. '
Much of the litigation at Athens arose out of bot-/'~'
tomry cases--that is, loans of moncy on the security of
a ship or of its cargo. Business of this kind was trans-
acted on a great scale; and as the risk was consider-
able, the interest charged was high--as much some-
times as thirty per cent. There seem to have been end-
less trickeries connected with it. One of Demosthenes'
speeches, for instance, was on behalf of two joint lenders
who had advanced some money on the security of a
wine cargo. Two brothers, merchants of Phaselis in
Pamphylia, were the borrowers. Phaselis, it appears;
had a very bad commercial reputation; and there were
said to be more actions brought against its traders at
Athens than against all the other traders put together.
In this case Demosthenes' client stated that the bor-
rowers of his moneyhad broken their agreement---" that
they had not shipped the stipulated quantity of wine ;
that they had raised a further loan on the same secu-
rity; that they had not purchased a sufficient return
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? 160 DEMOSTHENES.
cargo; that, on their return, they had not entered the
regular port of Athens, but had put into a little obscure
harbour known as ' Smugglers' Creek; ' and that, when
the repayment of the loan was demanded, they falsely
represented that the vessel had been wrecked. " Before
the matter was settled, one of the borrowers died, and
his property went to his brother, Lacritus, who, accord-
ing to the lenders' statement, had verbally engaged to
see that the loan should be repaid. So Lacritus was
sued for the amount, although very possibly he was
not legally liable, and may merely have been a "referee "
for his brother, and have stated, as such, that to the
best of his belief they were solvent. He was a man
of some note, having been a pupil of Isocrates, and
being himself a rather celebrated teacher of rhetoric.
He was, in fact, what the Greeks called a "sophist. "
On this he seems to have presumed; and he went
about bragging of his connection with "the great Iso-
crates. " Demosthenes makes his client say: "These
sophists are 'a bad lot. ' It is no affair of mine if a
man chooses to be a sophist, and to pay fees to Isocra-
tes ; but they must not, because they think themselves
clever, be allowed to swindle other people out of their
money. Lacritus does not trust to the justice of his
case; but he thinks that, as he has learnt oratory, he
shall be able to make you think exactly what he pleases.
Perhaps, as he is so clever, he will undertake to prove
that black is white--that the money was never bor-
rowed at all--or that it has been paid---or that the
bond is waste paper--or that the borrowers had a right
to use our money as they liked. " It is possible, as has
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? DEMOSTHENES AT THE BAR. 161
been supposed, that Demosthenes is really hitting at
Isoerates in his abuse of Lacritus. '
In one of his speeches he argues against the right of
a man to take a name already borne by one of his
brothers. The case is a rather singular one. Manti-
theus, the son of Mantias, brings an action against his
half-brother Boeotus for having got himself registered
as Mantitheus. Boeotus was the son of Mantias by a
mistress, herself an Athenian citizen, and so capable,
according to Athenian law, of transmitting citizenship
to her offspring. Every citizen's child was enrolled or
registered on the citizen-list at an early age, and then
again subsequently on reaching manhood. Boeotus
received his name on the first of these occasions. Be-
fore the second registration had taken place, his father
died. Disliking the name, which suggested a familiar
Greek proverb, "like a Boeotian hog," he contrived on
this second occasion to get himself enrolled under his
brother's name of Mantitheus. In this manner the '
legal designation of the two brothers became the same.
It should be noted that at Athens a citizen was de- ; _'
scribed by his own name, by that of his father, and:'T1.
that of his parish or township--Attica being divided it
into so many townships, or domes, as they were called.
In a comparatively small community this might not
be inconvenient. What, however, Bocotus had done,
could hardly fail to lead to confusion. His half-
brother, in the speech composed for him by Demos-
thenes, hints that matters would be all the worse, as
Jlceotus kept rather questionable company. Unpleasant
mistakes, too, as he points out, would probably arise
A. 0. S. B. vol. iv. 1,
I
u
U
x
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? 162 DEMOS THENES.
out of unpaid debts and appearances in the law courts.
In fact, the son of the lawful wife would often be
credited with the scrapes into which the son of the
mistress was likely to get himself.
"You tiresome Boeotus," says Demosthenes' client,
who really seems to have been a much-injured man,
"I would wish you, if possible, to renounce all
your bad ways; but if that is too much to hope,
pray oblige me to this extent: cease to give your-
self trouble; cease to harass me with litigation; be
content that you have gained a franchise, a property,
a father. No one seeks to dispossess you ; nor do
I. If, as you pretend to be a brother, you act
like a brother, people will believe that you are my
kinsman. But if you plot against me, go to law with
me, envy me, slander me, it will be thought that you
have intruded into a strange family, and treat the
members as if they were alien to you. As to me per-
sonally, however wrong my father may have been in
refusing to acknowledge you, I certainly am innocent.
It was not my business to know who were his sons;
it was for him to show me whom I was to regard as
brothers. As long as he forebore to acknowledge you,
I held you no kinsman; ever since he acknowledged
you, I have regarded you as he did. You have had
your portion of the inheritance after my father's death;
you participate in our religious worship, in our civil
rights--no one excludes you from these. What woull
you have'! Whoever hears the name will have to ask
which of us two are meant; then, if the person means
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? DEMOSTHENES AT THE BAR. 163
you, he will reply, ' The one whom Mantias was com-
pelled to adopt. ' Do you wish for this 'l "
We pass to quite a different case. It is a dis-
pute between two neighbouring Attic farmcrs. * Their
holdings were in a hilly part of Attica, and were
separated by a public road. It is an action for damages
which the plaintiff, Callicles, alleged that he had sus-
tained through the obstruction of a water-course, which
carried off the drainage from the surrounding hills.
The defendaut's father had built a wall on his land,
with the view of diverting the water into the road.
It seems that in Attica a proprietor might turn off his
drainage into a public way, to the great detriment, as
may well be supposed, of the country roads, which, in
hilly districts, must at times have been almost impas-
sable. The effect of the wall in this case was, that
after heavy rains the plaintifi"s farm was overflowed,
as well as the road. For this the plaintiff brought his
action. The defendant, Demosthenes' client, pleaded
in justification that the well in question had been law-
fully erected by his father fifteen years ago; that no
objection was then raised by the plaintiffs family;
that the so-called watercourse was not really a water-
course, but was part of his own land, as it was planted
with fruittrees, and contained an old family burial-
ground. The stream, too, which caused the mischief,
did not come to the defendant from a neighbour's
farm ; it flowed down the road both above and below
him: the flood which it occasioned in wet weather was
' Speech against Callicles.
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? 164 DEMOSTHENES.
a natural misfortune, from 'which others had suffered as
well as the plaintifi'--only, they had never thought of
going to law about it. The defendant broadly hints
that the plaintiff has an eye to his property, and is
trying to oust him from it by a vexatious action. The
matter in dispute was trifling enough, and the must have been inclined to laugh at the solemnity with
which they were implored to give their best attention
to all the details of the case. "There is no greater
nuisance" (so the defendant begins his pleading) " than
a covetous neighbour, which it has been my lot to
meet with. Callicles has set his heart on my land, and
worries me with litigation. First he got his cousin to
claim it from me, but I defeated that claim. I beseech
you all to hear me with attention--not because I am
any speaker, but that you may learn by the facts how
groundless the action is. " After he has explained the
facts, he asks pathetically what he is to do with the
'water, if he may not drain it off either into the public
road or into private ground. " Surely," he adds, with
a touch of bucolic humour, "the plaintiff won't force
me to drink it up 'Q " The damage done could not have
been very ruinous, if we may judge from a single
specimen. It appears that the mothers of the two
litigants used to visit each other, as country neighbours;
and on one occasion, when the defendant's mother was
calling at the plaintiffs house, she found the family
plunged in the deepest distress, and apparently crushed
by some more than ordinary calamity. It would seem
that the rustic mind then, as now, was peculiarly
sensitive to the most ludicrously trifling loss, and
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? DEMOSTHENES AT THE BAR. 165
delighted in describing it with the most violent exag-
geration. The injured farmer's wife, on this occasion,
pointed with tears to four bushels of barley which had
got wet and were being dried, and to a jar of oil,
which had indeed fallen down, but which was not
damaged. For this they wanted to claim, according to
the defendant, 1000 drachms, or about ? 40, by way of
compensation. An Attic farmer, it would seem (like
his English representative), was not likely to suffer
from asking too little. There is something very
characteristic in the following remark, which Demos-
thenes' client makes about his opponent: "In going
to law with me," he says, " I hold the plaintiif to be
thoroughly wicked and infatuated. "
In another * somewhat interesting case, Demosthenes
pleads for an unfortunate man who had been ejected
from his township, and was thereby in danger of ceasing
_ to be an Athenian citizen. At Athens, citizenship was
the subject of the strictest scrutiny; and the registers of
the townships were kept with the utmost care. Every
citizen, as has been already noted, had to be twice
registered; and to insure accuracy, and to exclude
questionable persons, the lists were from time to time
revised. Even with all these precautions, cases of
disputed citizenship not unfrequently occurred. In
the case which we are about to consider, Demosthenes'
client had been struck off the register of his township
on the occasion of a revision. The man's father had
been taken prisoner during the latter part of the Pelo-
ponnesian War ; and having lived some years "in for-
* Speech against Eubulides.
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? 166 ' DEMOSTHE mas
sign parts," he spoke Attic rather indifierently. How-
ever, on his return to Athens, he had resumed his
citizenship; and transmitted it, without question, as
it is alleged, to his son.
He was very poor, and he
and his wife had to eke out a livelihood by the
humblest of occupations. His son, it seems, had
made enemies in his parish, and among them one
Eubulides, against whom he had given evidence in a
court of justice. Eubulides, when he became mayor
of the township, had the registers revised, and con-
trived to get the man's name struck off. He managed
this by a sort of trick. The revision of the register
took place at Athens, from which the township was
about five miles distant. A good deal of time was
wasted in making speeches and drawing up resolu-
tions ; and the case of Demosthenes' client was taken
last of all. It was now dark, and all but about thirty
members of the township had gone home--and these,
it is said, were in the interest of Eubulides. When
the poor man's name was called, Eubulides started to
his feet, assailed him with a volley of abuse, and
insisted on a vote of expulsion. It was useless to ask
for an adjournment ; the business was hurried through,
and sixty ballot-balls were found in the box against
him, though it seems that only thirty townsmen were
present. The result was utter ruin to the man. Loss
of citizenship meant social death, and probably slavery.
He makes through his counsel a piteous appeal to the
jury, and says that if their verdict is adverse he shall
commit suicide, that he may at least have the satis-
faction of being buried by his relatives in his native
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? DEMOSTHENES AT THE BAR. 167
country. " I have been shamefully treated by this
Eubulides "--so he begins ; " and I pray you, consider-
ing the great importance of the present trial, and the
disgrace and ruin which attend conviction, to hear me,
as you have my opponent, in silence. " Further on in
his speech he touches on his poverty, and the humble
way in which his family maintain themselves.
" We confess that we sell ribbons, and live not in the
way we could wish. We are so low down in the world
that our opponent may go out of his way to abuse us.
It seems to me that our traflicking in the marketplace
is the strongest proof of the falsity of this man's
Charges. My mother, he says, sold ribbons in the
marketplace. Well, if she was an alien, they should
have inspected the market tolls, and shown whether
she paid the alien's toll, and to what country she
belonged. If she was a slave, the person who bought
her, or the person who sold her, should have been
called to give evidence. Then he has said she was a
nurse. We do not deny she was, in those evil days*
when all our people were badly off. But you will find
many women who are citizens taking children to nurse.
Of course, if we had been rich, we should not have
sold ribbons, or have been at all in distress. But
what has that to do with my descent'! Pray do not
scorn the poor (their poverty is a sufficient misfortune
for them), much less those who try to get an honest
livelihood. Poverty compels free men to do many
mean and servile acts, for which they deserve to be
" The last years of the Peloponnesian War.
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? 168 DEMOS THENES.
pitied rather than to be ruined. They tell me that many
women, citizens by birth, have become both nurses
and wool-dressers and vintagers, owing to the misfor-
tunes of our country at that period. I have confidence
in my case, and I come as an appellant to your tribunal
for protection. I know that the courts of law are
more powerful not only than my fellow-townsmen,
but even than the Council of the popular Assembly;
and justly so--for your verdicts are in every respect
most righteous. "
He concludes his address to the jury with the threat
of suicide already mentioned
One more of these cases must suffice. It is
an amusing one--an action, as we should say, for
assault and battery. There were, it seems, occasional
outbursts of rowdyism even at refined Athens, and the
police were not always " on the spot" to repress them.
Some of the "fast" young men about town formed
themselves into clubs--like the " Mohock Club" of the
last century, whose lawless proceedings are the subject
of one of the numbers of the ' Spectator. ' * " Ari
outrageous ambition (as the ' Spectator' says) of doing
all possible hurt to their fellow-creatures was the great
cement of their assemblies, and the only qualification
required in the members. " There was a club at Athens
which called itself the Triballi, the name of one of the
wildest and most savage tribes of Thrace. The mem-
bers of this delightful fraternity used to commit all
manner of horrid and indecent outrages on inoffensive
* No. 324.
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? DEMOSTIIENES AT THE BAR. 169
citizens as they were taking the evening air or return-
ing home from parties. One Conon and his sons
specially distinguished themselves. Their victim on
one occasion retained Demosthenes for his counsel.
They had all been on foreign military service together,
and it was then that the practical jokes and annoy-
ances were begun of which Demosthenes' client com-
plains. Conon and his set would drink all day after
lunch; and so by dinner-time they were only fit for
drunken frolics. " At first," the plaintiff says, " they
played tricks on his servants; at last on himself and
his party. They would pretend that our servants
annoyed them with smoke in cooking, and were saucy;
then they beat them, and played all sorts of dirty,
brutal jokes on them. We expressed our disgust;
and when they insulted us, we all went in a body to
the general, who gave them a severe reprimand. " In
this manner a very sore feeling grew up ; and when
they all returned to Athens, the assault took place
which was the ground of the action.
"When I had got back to Athens," the plaintiff
says, "I was taking a walk one evening in the
market-place with a friend of my own age, when
Ctesias, Conon's son, passed us, very much intoxi-
cated. Seeing us, he made an exclamation like
a drunken man muttering something indistinctly
to himself, and went on his way. There was a
drinking-party near, at the house of Pamphilus,
the fuller. Conon and many others were there.
Ctesias got them to leave the party and go with him
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? 170 DEMOSTHENES. '
to the marketplace. We were near the Leocorium"
(a small temple) "when we encountered them. As we
came up, one of them rushed on my friend and held
him. Conon and another tripped up my heels, and
threw me into the mud, and jumped on me, and
kicked me with such violence that my lip was cut
through and my eye closed up. In this plight they
left me, unable to rise or speak. As I lay I heard
them use dreadful language, some of which I should
be sorry to repeat to you. One thing you shall hear.
It proves Conon's malice, and that he was the ring-
leader in the affair. He crowed, mimicking fighting-
cocks when they have won a battle ; and his companions
bade him clap his elbows against his sides, like wings.
I was afterwards found by some persons who came
that way, and carried home without my cloak, which
these men had carried off. When they got to the
door, my mother and the maid-servants began crying
and bewailing. I was carried with some difficulty to
a bath; they washed me all over, and then showed me
to the doctor. " ' '
It seems to have struck Demosthenes that possibly
some of the jury would be inclined to laugh at this
somewhat ludicrously pathetic picture.
"Will you laugh," he makes his client say, "and
let Conon off, because he says we are a band of merry
fellows who, in our adventures and amours, strike and
break the neck of any one we please' ! I trust
not. None of you would have laughed if you had
been present when I was dragged and stripped and
kicked, and carried to the home which 'I had left
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? DEMOSTHENES AT _THE BAR. 171'
strong and well ; and my mother rushed out, and the
women cried and wailed as if a man had died in the
house, so that some of the neighbours sent to ask what
was the matter. "
Conon and his associates may well have been a
terror to peaceable citizens, if we may trust the fol-
lowing little sketch of their proceedings :--
"Many of you know the set. There's the grey-
headed man, who all day long has a solemn frown on
his brows, and wears a coarse mantle and singlesoled
'shoes. ' But when they get together, they stick at no
wickedness or disgraceful conduct. These are their
fine and spirited sayings: ' Shan't we bear witness for
one another'! ' 'Doesn't it become friends and com-
rades 'l' ' What will he bring against you that you're
afraid of'! ' ' Some men say they saw him beaten'! '
We'H say, 'You never touched him. ' 'Stripped of
his coat'! ' We'll say, 'They began. ' 'His lip was
sewed up'! ' VVe'll say, 'Your head was broken. '
Remember," solemnly adds the plaintiff, "I pro-
duce medical evidence ; they do not--for they can get
no evidence against me but what is fmnished by
themselves. "
It is to be hoped that the jury did not laugh, but
were persuaded by Demosthenes to make an example
of such offenders. Blackguardism could hardly go
further than to rob a man of his cloak, in addition to
beating and kicking him. The Athenian rowdy, if
Conon and his set were fair and average types of the
genus, certainly deserved little mercy.
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? CONCLUSION.
' Dsnosrnmrss is one of those men concerning whom,
both as a statesman and an orator, there cannot be
much difference of opinion. As a statesman, he is
unanimously eulogised by modern historians of the
first rank--such as Thirlwall, Grote, and Curtius. Every
one who sees anything to esteem and admire in old
Greek life, must esteem and admire Demosthenes. His
political career was a consistent one. He clung to and
worked for one idea. That idea was a free and inde-
pendent Greece, of which his own Athens had, morally
and intellectually, the right to be head. It was not,
as we have seen, the view of Isocrates; nor was it after-
wards that of the historian Polybius. Both these men
refused to believe that Greece could any longer be
what she had been. Both were honest and con-
scientious thinkers; but we can never have quite the
same feeling towards the man who is inclined to
' despair of a great cause as we have towards him who
will persist in hoping against hope. _It was this which
Demosthenes did through life amid many discourage-
mcnts ; and this gives him a moral greatness which we
' believe posterity will always recognise. Such a man
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? C0'NUL USION. ' 173
would be sure in his public speeches to appeal to con-
science, to the moral sense, and to a lofty patriotism.
The appeals may have often fallen dead ; but he could
not help believing that there was still a spirit in his
countrymen which, if rightly invoked, might yet be
roused, and stir them to the deeds of their forefathers.
This was the faith of Demosthenes. This it was which
made him dislike and distrust even the noble specula-
tions and philosophy of Plato. These, he felt--as many
an Englishman might have fe1t--would tend to carry
Athenians away from the practical sphere of politics
into a shadowy realm of ideas. Athens, he thought,
ought still to assert her greatness and dignity, and he
had something in regard to_ her of the feeling which
Yirgil has expressed in the well-known line---
" Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento. " *
As an orator he has, almost without question, been
unrivalled. Lord Brougham, in his dissertation on the '
oratory of the ancients, confidently pronounces this
opinion, and we are not aware that there is or has been
any dissent from it. His eloquence was the joint pro-
duct of natural genius and elaborate study. Quintilian
says, on the whole truly, that Cicero owed more to
study, and Demosthenes to nature. Still, as we have
seen, Demosthenes did his best to perfect his great
natural gifts by the most assiduous application. His
industry was prodigious. He left behind him a
collection of ezordia, or introductions to speeches,
which it seems that Cicero had by him. He was con-
tinually revising his words and phrases. All his
"' " Thine, Roman, be the claim to rule the world. " '
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? 174 DEMOSTHE. 'NES.
speeches, as far as we know, were the result of careful
preparation. His speaking exhibited great varieties.
His opponent is often scathed with an eloquence not
unlike that of the late Lord Derby, when his
words Were inspired by a strong moral indignation.
Some of his speeches remind us of the subtle and
ingenious reasoning of Mr Gladstone. Such is the
speech we have noticed, in which he argues for the
repeal of the law of Leptines. In others, again--the
Olynthiac orations especially, and that for the Crown
against Aischines--we have passages which recall to our
memories the impassioned fervour of some of the most
eloquent speeches of Mr Bright. There is the same
impressive appeal to the human conscience, and to the
worth and grandeur of freedom. At the same time,
he was a most dexterous master of his art. James
Mill used to point out to his famous son "how, first,
Demosthenes said everything important to his purpose
at the exact moment when he had brought the minds
of his hearers into the state most fitted to receive it;
second, how he insinuated, gradually and indirectly,
ideas which would have roused opposition if directly
presented. " Generally, he was a thoroughly success-
ful speaker, winning many a triumph in the Assembly
and the law court, and finally discomfiting his able
rival. And it must indeed have been an inspiriting
recollection to him when he looked back to Chaeroneia,
where, thanks to his eloquence, Athenians and Thebans
fought side by side in the cause of Greece.
END OF DEMOSTHENES.
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