contrary to the agreement; we know nothing of their transactions with their countryman; that is a matter within their own knowledge. Such we consider to be a just view of the case; and we entreat you, men of the jury, to give redress to us who are the injured parties, and to punish people who resort to trickery and sophistry, as these men do. If you take this course, your decision will be in accordance with your own interests, and you will deprive the swindlers of those artifices by which some of them contrive to evade nautical contracts.

THE ORATION FOR PHORMIO.

THE ARGUMENT.

PHORMIO, on whose behalf the present speech was composed, is (as the readers will easily discern) a different person from the defendant in the action by Chrysippus. The defendant in the present action was at an early period a slave of Pasion the banker, whose business for a long time he managed, and from whom as a reward for his good conduct he received his freedom.

Pasion died leaving a widow, Archippe, and two sons, Apollodorus and Pasicles, the younger of whom was a minor. He left a will, by which he directed that Phormio should marry his widow and receive with her a certain marriage portion; and he appointed him one of the guardians of his younger son, Pasicles. The bulk of his property was inherited by his two sons; between whom, soon after their father's death, a division was made by the guardians of all the inheritance, except the bank and a shield-manufactory, of which Pasion in his lifetime had granted a lease to Phormio, and the rents of which he continued to pay to the children until Pasicles came of age. At that time they came to a settlement; Phormio was discharged from the lease; and the brothers divided the two properties, Apollodorus taking the shield-manufactory, and Pasicles the bank. Upon the death of Archippe, Apollodorus made certain claims upon Phormio for property alleged to be in his possession; their dispute was referred to private arbitrators, under whose advice a compromise was agreed to, and Apollodorus gave to Phormio a release of all demands. A long time after this, and more than eighteen years after Pasion's death, Apollodorus preferred the claim, which is the subject of the present action, against Phormio, for a sum of banking stock, alleged to have been left by Pasion in the bank, and to have been fraudu lently appropriated by Phormio to his own use. Phormio indignantly denies the charge, asserting that Pasion possessed no banking stock, but, on the contrary, owed eleven talents to the bank when he took a lease of it. He contends that the charge was trumped up by

Apollodorus in order to extort money, he having brought himself into difficulties by litigation and extravagance.

Such is the case for the defence, stated to the jury by the friend who speaks on Phormio's behalf. Besides this answer on the merits, he pleads two pleas in bar of the action; first, a release of all demands by the plaintiff; secondly, the statute of limitations.

The result of the trial we learn from the speech against Stephanus, (page 1103,) where it is stated, that the speech for the defence made such an impression on the jury, that they would not hear a word that Apollodorus had to say, and the verdict passed against him by so large a majority, that he had to pay the Epobelia, or a sixth of the damages.

This speech, instructive and important as it is on other accounts, acquires an additional interest from the charge, to which it has given rise, against the character of the orator; who here attacks and bitterly inveighs against the character of a man, whom he had supported by his counsel and advocacy for a long series of years, and whom he again assisted in the suit against Stephanus, which arose out of this very proceeding. For Apollodorus our orator had composed the speeches against Timotheus, Callippus, Nicostratus, Polycles; that for the Naval crown, and several others. These indeed were in no way connected with the present case; and, unless Apollodorus was the personal friend of Demosthenes, he could hardly be censured for having undertaken the cause of a new client who was opposed to him. The case of Stephanus however stands on a different footing. Stephanus gave evidence for Phormio to establish Pasion's will, which was disputed. Apollodorus sued him for false testimony, and Demosthenes composed in his defence the two extant speeches against Stephanus, in which he contends that the will which Phormio produced at the trial was a forgery, and gives a totally different complexion to the family history of Apollodorus, and the proceedings therewith connected, from that which is given in the present speech. It is by this act that Demosthenes has laid himself open to censure.

We may regard as mere calumny the unsupported assertion of Eschines, that Demosthenes betrayed his client's secrets to the adversary. Plutarch simply observes, that Demosthenes damaged his reputation by writing speeches for both sides, which, he says, was like supplying two adversaries with weapons from the same workshop. Reiske, Auger, and many other modern critics have expressed similar opinions. The suggestion of Albert Gerhard Becker, that the speech for Phormio may have been wrongly ascribed to Demosthenes, is opposed to the current of authority. Ranke conceives, that, as some time must have elapsed between the first trial and the proceeding against Stephanus, the orator may in the meantime have found reason to change his opinion, and gone over to Apollodorus because he thought the merits of the case were on his side. This would hardly justify him according to our English notions; for we hold that it is not the province of the advocate to set himself up as a judge between the contending parties, much less to desert from one to the other upon any such ground. Pabst

adopts a view, to which Thirlwall also inclines; that the doubledealing of Demosthenes in relation to Apollodorus and his opponent is not to be ascribed to any professional love of gain, but that he was tempted to take up the different sides of a question as a rhetorical exercise, and felt less scruple to do so in the case of persons like Apollodorus and Phormio, who were citizens of late creation. It is very possible that we are not in possession of the circumstances which might tend to justify or excuse the course taken by the orator. An English counsel would consider himself at liberty to accept an engagement against his former client, even in a case arising out of one in which he had been his advocate, if the client had not thought proper to secure his services by retaining him beforehand. It seems not unreasonable to apply a similar rule of right to the practice of an Athenian speech-writer. Apollodorus, in commencing his action against Phormio, may in the first instance have thought it unnecessary to employ Demosthenes; yet afterwards may have repented of not having done so. Phormio may in the subsequent proceeding have been guilty of similar neglect, and thus given the advantage to his opponent. Demosthenes of course knew the weak points of Phormio's case, and, being engaged on the other side, did not hesitate to expose them. He may, as I have intimated, have been justified in doing so by an understood course of practice, or possibly by some peculiar circumstances unknown to us. The reader should by all means compare the present speech with those against Stephanus. The date of this speech is said to have been B.C. 350.

PHORMIO'S inexperience in speaking and utter incapacity you see yourselves, men of Athens. It is necessary for us his friends to state and explain to you those particulars, which, from having heard him so often relate them, have become known to us; that, when we have rightly informed and put you in possession of the case, you may give a just and conscientious verdict. We have put in the special plea to the action, not for the sake of evasion and delay, but in order that, if the defendant can show by the facts that he has com

mitted no wrong, he may obtain in this court a final acquittal.

What with other people settles and determines disputes without a trial by jury, Phormio the defendant has done; he has conferred many benefits on the plaintiff Apollodorus, he has honestly paid and delivered up everything belonging to the plaintiff which was left under his control, and has since that been released from all demands; yet, as you see, because he is not able to endure this man's treatment,1 he has com

1.e. because Phormio cannot submit to the vexatious and extor tionate demands of Apollodorus. Pabst. "Da dieser sich seine Zudringlichkeiten nicht mehr gefallen lassen konnte."

menced against him this vexatious action for twenty talents. I will begin at the beginning, and endeavour to explain to you in as short a compass as possible all the transactions which the defendant has had with Pasion and Apollodorus. From this, I am sure, you will clearly see the vexatious conduct of the plaintiff, and from the same statement you will learn that the action is not maintainable.

First he shall read you the articles of agreement, according to which Pasion let the bank and the shield-manufactory to the defendant. Please to take the articles of the agreement and the challenge and these depositions.

[The Articles of Agreement, the Challenge, the Depositions.]

These, men of Athens, are the articles, according to which Pasion let the bank and the shield-manufactory to the defendant, when he had become his own master. You must hear and understand, in what way Pasion came to owe the eleven talents to the bank. He owed that sum not on account of poverty, but on account of his industry in business. For the landed property of Pasion was about twenty talents, and, in addition to that, he had money of his own lent at interest, amounting to more than fifty talents. With these fifty talents there were eleven talents from the deposits of the bank profitably invested. When Phormio therefore became lessee of the bank business, and received the deposits, seeing that, while he did not enjoy the rights of Athenian citizenship, he should not be able to get in the monies that Pasion had lent on land and lodging-houses, he chose that Pasion himself should owe him those sums rather than the other debtors to whom he had lent them. And so on this account Pasion was set down in the lease as owing eleven talents, as you have heard stated in evidence.

In what way the lease was made, evidence has been given to you by the manager of the bank. Pasion became ill after that, and see how he made his will. Take the copy of the will, and this challenge, and these depositions, made by the persons with whom the will is deposited.

[The Will, the Challenge, the Depositions.1]

See what Apollodorus says as to this mode of proving the will in the speech against Stephanus, p. 1104, &c.

Pasion died leaving this will; and Phormio the defendant takes his widow according to the terms of the will, and undertook the guardianship of his son. As the plaintiff was helping himself, and not scrupling to take large sums out of the common fund for his own private expenditure, the guardians, calculating among themselves that, if it should become necessary to deduct from the common fund an equivalent to what the plaintiff had spent and then divide the residue, there would be no surplus left, determined on behalf of the infant to make a partition of the effects. And they divide the rest of the property except what the defendant had taken a lease of; and of the revenue arising therefrom they paid a moiety to the plaintiff. Up to this time then how is it possible for him to make any complaint in respect of the lease? He should have expressed his dissatisfaction at the time, and not waited till now. Nor again can he say that he has not received the rents which afterwards became due. Had that been so, Apollodorus, you and your brother would never have released Phormio from all demands, when he gave up the lease upon Pasicles coming of age; on the contrary, if he had owed you anything, you would have demanded it that

instant.

To prove the truth of my statements-to show that the plaintiff made partition with his brother while yet a minor, and that they discharged Phormio from his liability under the lease and from all other demands-take this deposition.

[The Deposition.]

Immediately after they had discharged the defendant from the lease, men of Athens, they divide between them the bank and the shield-manufactory, and Apollodorus, having the selection, chooses the shield-manufactory in preference to the bank. Now, if the plaintiff had any private capital in the bank, what could possibly have induced him to prefer the other property? The income was not greater, but less; for the manufactory produced a talent, while the bank yielded a hundred minas; nor was the property more agreeable, if there was a private fund of his own in the bank. But there was no such fund. The plaintiff therefore acted wisely in choosing the shield-manufactory; for that is a property