Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/65

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
ATHENS BEFORE THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR.
43

to both parties, we are represented as animated by nothing better than a love of litigation."[1] "Our allies (he adds) would com-


  1. Thucyd. i, 76, 77. Ἄλλους γ' ἂν οὖν οἰόμεθα τὰ ἡμέτερα λαβόντας δεῖξαι ἂν μάλιστα εἴ τι μετριάζομεν· ἡμῖν δὲ καὶ ἐκ τοῦ ἐπιεικοῦς ἀδοξία τὸ πλέον ἢ ἔπαινος οὐκ εἰκότως περιέστη. Καὶ ἐλασσούμενοι γὰρ ἐν ταῖς ξυμβολαίαις πρὸς τοὺς ξυμμάχους δίκαις, καὶ παρ' ἡμῖν αὐτοῖς ἐν τοῖς ὁμοίοις νόμοις ποιήσαντες τὰς κρίσεις, φιλοδικεῖν δοκοῦμεν, etc.

    I construe ξυμβολαίαις δίκαις as connected in meaning with ξυμβόλαια and not with ξύμβολα—following Duker and Bloomfield in preference to Poppo and Goller: see the elaborate notes of the two latter editors. Δίκαι ἀπὸ ξυμβόλων indicated the arrangements concluded by special convention between two different cities, by consent of both, for the purpose of determining controversies between their respective citizens: they were some thing essentially apart from the ordinary judicial arrangements of either state. Now what the Athenian orator here insists upon is exactly the contrary of this idea: he says, that the allies were admitted to the benefit of Athenian trial and Athenian laws, in like manner with the citizens themselves. The judicial arrangements by which the Athenian allies were brought before the Athenian dikasteries cannot, with propriety, be said to be δίκαι ἀπὸ ξυμβόλων; unless the act of original incorporation into the confederacy of Delos is to be regarded as a ξύμβολον, or agreement, which in a large sense it might be, though not in the proper sense in which δίκαι ἀπὸ ξυμβόλων are commonly mentioned. Moreover, I think that the passage of Antipho (De Cæde Herodis, p. 745) proves that it was the citizens of places not in alliance with Athens, who litigated with Athenians according to δίκαι ἀπὸ ξυμβόλων,—not the allies of Athens while they resided in their own native cities; for I agree with the interpretation which Boeckh puts upon this passage, in opposition to Platner and Schömann (Boeckh, Public Econ. of Athens, book iii, ch. xvi, p. 403, Eng. transl.; Schömann, Der Attisch. Prozess, p. 778; Platner, Prozess und Klagen bei den Attikern, ch. iv, 2, pp. 110–112, where the latter discusses both the passages of Antipho and Thucydides).

    The passages in Demosthenês Orat. de Halones. c. 3, pp. 98, 99; and Andokidês cont. Alkibiad. c. 7, p. 121 (I quote this latter oration, though it is undoubtedly spurious, because we may well suppose the author of it to be conversant with the nature and contents of ξύμβολα), give us a sufficient idea of these judicial conventions, or ξύμβολα,—special and liable to differ in each particular case. They seem to me essentially distinct from that systematic scheme of proceeding whereby the dikasteries of Athens were made cognizant of all, or most, important controversies among or between the allied cities, as well as of political accusations.

    M. Boeckh draws a distinction between the autonomous allies (Chios and Lesbos, at the time immediately before the Peloponnesian war) and the subject-allies: "the former class (he says) retained possession of unlimited