[1015] Æschines (adv. Ktesiph. p. 86) charges Demosthenes with “having stolen away from the city the trierarchs of sixty-five swift sailing vessels.” This implies, I imagine, that the new law diminished the total number of persons chargeable with trierarchy.
[1016] Deinarchus adv. Demosthen. p. 95. s. 43. Εἰσί τινες ἐν τῷ δικαστηρίῳ τῶν ἐν τοῖς τριακοσίοις γεγενημένων, ὅθ᾽ οὗτος (Demosthenes) ἐτίθει τὸν περὶ τῶν τριηράρχων νόμον. Οὐ φράσετε τοῖς πλησίον ὅτι τρία τάλαντα λαβὼν μετέγραφε καὶ μετεσκεύαζε τὸν νόμον καθ᾽ ἑκάστην ἐκκλησίαν, καὶ τὰ μὲν ἐπώλει ὦν εἰλήφει τὴν τιμὴν, τὰ δ᾽ ἀποδόμενος οὐκ ἐβεβαίου;
Without accepting this assertion of a hostile speaker, so far as it goes to accuse Demosthenes of having accepted bribes—we may safely accept it, so far as it affirms that he made several changes and modifications in the law before it finally passed; a fact not at all surprising, considering the intense opposition which it called forth.
Some of the Dikasts, before whom Deinarchus was pleading, had been included among the Three Hundred (that is, the richest citizens in the State) when Demosthenes proposed his trierarchic reform. This will show, among various other proofs which might be produced, that the Athenian Dikasts did not always belong to the poorest class of citizens, as the jests of Aristophanes would lead us to believe.
[1017] Demosthen. De Coronâ, p. 329. Boeckh (Attisch. Seewesen, p. 183, and Publ. Econ. Ath. iv. 14) thinks that this passage—διτάλαντον δ᾽ εἶχες ἔρανον δωρεὰν παρὰ τῶν ἡγεμόνων τῶν συμμοριῶν, ἐφ᾽ οἷς ἐλυμῄνω τὸν τριηραρχικὸν νόμον—must allude to injury done by Æschines to the law in later years, after it became a law. But I am unable to see the reason for so restricting its meaning. The rich men would surely bribe most highly, and raise most opposition, against the first passing of the law, as they were then most likely to be successful; and Æschines, whether bribed or not bribed, would most naturally as well as most effectively stand out against the novelty introduced by his rival, without waiting to see it actually become a part of the laws of the State.
[1018] See the citation from Hyperides in Harpokrat. v. Συμμορία. The Symmories are mentioned in Inscription xiv. of Boeckh’s Urkunden über das Attische Seewesen (p. 465), which Inscription bears the date of 325 B. C. Many of these Inscriptions name individual citizens, in different numbers three, five, or six, as joint trierarchs of the same vessel.
[1019] Demosth. De Coronâ, p. 262.
[1020] Chap. xxviii. p. 62 seqq.
[1021] For the topography of the country round Delphi, see the instructive work of Ulrichs, Reisen und Forschungen in Griechenland (Bremen, 1840) chapters i. and ii. about Kirrha and Krissa.
[1022] Æschines adv. Ktesiph. p. 69; compare Livy, xlii. 5; Pausanias, x. 37, 4. The distance from Delphi to Kirrha is given by Pausanias at sixty stadia, or about seven English miles: by Strabo at eighty stadia.