Demosthenes, Speeches 50-59

58. Against Theocrines

58. AGAINST THEOCRINES 1As in the case of some other trials, it is not the text itself that provides the speaker’s name, but the hypothesis by Libanius. It is possible that Libanius was simply guessing that, like many Greeks, the speaker bore his grandfather’s name (see 67), a man about whom there is some independent evidence if he is indeed Epichares of the deme Cholleidae. Even if that was the speaker’s name, his identi fication is problematic, as it is a common name (Osborne and Byrne 1994 list eighty-five men called Epichares). 2Aside from this speech, Theocrines has left no trace in our evidence. 3By agraphē paranomōn, a public action charging that a decree (psēphisma) was contrary to the laws. Formally, the charge was directed against the decree, which would be nullified if the action succeeded, but the man who proposed it was also in jeopardy. introduction Acting, he says, to avenge his father, a man named Epichares1 brought a denunciation of the sort called anendeixis against his father’s enemy, Theocrines.2 The father was debarred from bringing the prosecution himself: he had been disenfranchised (atimos) ever since Theocrines had successfully prosecuted him on a charge of unconstitutional action (graphē paranomōn3) (30). Epichares’ father pressured his young and inexperienced son to institute litigation (2) and coached him in some detail (5). The specific complaint in Epichares’ endeixis is that Theocrines had himself brought two prosecutions, despite his being a state debtor (opheilōn tōi dēmōsiōi) and therefore prohibited as atimos from doing so. Our sources for the procedure of endeixis are not extensive, and there has been disagreement among scholars as to some of its features, 09-T2434-58 2/18/03 12:46 PM Page 129 130 demosthenes 4Other relevant speeches: Ant. 5; And. 1; Lys. 6; Dem. 25, 26. 5Hansen 1976: esp. 1–24. For a summary of the case at hand, see 137–138. 6In fact, the stylistic features intensively studied in the nineteenth century, relative indifference to hiatus and runs of three short syllables, suggest the contrary (see the Introduction to Dem. 56). especially how it relates toapagōgē.4 Etymology suggests translatingendeixis as “pointing to” and apagōgē as “taking away,” but neither these translations nor the more idiomatic (and technical sounding) “indictment ” and “arrest” are very informative. The most comprehensive study of these procedures to date, that of M. H. Hansen,5 argues that they are “two phases of the same type of process.” Endeixis and apagōgē did not, in Hansen’s view, differ according to whether the prosecutor himself or state officials arrested the alleged offender; the real differences were (1) that only apagōgē required the claim that the person or persons arrested had been caught in the criminal act, (2) that an endeixis might require a summons, but an apagōgē, by its very nature (“summary arrest”) did not, and (3) that the prosecutor in an endeixis (but not an apagōgē) might have had the option to agree to bail for the defendant. But there is no scholarly consensus on these points, and much remains uncertain about these procedures. The authorship of this speech has been controversial since antiquity . Callimachus, the great Alexandrian poet and scholar of Greek literature (third century bc), listed the speech in his catalogue of speeches by Demosthenes, but Dionysius of Halicarnassus (first century bc– first century ad) believed it was written by Dinarchus, the last of the canonical Attic orators. This was a deduction from the speaker’s invective against Demosthenes for withdrawing his support (42) and Dinarchus ’ unquestionable hatred for Demosthenes (see Din. 1, Against Demosthenes). Harpocration, a lexicographer of the first or second century ad, straddled the fence, attributing the speech to either Demosthenes or Dinarchus. Libanius (fourth century ad) concludes his summary of the speech (the hypothesis) with the declaration: “Many regard the speech as belonging to Dinarchus, but it does not differ from Demosthenes ’ speeches.”6 Scholars of the modern period have for the most part doubted that either Demosthenes or Dinarchus could be the 09-T2434-58 2/18/03 12:46 PM Page 130 58. against theocrines 131 7Demosthenes und seine Zeit, Vol. 3 (Leipzig, 1858), 279–280. 8See Ath. Pol. 48.1, with the commentary by P. J. Rhodes. 9Once the father dies, the speaker would inherit his father’s...