§ 1. _who praise your forefathers_. The advocates of war with Persia
had doubtless appealed to the memory of Marathon and Salamis, and the
old position of Athens as the champion of Greece against Persia.
§ 10, 11. The argument is this: 'If a war with Persia needed a special
kind of force, we could not prepare for it without being detected: but
as all wars need the same kind of force, our preparations need rouse no
suspicion in Persia particularly.'
_acknowledged foes_: i.e. probably Thebes, or the revolted allies of
Athens, with whom a disadvantageous peace had, perhaps, just been made.
It is not, however, impossible that Philip also is in the orator's
mind; for though at the time he was probably engaged in war with the
Illyrians and Paeonians, his quarrel with Athens in regard to
Amphipolis had not been settled. The Olynthians may also be thought of.
(See Introd. to Phil. I and Olynthiacs.)
§ 12. _rhapsodies_. The rhapsodes who went about Greece reciting Homer
and other poets had lost the distinction they once enjoyed, and
'rhapsody' became a synonym for idle declamation.
§ 14. _a bold speech_: i.e. a demand for instant war, helped out by
rhetorical praises of the men of old.
§ 16. _unmarried heiresses and orphans_. These would be incapable of
discharging the duties of the trierarchy, though their estates were
liable for the war-tax. Partners were probably exempted, when none of
them possessed so large a share in the common property as would render
him liable for trierarchy.
_property outside Attica_. According to the terms made by Athens with
her allies when the 'Second Delian League' was formed in 378, Athens
undertook that no Athenian should hold property in an allied State. But
this condition had been broken, and the multiplication of Athenian
estates [Greek: _kl_erhouchiai_] in allied territories had been one of
the causes of the war with the allies.
_unable to contribute_: e. g. owing to no longer possessing the estate
which he had when the assessment was made.
§ 17. _to associate, &c_. The sections which contained a very rich man
were to have poor men included in it, so that the total wealth of every
section might be the same, and the distribution of the burden between
the sections fair.
§ 18. _the first hundred, &c_. Demosthenes thinks of the fleet as
composed, according to need, of 100, 200, or 300 vessels, and treats
each hundred as a separate squadron, to be separately divided among the
Boards.
_by lot_. In this and other clauses of his proposal, Demosthenes
stipulates for the use of the lot ([Greek: _sunkl_er_osai_], [Greek:
epikl_erosai]) to avoid all unfair selection. It is only in the
distribution of duties among the smaller sections within each Board
that assignment by arrangement ([Greek: _apodounai_], a word suggesting
distribution according to fitness or convenience) is to be allowed.
§ 19. _taxable capital_ ([Greek: _tim_ema_]). The war-tax and the
trierarchic burdens were assessed on a valuation of the contributor's
property. Upon this valuation of his taxable capital he paid the
percentage required. (The old view that he was taxed not upon his
capital, as valued, but upon a fraction of it varying with his wealth,
rests upon an interpretation of passages in the Speeches against
Aphobus, which is open to grave question.) The total amount of the
single valuations was the 'estimated taxable capital of the country'
([Greek: _tim_ema t_es ch_oras_]). This, in the case of the trierarchy,
would be the aggregate amount of the valuations of the 1,200 wealthiest
men, viz. 6,000 talents. (Of course the capital taxable for the war-tax
would be considerably larger. Even at a time when the prosperity of
Attica was much lower, in 378-377 B.C., it was nearly 6,000 talents,
according to Polybius, ii. 62. 6.)
§ 20. A tabular statement will make this plain:--
_Persons _Total capital taxable
_Ships_. responsible_. for each ship_.
100 12 60 tal.
200 6 30 "
300 4 20 "
The percentage payable on the taxable capital was of course higher, the
larger the number of ships required. Each ship appears to have cost on
the average a talent to equip. The percentages in the three cases
contained in the table would therefore be 1-2/3, 3-1/3, and 5,
respectively. (Compare § 27.)
§ 21. _fittings ... in arrear_. Apparently former trierarchs had not
always given back the fittings of their vessels, which had either been
provided at the expense of the State, or lent to the trierarchs by the
State.
§ 23. _wards_ ([Greek: _trittyes_]). The trittys or ward was one-third
of a tribe.
§ 25. _you see ... city_. The Assembly met on the Pnyx, whence there
was a view of the Acropolis and of the greater part of the ancient city.
_prophets_. The Athenian populace seems always to have been liable to
the influence of soothsayers, who professed to utter oracles from the
gods, particularly when war was threatening. This was so (e. g.) at the
time of the Peloponnesian War (Thucyd. ii. 8, v. 26), and the
soothsayer is delightfully caricatured by Aristophanes in the _Birds_
and elsewhere.
§ 29. _two hundred ships ... one hundred were Athenian_. In the Speech
on the Crown, § 238, Demosthenes gives the numbers as 300 and 200.
Perhaps a transcriber at an early stage in the history of the text
accidentally wrote HH (the symbol for 200) instead of HHH, in the case
of the first number, and a later scribe then 'corrected' the second
number into H instead of HH. The numbers given by Herodotus are 378 and
180, and, for the Persian ships, 1,207.
§ 31. _against Egypt_, which was now in rebellion against Artaxerxes.
Orontas, Satrap of Mysia, was more or less constantly in revolt during
this period.
§ 32. _even more certainly_ [Greek: _palai_]: lit. 'long ago'. The
transition from temporal to logical priority is paralleled in certain
uses of other temporal adverbs, e.g. [Greek: _euthys_] (Aristotle,
_Poet_. v), and [Greek: _schol_e_] (of which, as Weil notes, [Greek:
_palai_] is the exact opposite).
§ 34. _sins against Hellas_. This refers to the support given to the
Persian invaders by Thebes in the Persian Wars (Herod. viii. 34).