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Plot on a Map
Athens.

(1) I do not know how most people can list this speech among the private speeches, as it is clearly a public one.³⁴ But this will be obvious from the hypothesis itself. (2) Denunciations had been lodged against merchants or ship captains who had transported grain to other places but not to Athens. The law was as follows: If someone lodges a denunciation and does not prosecute, or prosecutes but fails to receive one-fifth of the votes, he must pay one thousand drachmae to the treasury, and those who owe this debt but have not paid it may not speak in the Assembly; <second, that anyone convicted of embezzling sacred moneys is to be disfranchised>; and third, if someone unjustly frees someone else from slavery, he owes half the penalty to the treasury. (3) Epichares therefore lodged an information against Theocrines that he was not allowed to speak, on the basis of all three laws. Indeed, he says that Theocrines had lodged a denunciation against Micon for having transported grain elsewhere, but did not go through with it; in addition, as the overseer appointed by his tribesmen, he was convicted in the audit of embezzling the sacred money of the eponymous heroes; and third, Theocrines’ father unjustly freed Cephisodorus’ handmaid and so was indebted by an additional five hundred drachmae. (4) For these reasons, the information and the whole affair are clearly public matters, and most believe that although the speech is not unlike those of Demosthenes, it is actually by Deinarchus.³⁵

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— Notes —

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