Apollodorus Against Polycles

that Miltocythes[*]( Miltocythes was a vassal of Cotys, king of the Odrysae in Thrace, a former friend, but now an enemy of Athens.) had revolted from Cotys, and had sent ambassadors regarding an alliance, begging you to send troops to his aid, and offering to restore the Chersonesus; that the Proconnesians,[*]( Proconnesus, an island on the Propontis (Sea of Marmora).) your allies, were requesting you in the assembly to come to their aid, stating that the Cyzicenes[*](Cyzicus, a town on the southern shore of the Propontis.) were pressing them hard in war by both land and sea, and imploring you not to look idly on while they perished.

When you heard all these tidings at that time in the assembly from both the speakers themselves and those who supported them; when furthermore the merchants and shipowners were about to sail out of the Pontus, and the Byzantines and Calchedonians[*](Calchedon, a town across the Bosporus from Byzantium.) and Cyzicenes were forcing their ships to put in to their ports because of the scarcity of grain in their own countries; seeing also that the price of grain was advancing in the Peiraeus, and that there was not very much to be bought, you voted that the trierarchs should launch their ships and bring them up to the pier, and that the members of the senate and the demarchs should make out lists of the demesmen and reports of available seamen, and that the armament should be despatched at once, and aid sent to the various regions. And this decree, proposed by Aristophon, was passed, as follows:

The Decree

The decree, then, you have heard, men of the jury. For my own part, when the sailors listed by the demesmen did not appear, save a very few, and these incompetent, I dismissed them; and having mortgaged my property and borrowed money, I was the first to man my ship, hiring the best sailors possible by giving to each man large bonuses and advance payments. More than that, I furnished the ship with equipment wholly my own, taking nothing from the public stores, and I made everything as beautiful and magnificent as possible, outdoing all the other trierarchs. As for rowers, I hired the best that could be had.

And not only did I defray the trierarchal expenses, which at that time were so very heavy, but I also paid in advance no small part of the taxes which you had ordered to be collected for the cost of the expedition. For when you had voted that the members of the senate on behalf of the demesmen should report the names of those who were to pay taxes in advance, both of those who were members of the demes and those who owned property in them, my name was reported from three demes, as my property was in land.

Of these I was the first to pay my taxes in advance, nor did I seek to get myself excused either on the ground that I was serving as trierarch and could not defray the costs of two public services at once, or that the laws did not permit such a thing. And I have never recovered the money which I advanced, because at the time I was abroad in your service as trierarch, and afterwards, when I returned, I found that the money from those who had resources had already been gathered in by others, and that those who were left had nothing.

To prove that I am stating the truth to you in this, the clerk shall read you the depositions covering these matters, those of the persons who at that time collected the military supplies and of the despatching board; also the record of the pay which I gave out every month to the rowers and the marines, receiving from the generals subsistence-money alone, except pay for two months only in a period of a year and five months also a list of the sailors who were hired, and how much money each of them received; to the end that from this evidence you may know how generous I was and why the defendant was unwilling to take over the ship from me when the term of my trierarchy had expired.

The Depositions

The proof, then, that I am uttering no falsehoods in regard to the matters which I have mentioned, you have learned, men of the jury, from the reading of the depositions. But, further, you will all agree with me that what I am about to say is true. It is admitted that the usefulness of a ship is done away with, first, if the men are not paid, and secondly, if she put into the Peiraeus before her expedition is finished; for in that case there is a great deal of desertion, and those of the sailors who remain are unwilling to embark again, unless additional money is given them for their household expenses. Both of these things happened to me, men of the jury, so that my trierarchy became the more costly.

For I received no pay from the general for the space of eight months, and I sailed home to Peiraeus with the ambassadors because my ship was the fastest sailer, and again, when I was ordered by the people to take Menon the general to the Hellespont to replace Autocles, who had been removed from his command, I set sail on short notice from Athens. In the place of the seamen who had deserted I hired others, giving them large bonuses and advance payments, and I gave to those of the original sailors who stayed with me something to leave behind for the maintenance of their households in addition to what they had before;