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Family Quarrels (Dem. 39–40)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

S. C. Humphreys
S. C. Humphreys
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Extract

Much has been written already about the dispute between Mantitheos and Mantitheos-Boiotos (henceforth Boiotos), sons of Mantias of Thorikos; but the currently accepted chronology needs some modification and the relations between institutions and strategies have not been fully explored.

The current view (APF 9667, largely following J. Rudhardt, Mus. Helv. xix [1962] 39–64) has Boiotos born, in wedlock, c. 382; by c. 381 Mantias would have divorced Boiotos' mother Plangon and remarried, Mantitheos being born c. 380. Mantitheos entered the deme Thorikos and married c. 362; Boiotos succeeded in getting Mantias to present him to his phratry in autumn 359 and in summer 358, by which time Mantias was dead, presented himself to the deme under the name Mantitheos. Demosthenes xxxix is dated to autumn 348, [D.] xl to 347.

Type
Notes
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 109 , November 1989 , pp. 182 - 185
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1989

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References

1 Some continue to argue (most recently, Walters, K. R.. Class. Ant. ii [1983] 314–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar) that as the son of two Athenian parents Boiotos was entitled to citizenship even if he was born out of wedlock, and that Mantias never acknowledged him and his brother as legitimate sons. This view ignores the fact that recognition by Mantias led to an equal division of his estate between the three sons (cf. M. H. Hansen, Demography and democracy [Systime, Herning, Denmark 1985] 73–6). In the mind of Mantitheos at least, recognition, citizenship and inheritance were indissolubly connected. The view that Boiotos was only seeking recognition as a nothos would make his behaviour particularly difficult to explain on the current chronology.

2 Even if young men between the ages of 18 and 20 were already in c. 360 debarred from appearing in court except in cases concerned with inheritance and similar matters (such as rights to genos priesthoods), which is not certain (Rhodes, Comm. Ath. Pol. 509), suits concerning entry to the deme must have been included in the permitted category. Rhodes (501) thinks that appeals against rejection by the deme—and presumably also suits such as Boiotos threatened—would have had to be brought by a parent or guardian, but this seems to me unnecessarily legalistic. Boiotos had older and more experienced supporters, predictably characterised by Mantitheos as sycophants.

3 Note that the boyhood acquaintances of Boiotos who testify that he took part in boys' choruses in the tribe of his mother's family, Hippothontis, (xxxix 24) were not asked to testify that he was called Boiotos at that time.

4 Rudhardt argues that if Mantias had put in an official claim for Plangon's dowry Mantitheos could not have asserted that there was no proof of it (xl 21). But Athenian litigants do not produce documentary evidence of such transactions from state records; they call persons who were in office at the time to testify from memory (Humphreys, , History and Anthropology i 2 [1985] 236–7Google Scholar). After a 30-year interval Boiotos would have found this difficult. For the risks to affines and close associates in such circumstances see Lysias xix and xxix. We really cannot tell whether Plangon ever lived under Mantias' roof. It is not essential to my argument to hold that she did not; however, if Mantias had formally married her before witnesses and celebrated gamelia in his phratry Boiotos should have been able to produce witnesses to the fact, in which case one would expect Mantitheos to try to deal with their testimony. No doubt he assured Plangon and her family that he was acting in their best interests and would secure citizen rights for the boys when the time came. Once the initial step had been taken, they had little choice. On the manoeuvres by which debtors' friends could save property from confiscation see Osborne, R., JHS cv (1985) 40–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Humphreys, Law and History Review (1988) n. 25. The ‘dowry’ may have included the house in which Plangon and her sons lived, presumably with her brothers. Whether there was further property retained by Mantias after his marriage to Mantitheos' mother—as Boiotos seems to have claimed—and used by him to pay the expenses of Plangon's household, as Mantitheos alleges (xl 51), is much more doubtful.

5 Mantitheos' claim to be the oldest son implied an admission that Mantias was sleeping with Plangon while married to the widow. This may well be true. Pamphilos II, old enough to enter the phratry in autumn 359, should have been born by 375. His name does not imply that Mantias disclaimed paternity; to name a second son after his maternal grandfather was normal. Carey and Reid (Demosthenes. Selected Private Speeches [Cambridge 1985] 165–6, 183Google Scholar) suggest that Pamphilos was older than Mantitheos. On their view Mantias developed suspicions during Plangon's second pregnancy that she was being unfaithful to him, sent her home to her brothers and refused to take further steps to legitimise Boiotos, whose dekate he had celebrated earlier. This view lengthens the gap in age between Boiotos and Mantitheos and I do not find it plausible.

6 It might even conceivably have been claimed that state debtors, who were deprived of many of their citizen rights, lacked the capacity to adopt—though the question was hardly likely to arise often.

7 xxxix 5. Diodorus Siculus (xvi 2.6–3.5) puts Mantias' command in 360/59; he is not always reliable on such matter, and 359/8 would be possible, but would make the date of [D.] xl more problematic. Mantitheos' statements (xl 12–13)tnat he was married after Boiotos' presentation to the phratry and that Mantias lived ‘not many years’ after the birth of his daughter involve, at the least, suggestio falsi, since Mantias cannot have lived for as much as a year after the phratry presentation. Mantitheos seems to be trying to stress that he was already a settled, responsible paterfamilias before his father's death, while Boiotos was still an adolescent in process of initiation into full citizenship. The date of Boiotos' entry into the deme cannot be exactly determined, but was probably somewhere fairly close to the beginning of the Attic year in July (Whitehead, D., The Demes of Attica [Princeton 1986] 89–92, 269–70Google Scholar). Mantitheos may have celebrated his wedding and begun married life in summer and sacrificed gamēlia at the Apatouria when Boiotos was admitted to the phratry.

8 Dikaiogenes (Lysias frr. xxiii 2–3 Gernet, 24, 30 Thalheim) also married at 18 but grew up in the household of the speaker, probably a stepbrother or matrilateral kinsman, and was therefore presumably fatherless, as was Nikias II son of Nikeratos of Kydantidai, who married at 23 (APF 10808, cf. Lewis, BSA 1 [1955] p. 30). Other early marriages which definitely took place during the father's lifetime are those of Hippias son of Peisistratos (APF 11793. "III, VII), of Menestheus son of Iphikrates to the daughter of Timotheos, at 24 (APF 7737)—these two clearly atypical—and of Kritoboulos, the eldest son of Sokrates' friend Kriton (APF 8823).

9 Mantitheos' sentimental picture of the old man longing for grandchildren (xl 12) is hardly convincing; if Mantias' death was anticipated he would have said so more plainly, and the birth of a child to Mantitheos had no legal bearing on Boiotos' position. He repaid the borrowed capital alone, although he gave his brothers a share of the proceeds of the mine (xl 52); at 18 he may not have been able to borrow money or lease a mine alone. Note the remarks of Walbank, M., Hesperia lii (1983) 225Google Scholar, on leasing by young men.

10 In c. 342 a debt owed by Mantias from his service as steward of the dockyards in 377/6 was paid by his three sons, listed as Mantitheos, Mantitheos and Pamphilos (IG ii2 1622. 435–43). If they were aware of the existence of this debt it may have supplied another motive for the three sons to postpone final settlement of the division of Mantias' estate; but of course it could not be mentioned in court. (Mantias is also recorded as trierarch in ?378/7: Lewis, D. M., Gnomon xlvii [1975] 718Google Scholar.)

11 Gernet's date of 349 for Tamynai (Dem. Plaidoyers civils ii [Budé] 14) is a slip of the pen. In xl 34–5 we are told that Mantitheos sued because Boiotos had attempted to take office as taxiarch in his brother's place and had claimed that his brother was liable for a judgement given against him. In xxxix 7–16, however, such manoeuvres are mentioned merely as hypothetical possibilities. Either Mantitheos felt that the suit over the name had made him look foolish and was trying to improve his case retrospectively, or xl 34–5 is an interpolation. The question of the cause of action in D. xxxix is probably insoluble. Carey and Reid (166) discuss the arguments for and against regarding it as a suit for damages (dikē blabēs). We should beware, however, of assuming that Athenian litigants were only permitted to sue under attested rubrics. Most magistrates will not have cared to impose strict rules, and on this occasion Boiotos had no reason to make procedural objections; his case was strong enough without that.

12 The next-of-kin could not legally claim an epiklēros until her father's death, and then (probably) only if she had not produced children (Harrison, A. R. W., The Law of Athens i [Oxford 1968] 10–11Google Scholar); but for the father to marry her outside the family would provoke conflict. Boiotos was perhaps behaving like the Egyptian cousins of the Danaidai in Aeschylus' Suppliants. Plato, Laws 833D, sets the age of marriage at 13 for epiklēroi. On menarche and marriage see King, H., ‘Bound to Bleed’, in Cameron, A. and Kuhrt, A., eds. Images of Women in Antiquity (London 1983) 109–27Google Scholar. The medical writers of the Roman period tend to set menarche at 14, but may be influenced by the classification of the life-cycle into seven-year stages; comparative data from preindustrial societies would put it earlier rather than later (King, pers. comm.). Texts recommending a later age for marriage are collected in Mulder, J. J. B., Quaestiones nonnullae ad atheniensium matrimonia vitamque coniugalem pertinentes (Diss. Utrecht 1920) 7–20Google Scholar.

13 Perhaps PA 673, the son of Lysikrates, whose tombstone in Mytilene ‘arricis antiquissimis lirteris’ was recorded by Cyriacus of Ancona (IG xii. ii. 307).

14 Those who still, despite the arguments of Osborne, M.J. (BSA lxvi [1971] 297–322Google Scholar) regard IG ii2 207 as a single inscription dated in 349/8 might think that Mantitheos had gone to the north-east Aegean with Phokion during his service as taxiarch, in spring 348. But this inscription—which on the pre-Osborne view has an embarrassingly large number of generals in the north-east for 349/8 and has to posit a move for Phokion not supported by the other sources—seems to be concerned with corn supplies and with collecting the regular League contributions of syntaxis in Lesbos rather than with raising money through private contacts to pay mercenaries; and if Mantitheos' trip to Lesbos had taken place in spring 348 (or earlier, as suggested by Thalheim, , Jahresbericht d. Kgl. Gymn. Schneidemühl xx [1889] 10Google Scholar) Boiotos' allegations should already have been mentioned in D. xxxix.

15 He would have been eligible for presentation to the phratry at 16 but could not threaten to sue at that age.

16 The reference to ‘sale’ in xl 58–9 surely means prasis epi lysei. In such transactions it was commoner for the mortgager to retain possession and pay interest on the loan (Harrison, Law i ch. 8, especially pp. 258, 263), but in this case Kriton may well have moved in.

17 The speaker of D. lvii (§ 70) seems to think that people would expect him to leave Attica if he lost his case. Some apepsēphismenoi were still there after Chaeronea (Hyperides Jr. 18.3 Blass, 29 Kenyon), but these may be men who did not appeal to the courts. The legal position is not very clear (Gernet, , Plaidoyers civils iv [1960] 9–10Google Scholar).

18 A similar ambiguity contributes to the plot of Terence's Phormio. Chremes has one household in Athens and another on Lemnos; he plans to marry his Lemnian daughter to the son of his brother, who is ready to accept her without asking awkward questions about her civic status. In theory Lemnians might have impeccable claims to citizenship through cleruch ancestry on both sides, but evidently the standards of evidence were suspect. ‘Lemnians’ turn up in court as well as on stage (Is. vi 13); David Konstan in his analysis of the Phormio (Roman Comedy [Ithaca 1983]) did not need to contrast the ambiguities of drama with the clarity of ‘real life’. In real life too, if two brothers agreed to marry the ‘Lemnian’ daughter of one to the fully Athenian son of the other, they would not find it difficult.