Sir Richard C. Jebb, The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos

1 Direct possession could thus be taken only (1) by children or grandchildren of the testator: (2) by an adoptive son who had been adopted during the lifetime of the testator. A son adopted by will had, like remoter kinsfolk, to put in a claim to the inheritance (ἐπιδικάζεσθαι) Kleon therefore must have appealed to the will, not to prove the adoption, but merely to prove that the adopted son was also the heir.

2 By the form of παρακαταβολή (Schöm. p. 404) in the strict sense —literally ‘deposit of security for costs.’ The term ἀμφισβητεῖν was used of any claimant in a willcase: παρακαταβάλλειν was properly said of one who (as here) asserted his right to the whole estate.

3 From about 395 to 374 dynastic feuds were rife in Thessaly: see Thirlwall c. 38, v. p. 65. Jason of Pherae kept a large standing army of mercenaries.

4 I can, however, conjecture the occasion of this expedition to Mytilene. In 373 Timotheos was named commander of the fleet which was to help Corcyra. Not being able to man his fleet at Athens, he went on a cruise in the Aegean, to get men and money from the allies (Xen. H. VI. ii. 12 Grote x. 199). Now we know that, in 390 at least, Mytilene was the only Lesbian town not favourable to Sparta (Xen. H. IV. viii. 28). A levy of troops and money on Lesbos might easily give the laconising towns of the island a pretext for attacking the one notoriously philathenian town. The expedition in which Astyphilos was killed may have been sent to support Mytilene. Does not the phrase in § 1, οἱ εἰς Μιτυλήνην στρατιῶται, imply a succour?

5 Dobree (Adv. I. 305) puts the speech in 374— 1 B.C.; but does not give his reasons Weissenborn (Ersch and Gruber's Encycl. p. 300) puts it about 369 B.C. Blass (Att. Ber. II. 525) says, ‘some time after 371 at earliest.’Schömann's view is widely different, and as, I think, indefensible. He puts the speech in 390 B C., ‘or not much later,’ and holds that (1) The Theban War means the invasion of Boeotia by Sparta in 395, when Athens helped Thebes, and Lysander was killed at Haliartos: (2) The expedition to Thessaly refers to 394, when Agesilaos marching through Thessaly, routed the Thessalian allies of Thebes, who may have been supported by Athenians: (3) The expedition to Mytilene is the visit of Thrasybulos and his fleet in 390— 389 B.C.I should object:—(1) that the order in § 14,—Corinth, Thessaly, Theban War, which the context shows to be chronological, is thus changed to Theban War, Thessaly, Corinth: (2) that the phrase τὸν Θηβαικὸνπόλεμον ἅπαντα clearly implies more than a single campaign: (3) that in 394 it is very unlikely that Astyphilos or an Athenian force should have met Agesilaos in Thessaly, since the allied forces, including Athenians, were waiting for Agesilaos in Boeotia: (4) that Mytilene—as Blass has observed—was never the immediate object of Thrasybulos: cf. Xen. H. IV. viii. 25.

6 Had Kleon and his son not been thus adopted into another family, their claim to the estate of Astyphilos would have been better than that of the speaker. Of collateral kinsfolk, the law called to the succession, first, kinsfolk on the father's side down to the ἀνεψιῶν παίδας (or ἀνεψιαδοῦς), i.e. children of the children of a father's brother or a father's sister; secondly, in default of such, kinsfolk on the mother's side—a son of the same mother by another marriage ranking first among these. See Or. VII. § 20, and Schömann, p. 405.