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§ 2. If Pantaenetus had really been wronged, he would have brought the action long before this, and when I was at Athens along with Evergus. Men are usually most indignant when the sense of wrong is recent; and the courts decide such cases before the end of the month. The truth is, he was not wronged by me, but put up to this prosecution by having got a verdict against Evergus. ἐμμήνων Kennedy translates, ‘as these actions last only for a month.’ Or. 33 § 23 αἱ λήξεις τῶν δικῶν τοῖς ἐμπόροις ἔμμηνοί εἰσιν ἀπὸ τοῦ βοηδρομιῶνος μέχρι τοῦ μουνυχιῶνος, i.e. from September till April. Cf. Or. 35 § 46 n. Boeckh (P. Econ. ed. 1, pp. 50 and 667, trans. Lewis (2)) renders it ‘monthly suits’ (cf. Soph. El. 281 “ἔμμηνα ἱερά”, “monthly offerings”); but on p. 667 he explains it to mean that “it was necessary that judgment should be given within a month, the object being that the mine-proprietor might not be too long detained from his business.” [In his 2nd ed., however, the rendering ‘monthly suits’ disappears, and the epithet is understood to refer to the ‘decision of certain processes within a month from their commencement,’ p. 72, Lamb. So also Meier u. Schomann, p. 906 f. Lipsius.] παρ᾽ αὐτὰ κ.τ.λ. ‘At the very time of the wrongs.’ In Or. 32 § 7, for παρὰ τἀδικήματα we should perhaps read παρ᾽ αὐτὰ τἀδικήματα. For the sentiment compare Thuc. III 38 ἀμύνασθαι τῷ παθεῖν ὅτι ἐγγυτάτω κείμενον ἀντίπαλον ὂν μἀλιστα τὴν τιμωρίαν άναλαμβάνει (where perhaps ὂν is an interpolation: the τιμωρία is μάλιστα ἀντίπαλος when it is recent). So Or. 36 § 53 πλησίον ὄντων τῶν ἀδικημάτων ἐγκαλεῖς. p. 967. ἐπηρμένος ‘Elated,’ put up to it, ‘by having carried to a successful issue the suit against Evergus.’ Thucydides generally uses ἐπαιρόμενος. Or. 32 § 10, we have τῷ ποτ᾽ ἐπηρμένος οὗτος κατελήλυθε, and in 4 § 49 τοῖς πεπραγμένοις ἐπηρμένον. παρ᾽ ὑμῖν ‘In your court.’
Select Private Orations of Demosthenes, Part I. F. A. Paley, M.A., LL.D., and J. E. Sandys, Litt. D. 1898. Cambridge University Press.
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