It is apparent that when Hegestratus represented himself to be the owner of the cargo and obtained a loan from Syracusan money lenders upon the cargo, he probably had no criminal intention of casting the vessel away, but as with Tito in Romola, one rascality led to another. He intended to swindle the Syracusans and to get away from the vessel before it reached Athens. Hegestratus could not appear with his ship at Athens, for his fraud would be at once exposed. Probably he intended at some point before arriving at Athens to decamp, leaving his vessel to the mortgagees, and the cargo to be fought over by Protus, representing Demon, and Zenothemis, representing the Syracusans. Hegestratus’s money was safe at Marseilles, and he expected to reach there and enjoy his ill-gotten gains. There being no extradition laws, he need not trouble himself about pursuit. Possibly he could restore some dilapidated temple, repent of his evil deeds and the priests would enable him to die in the odor of sanctity at peace with the gods.
This was the situation when the vessel sailed from Syracuse. A cargo of grain was on board and certain passengers were accommodated with passage. Protus and Zenothemis were two of the passengers. They were watching over the same cargo, but representing hostile interests. Hegestratus must have been a shallow-pated fool to suppose that two Greeks could keep silent about their business. Zenothemis soon learned that Protus owned the cargo, and at once Zenothemis compelled Hegestratus to give him a writing. What it was, the speech does not say, but it was probably a conveyance outright of the cargo and it was lodged in Greek fashion with a passenger. This paper Hegestratus could very well give, because he never intended to dispute the cargo, or for that matter the vessel, with any one. When he obtained the Syracusan loan and dispatched the money to Marseilles he had exhausted his field of illicit profit.
It now dawned on Hegestratus that if he could sink the vessel he would be rid of his troubles. Probably he felt that Zenothemis and Protus would keep a strict watch on him so that he could not get away, unless in the confusion of a sinking. He imagined that if he could sink the vessel, the cargo would cease to exist and all contention would be at an end, because the loss of cargo would end the Protus property as well as the Syracusan loan. He was benevolently saving Protus and Zenothemis from the burden of a Greek lawsuit. Hegestratus waited until the ship was close enough to the island of Cephallenia to let all escape from a sinking vessel, and there he put his brilliant plan into execution.
One night he left the garlic-scented Greeks snoring on the deck, went below and proceeded to cut a hole in the bottom of the vessel. He seems to have been a clumsy imbecile, for the noise he made betrayed him and, when detected, he rushed on deck and, knowing a boat was being towed astern, jumped for the boat, intending to cut it adrift and thus get away. But in the darkness he missed the boat and was drowned. As the Greeks would say, the goddess Nemesis was dogging his footsteps. By the exertions of the passengers and the crew, stimulated by rewards offered by Protus, the ship was saved and brought into the harbor of Cephallenia. Here Zenothemis went into alliance with the crew who were from Marseilles, and insisted that the vessel should be navigated to Marseilles. Athens, of course, was the one place on the Mediterranean that Zenothemis did not desire the ship to reach, and he no doubt thought that on the voyage to Marseilles the ship would put into Syracuse, where an appropriation of the cargo to the Syracuse loan would be easily obtained.
It is likely that the repairs of the vessel took some time; perhaps it was necessary to unload it. In the meantime Protus appealed for help to Demon at Athens. Demon sent out a pettifogger named Aristophon, said to be of the Council. He had been paid by the side that hired him and sent him out, and was ready to earn another fee on the opposite side. Zenothemis appears to have bought him up at once; but in spite of all they could do, the Cephallenian authorities decided that the ship must proceed to Athens, whither she was bound. They enforced the decision. So we may suppose the vessel rounding the treacherous capes of the Peloponnesus and arriving at the Piraeus with the disputed cargo. The three precious rascals, Protus, Zenothemis and the pettifogger, were on board, but missing was the chief rascal Hegestratus, whose Nemesis had found him out.
Upon arrival the mortgagees of the vessel took possession of the vessel and Protus took possession of the grain. Thereupon Zenothemis claimed that he was in possession of the cargo. The archaic Greek procedure probably required self-help to the extent that Zenothemis could insist upon being removed by a fiction of force and that he could require that the actual owner, the one entitled to the possession, should remove him. He refused to recognize Protus as owner, and thereupon Demon took possession and removed him. Enough appears from the speech to show that the Athenian law treated Demon and not Protus as owner, and this would be the law to this day in a commercial country.
Demon and Protus proposed to Zenothemis that they should go before the authorities at Syracuse, and if it appeared that Protus had bought the corn and that the customs’ duties were paid by him, Zenothemis should be punished as a rogue; but if it proved otherwise, he should receive the corn and his expenses and damages to the amount of a talent. Naturally Zenothemis refused this absurd offer, for he was no rogue in his own eyes, even if he had been deceived by Hegestratus. So Demon took possession and was sued. The curious thing is that Zenothemis, to be on the safe side, brought two actions, one against Protus and another against Demon. It is certain that the one against Demon was under a special statute giving jurisdiction as to merchandising to and from Athens. The other action against Protus was probably another kind of action, but what it was is problematical.
While these two actions were pending, the price of wheat fell at Athens so much that Protus no longer had any profit, but was confronted by an execution for a deficiency. Demon made this plain to him, as the speech confesses. Protus, being a Greek, thereupon naturally dealt with Zenothemis as his only chance for profit. It was made worth Protus’s while to abscond and Zenothemis promptly took judgment against Protus by default. Demon was now without the evidence of Protus to show that Demon’s money bought the grain at Syracuse, and this fact made Demon’s case less certain. He would find trouble, too, in the consideration that by the default judgment against Protus, Demon’s title was made questionable at least to a jury. So it became necessary for Demon to hunt for a technicality, unless he was prepared to go into court, relying upon truth and justice, and this would not occur to any Athenian save Socrates, who suffered death for his temerity.
The fact that the dead Hegestratus could not possibly have bought the shipload of corn was the controlling fact. Zenothemis claimed title solely through Hegestratus, who had no title and could give none. The controlling fact is not even referred to in the speech. It is urged in the speech that Zenothemis on shipboard obtained a writing from Hegestratus, that he tried to divert the ship to Marseilles, that he made some arrangement with Protus for the default, and did not detain Protus as he could have done, and such like trivial matters, but the one controlling fact of Hegestratus’s inability to buy any corn or even to outfit his ship is not urged, nor is it shown that if Protus had not in fact bought the grain, Hegestratus could not have realized anything from the Syracusan loan. It is plain that if Hegestratus had not gotten a loan in Syracuse on corn of Protus already laden, he would have made no money and would have had no motive for casting away the vessel. This point seems to have evaded Demosthenes.
The action of Zenothemis against Demon, being under the statute, was required to be based on a merchandising venture to or from Athens or both, and it is difficult to see how a grain-loan made at Syracuse or a sale on the high seas fell under the terms of the law. This is what Demon pleaded as a technical defense. It was his only plea apparently, and perhaps a defendant could plead but one defense. This plea, where the difference between issues of fact and issues of law was not provided for in the procedure, went to the jury, who would decide upon the whole controversy.
Upon the trial the actual defense pleaded under the statute was merely stated in the speech for Demon and then the orator proceeded to argue that Zenothemis had no merits on the facts. It was, of course, utterly immaterial to the pure legal defense pleaded whether Zenothemis had the property right in the grain or not. The speech is confused and we have not all of it. Instead of relying upon the actual facts showing a plain, straightforward case, the orator attempts to show that from the beginning at Syracuse Zenothemis was in a scheme with Hegestratus to defraud Protus and Demon. But this was not tenable under the actual facts. The result is a case so muddy that it tends to show very clearly the confused, formless mode of a Greek trial.