Callistratus

In retaliation, the men in Piraeus killed one of the cavalrymen, Callistratus, of the tribe of Leontis, having captured him in the country.

After him Callistratus said:

Callistratus, the popular orator, also went with the embassy;

For Leosthenes, who had been exiled from Athens through the work of blackmailers, was not competent to write a clever letter—a man whom some do not hesitate to rank next to Callistratus of Aphidna as an able orator!

Amytheon had a son Damostratus, who bore the same name as his grandfather, and two others, Callistratus and Dexitheus.

and to the youngest I gave the name Callistratus, which was the name of my mother’s father.

For Callistratus married the granddaughter of Habron, the son of Buselus, being himself the son of Eubulides and grandson of Buselus;

nor did Callistratus, who was in power, and who was his nephew, try to make new laws to meet his particular case.

You are going, said he, to bring Callistratus, an exile whom the Athenians have twice condemned to death, from Methonê to Thasos to Timomachus, his kinsman by marriage.

He spoke roughly to me and threatened me in a way you can easily understand (for you are not without experience of the ways of Callippus), and I said to him, I hear that you are sailing to fetch Callistratus.

As for the trireme of Thrasylochus of Anagyrus, on board which he was himself sailing, he induced Thrasylochus to let his trierarchy to Callippus, that Callippus, being in full control of the ship, might carry Callistratus about, as he pleased.

and besides, Callistratus, who sold the goods of Antimachus, was a friend of his, so that my father was meeting no opposition.

Again, when you had removed him from his command as general because he failed to sail round the Peloponnesus, and he had been given over to the popular assembly for trial under a very heavy charge, when he was being prosecuted by Callistratus and Iphicrates, men of power both in action and in speech, and they and their fellow-pleaders so influenced your minds by their accusations against him that …

He was hard pressed on every side, his life was in extreme danger because of the gravity of the misfortunes which had befallen the state, the army in Calaureia had been broken up for want of pay, the allies around Peloponnesus were being besieged by the Lacedaemonians, Iphicrates and Callistratus were accusing him of being responsible for the present disaster, and, furthermore, those who came from …

For ten years after that, during which they subsequently leased the bank to Xeno and Euphraeus and Euphro and Callistratus, he received a talent every year.

To prove that I speak the truth in this, and that Apollodorus subsequently leased the bank to Xeno and Euphraeus, and Euphro, and Callistratus, and that he delivered no private capital to them either, but that they leased only the deposits and the right to the profits accruing from them, take, please, the deposition which proves these matters, and proves also that he chose the shield-factory.

Furthermore, at Athens many men have upon occasion risen to power—the great Callistratus, for instance, Aristophon, Diophantus, and others of earlier date.

For when on the advice of Callistratus you undertook to aid the Lacedaemonians, he at that time opposed in the assembly the vote to do so, because he had purchased the right to collect the two per cent tax on grain during the peace, and was obliged to deposit his collections in the senate-chamber during each prytany.

This fellow Stephanus was getting nothing worth mentioning from public business, for he was not yet a public speaker, but thus far merely a pettifogger, one of those who stand beside the platform and shout, who prefer indictments and informations for hire, and who let their names be inscribed on motions made by others, up to the day when he became an underling of Callistratus of Aphidna.

This, I said, their poets have got from Homer as from an ophthalmia.

Which seems to you, Callistratus, the better poet, Homer or Phocylides?

And Callistratus was about eighteen years old, very fair and tall, having much of the Ionian in his look.

It is remarkable too that the “equality” of laws on which the Greek democracies prided themselves—that equality which, in the beautiful drinking song of Callistratus, Harmodius and Aristogiton are said to have given to Athens—had little in common with the “equity” of the Romans.

” Seneca, the writer already quoted, produces two instances, the one of Callistratus at Athens, and the other of Rutilius at Rome, who refused to be restored from banishment thinking it better for two individuals to suffer hardship, than for the public to be plunged into calamities.

At one time the men impeached before you were Timomachus, Leosthenes, Callistratus, Philon of Anaea, Theotimus who lost Sestos, and others of the same type.

For where Athenodorus and Callistratus, the one a private, the other an exile, have been able to found cities, surely we could gain possession of many such places if we so desired.

Who does not know the fate of Callistratus, which the older among you remember and the younger have heard recounted, the man condemned to death by the city?

1 Callistratus, they say (so at least Hecaton is the authority), when he was going into the exile into which a state seditious and intemperately free had driven many along with him, when a certain man wished that the Athenians might have the necessity of restoring their exiles, abhorred such a return.