Trierarchs

or the story of the generalship of Cephisodotus, and the naval expedition to the Hellespont, when Demosthenes as one of the trierarchs carried the general on his ship, and shared his table, his sacrifices, and his libations and how after he had been thus honored because the general was an old friend of his father’s, he did not hesitate, when the general was impeached, and was on trial for his life …

Again, the law directs that the trierarchs be subject to audit, though they have had no public funds in their hands, and though they are not men who filch large sums from your treasury and pay out small ones, and not men who claim to be making donations when they are only paying back what is your own, but men who are acknowledged by all to have spent their family fortunes in their ambition to serve you.

Furthermore, not the trierarchs alone, but also the highest bodies in the state, come under the verdict of the courts of audit.

Now to prove to you that I was not the only one thus commissioned, when I received from the magistrates the name of this man with orders to exact from him the equipment which he owed to the state, but that others of the trierarchs took such measures against others whose names they had received, read, please, their depositions.

When this decree had been passed, the magistrates chose by lot those who owed the ship’s equipment to the state and handed over their names, and the overseers of the dockyards passed on the list to the trierarchs who were then about to sail, and to the overseers of the navy-boards.

Now I, as it happened, was a trierarch and overseer of the navy-board, and Demochares of Paeania was in the navy-board, and was indebted to the state for the equipment of a ship in conjunction with Theophemus here, for he had served as joint trierarch with him.

But they appoint the trierarchs;

Be assured that it will be no more in my interest than in your own that you will punish Polycles, nor will you be showing concern merely for those who have served as trierarchs in the past;

seeing also that the price of grain was advancing in the Peiraeus, and that there was not very much to be bought, you voted that the trierarchs should launch their ships and bring them up to the pier, and that the members of the senate and the demarchs should make out lists of the demesmen and reports of available seamen, and that the armament should be despatched at once, and aid sent to the various regions.

More than that, I furnished the ship with equipment wholly my own, taking nothing from the public stores, and I made everything as beautiful and magnificent as possible, outdoing all the other trierarchs.

if you want two hundred, there will be thirty talents to cover the cost and six persons to serve as trierarchs;

so that you can know at once, if necessary, where each tribe and each third of a tribe is stationed, who are the trierarchs and what ships they have, and that so each tribe may have thirty ships and each third of a tribe ten.

That, I think, would be the best way of providing and organizing the money, the hulls, the trierarchs, and the calling in of the ships’ gear.

As to the ship’s equipment, moreover, all, that is, which the state is bound to supply to the trierarchs, I purchased it with my own resources and took nothing from the public stores, while these men used equipment of yours and spent none of their own money for this purpose.

I for my part wonder why in the world these men should imprison and punish those of the sailors who desert their ships—men who receive only thirty drachmae apiece,—while you do not deal in the same manner with those of the trierarchs who do not sail with their ships yet receive thirty minae apiece for so doing;

For a man who serves as trierarch in the interest of Athens ought not to expect to grow rich at the public expense, but ought by means of his own resources to repair the losses of the state, if you are to have the service which you need.