This book is an attempt to combine a general survey of some important aspects of Athenian society with a detailed commentary on a central group of sources viz, some of the private speeches in the Corpus Demosthenicum. The book is intended, in the first place, for historians (mainly undergraduates) who have little or no knowledge of Greek. Accordingly, we have reduced the number of quotations and expressions in Greek to a minimum. The eight Demosthenic speeches discussed in this work (xxxii—xxxviii and lvi) have been chosen with a view to two subjects: legal history (the special plea called paragraphe) and economic history (the foreign trade of Athens). A prerequisite for any description of paragraphe is a general delineation of procedure in private suits in Athens, and any description of Athenian foreign trade must be supplemented by discussions of other subjects of the economic life of Athens, mining and banking in particular. Accordingly, the introduction includes general chapters on these general subjects as well as more specialized discriptions of paragraphe and maritime loans in fourth-century Athens.
Signe Isager was educated at the University of Aarhus, where she read Classical Philology. In 1972 she was appointed lecturer in Ancient History at Odense Uni-versity. Dr. Mogens Herman Hansen was educated at the University of Copenhagen, where he read Greek literature and History. He was appointed lecturer in Classical Philology at the University of Copenhagen in 1969 and became Doctor of Philos-ophy in 1973. This book is an English edition of Attiske retstaler Ira Demosthenes' tid written by Signe Isager and Mogens Herman Hansen in 1970-71 and published in 1972. Other publications by Dr. M. H. Hansen are Antifons taler (1969), Atimistraffen i Athen i Klassisk Tid (1973) and The Sovereignty of the People's Court in Athens in the Fourth Century B. C. (1974). His most recent book Eisangelia will appear in this series in July 1975.
