Note 37 — Chapter XIV

“Probably vine sticks, round which the vines were trained. To understand the account given in the text, we must suppose that the individuals whom Pithias prosecuted were the tenants of the sacred ground from which the sticks were cut, and possibly had inherited the possession of it from their ancestors, so that they regarded it from long use as their own property: just as the Roman aristocracy thought themselves aggrieved when an Agrarian law called on them to resign the possession of the national lands which they had for so many generations appropriated to themselves without any lawful title. As hereditary tenants of the sacred ground, the Corcyrean nobles had probably been always in the habit of treating it as their own: so that when suddenly charged with sacrilege, in abusing their legal rights as tenants, by cutting down the trees, which belonged not to them, but to the god, the owner of the land, they, like the Roman nobility, had no legal defence to make, and could only maintain their encroachments by violence.” This is Dr. Arnold’s explanation. The Roman aristocracy, however, had a lawful title to the possession, though not to the full property, of the lands in question. See Penny Cyclopædia, art. Agrarian Law. A lease of certain public lands in Attica is preserved in the British Museum (Elgin Marbles, No. 261), in which the devastation of wood is especially forbidden. See Boeckh, Public Economy of Athens, English translation, vol. ii. p. 15. The prosecution and amount of fine were, however, evidently dictated by party spirit and revenge.