Note 414 — Chapter XXXIX · LEGES AND EPINOMIS. (continued 3)
Reading edition
Respecting the ἐρανικαὶ δίκαι at Athens, see Heraldus, Animadversiones in Salmasium, vi. 1, p. 407 seq.; Meier und Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, p. 540 seq.; K. F. Hermann, Staats Alterth. s. 146, not. 9.
The word ἔρανος meant very different things — a pic-nic banquet, a club for festive meetings kept up by subscription with a common purse, a contribution made to relieve a friend in distress, carrying obligation on the receiver to requite it if the donor fell into equal distress. This last sense is the prevalent one in the Attic orators, and is brought out well in the passage of Theophrastus — Περὶ Μεμψιμοιρίας. Probably the Attic ἐρανικαὶ δίκαι took cognizance of complaints arising out of ἔρανος in all its senses.