282 



MAKCUS N. TOD^ M.A.^ ON INTERNATIONAL 



that it was too far off to be able properly to examine the facts 

 of the situation, and that it was too heavily burdened with 

 business to be able adequately to investigate the case, contented 

 itself with laying down the rule which was to govern the 

 decision and then deputing to some Hellenic state the task of 

 discovering the facts and applying the rule. In one well-known 

 instance, for example, Sparta and Messene both laid claim to a 

 piece of border-land, the ager Dentheliates, which lay between 

 their territories on the western slope of Mount Taygetus. After 

 several decisions the question was referred to the Senate for 

 settlement : tliat body decided that the land in dispute was 

 to belong to that state which had been in de facto possession of 

 it when L. Mummius, the Eoman general who had destroyed 

 Corinth and had made Greece a province of the Eoman Empire, 

 was in Greece as consul or pro-consul. The matter was then 

 referred to the Milesians, whose sole duty was to find out which 

 state had been master of the ager Dentheliates in the year 

 referred to and to enter judgment accordingly. 



I have tried to set before you in barest outline an historical 

 sketch of the development of arbitration in the Greek world, 

 based upon a large number of extant records dealing with 

 individual cases. These records are of two kinds. On the one 

 hand we have the references to arbitration which occur in the 

 pages of Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Plutarch, and other 

 authors, both Greek and Latin, consisting for the most part of 

 brief statements of the cause of the dispute, the two states 

 engaged in it, the arbitrator to whom the matter was referred 

 and the result of the appeal. The cases thus mentioned are 

 usually of some historical importance, they are placed in their 

 true setting, and the record, brief as it is, is generally complete 

 and easily intelligible. On the other hand we have the inscrip- 

 tions, contrasting in many ways with these literary records. In 

 the first place, their survival is wholly independent of the 

 historical value of the events they narrate ; thousands of 

 inscriptions are extant to-day, thousands more have j^erished, 

 but there has been no selection at work determining which 

 should be preserved. In this sphere at least there is no 

 survival of the fittest. The historian selects his materials, 

 chooses out some facts for permanent record and deliberately 

 allows others, so far as he is concerned, to fall into oblivion ; 

 but the chance which has partially preserved, partially destroyed 

 the epigraphical records of ancient Greece is blind, and has 

 followed mere caprice and not intelligent principle. Again, the 

 surviving inscriptions are not placed in their proper historical 



