ARBITRATION IN THE GREEK WORLD. 



289 



ill their anxiety to restore the friendship which had once 

 existed between the two states, used every effort to bring about 

 reconciliation and amity between them. In this instance the 

 effort was frustrated, — " our purpose," the report continues, 

 " was hindered of its fulfilment by the exceeding bitterness of 

 their enmity, and the award was consequently decided by vote," 

 — but there were many occasions, as the inscriptions testify, on 

 which this aim of the arbitrators was realized and the settlement 

 took the form of an agreement or reconciliation and not of an 

 arbitral award. This is no mere question of words and names ; 

 it is indicative of the healthy spirit which inspired these 

 arbitral boards. 



Of the evidence brought forward in such trials we are well 

 informed, especially by a series of long inscriptions which con- 

 tain not only the official account of the enquiry and of the 

 award, but also a summary of the evidence used by each side in 

 support of its claims. This depended upon the nature of the 

 dispute, and was of the most varied character. The appeal to 

 mythology and the early epic poems carried considerable weight 

 with a G-reek court in determining the original ownership of 

 territory, and we find archaeological evidence also employed in 

 the early dispute between Athens and Megara for the possession 

 of Salamis. On that occasion Solon, the Athenian spokesman, 

 cited two verses from the Iliad in confirmation of his case, the 

 crucial one of which he is said to have himself foisted upon the 

 poem, and backed up his contention by an appeal to the manner 

 in which the Athenians buried their dead and a demand for the 

 excavation of Salaminian tombs. The works of historians were 

 also brought forward. We hear, for instance, of a dispute 

 between the Prienians and the Samians, in which the latter 

 rested their cause mainly upon the evidence of four historical 

 writings, which they cited as supporting their claim ; but a 

 more careful examination showed the arbitrators that only one 

 work — that which bore the name of Mieandrius of Miletus, but 

 was widely regarded as a forgery — really favoured the Samian 

 contention, while all the other historians — Creophylus and 

 Eualces of Ephesus, Theoponipus of Chios, and, most important 

 of all, the four native Samians, Uliades, Euagon, Olympichus, 

 and Duris — ran directly counter to it. Treaties and other 

 public documents, receipts and decrees, deeds of sale and letters 

 were also quoted as evidence, whether written upon paper and 

 produced from state archives or engraved upon stone and set up 

 in temples or other public places. Frequently the report of the 



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