you, he will reply, 'The one whom Mantias was compelled to adopt.' Do you wish for this?"
We pass to quite a different case. It is a dispute between two neighbouring Attic farmers.[1] Their holdings were in a hilly part of Attica, and were separated by a public road. It is an action for damages which the plaintiff, Callicles, alleged that he had sustained through the obstruction of a water-course, which carried off the drainage from the surrounding hills. The defendant's father had built a wall on his land, with the view of diverting the water into the road. It seems that in Attica a proprietor might turn off his drainage into a public way, to the great detriment, as may well be supposed, of the country roads, which, in hilly districts, must at times have been almost impassable. The effect of the wall in this case was, that after heavy rains the plaintiff's farm was overflowed, as well as the road. For this the plaintiff brought his action. The defendant, Demosthenes' client, pleaded in justification that the wall in question had been lawfully erected by his father fifteen years ago; that no objection was then raised by the plaintiff's family; that the so-called water-course was not really a water-course, but was part of his own land, as it was planted with fruit-trees, and contained an old family burial-ground. The stream, too, which caused the mischief, did not come to the defendant from a neighbour's farm; it flowed down the road both above and below him: the flood which it occasioned in wet weather was
- ↑ Speech against Callicles.
