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ATI MI A.
foreign to Athenian notions of justice to confiscate the property of a person who had incurred personal atimia by some illegal act. (Dem. c. Lept. p. 504.)
The crimes for which total and perpetual atimia was inflicted on a person were as follow: — The giving and accepting of bribes, the embezzlement of public money, manifest proofs of cowardice in the defence of his country, false witness, false accusation, and bad conduct towards parents (An-docid. I. c.) : moreover, if a person either by deed or by word injured or insulted a magistrate while he was performing the duties of his office (Dem. c. Mid. p. 524, Pro Megalop. p. 200) ; if as a judge he had been guilty of partiality (r,. Mid. p. 543); if he squandered away his paternal inheritance, or was guilty of prostitution (Diog. Lae’rt. i. 2. 7), &c. We have above called this atimia perpetual; for if a person had once incurred it, he could scarcely ever hope to be lawfully released from it. A law, mentioned by Demosthenes (c. Timocrat. p. 715), ordained that the releasing of any kind of atimoi should never be proposed in the public assembly, unless an assembly consisting of at least 6000 citizens had previously, in secret deliberation, agreed that such might be done. And even then the matter could only be discussed in so far as the senate and people thought proper. It was only in times when the republic was threatened by great danger that an atimos might hope to recover his lost rights, and in such circumstances the atimoi were sometimes restored en masse to their former rights. (Xen. Hellen. ii. 2. § 11 ; Andocid. I. c.) – A second kind of atimia, which though in its extent a total one, lasted only until the person subject to it fulfilled those duties for the neglect of which it had been inflicted, was not so much a punishment for any particular crime as a means of compelling a man to submit to the laws. This was the atimia of public debtors. Any citizen of Athens who owed money to the public treasury, whether his debt arose from a fine to which he had been condemned, or from a part he had taken in any branch of the administration, or from his having pledged himself to the republic for another person, was in a state of total atimia if he refused to pay or could not pay the sum which was due. His children during his lifetime were not included in his atimia ; they remained eTrfrtyioz. (Dem. c. Theocrin. p. 1322.) If he persevered in his refusal to pay beyond the time of the ninth prytany, his debt was doubled, and his property was taken and sold. (Andocid. I. c.; Dem. c. Nicostrat. p. 1255, c. Neaer. p. 1347.) If the sum obtained by the sale was sufficient to pay the debt, the atimia appears to have ceased ; but if not, the atimia not only continued to the death of the public debtor, but was inherited by his heirs, arid lasted until the debt was paid off. (Dem. c. Androt. p. 603, compare Bbckh, Pull. Econ. of Athens, p. 391, 2d edit.; and heres.) This atimia for public debt was sometimes accompanied by imprisonment, as in the case of Alcibiades and Cimon ; but whether in such a ease, on the death of the prisoner, his children were likewise imprisoned, is uncertain. If a person living in atimia for public debt petitioned to be released from his debt or his atimia, he became subject to o/5ei£is: and if another per-Bon made the attempt for him, he thereby forfeited His own property ; if the proedros even ventured feo put the question to the vote, he himself became
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atimos. The only but almost impracticable mode of obtaining release was that mentioned above in connection with the total and perpetual atimia.
A third and only partial kind of atimia deprived the person on whom it was inflicted only of a portion of his rights as a citizen. , (Andocid. de MysL p. 17 and 36.) It was called the ari/aia Kara irp6(rra^iv^ because it was specified in every single case what particular right was forfeited by the atimos. The following cases are expressly mentioned : — If a man came forward as a public accuser, and afterwards either dropped the charge or did not obtain a fifth of the votes in favour of his accusation, he was not only liable to a fine of 1000 drachmae, but was subjected to an atimia which deprived him of the right, in future, to appear as accuser in a case of the same nature as that in which he had been defeated or which he had given up. (Dem. c. Aristog. p. 803 ; Har-pocrat. s. v. Aecpco^ jpa^.) If his accusation had been a ypa<pri] acregefas, he also lost the right of visiting particular temples. (Andocid. de Myst. p, 17.) Some cases are also mentioned in which an accuser, though he did not obtain a fifth of the votes, was not subjected to any punishment whatever. Such was the case in a charge brought before the first archon respecting the ill-treatment of parents, orphans, or heiresses. (Meier, de, Bern. Damnat. p. 133.) In other cases the accuser was merely subject to the fine of 1000 drachmae, without incurring any degree of atimia. (Pollux, viii. 53.) But the law does not appear to have always been strictly observed. (Bockh, Publ. Econ. of Athens, p, 381, 2d ed.) Andocides mentions some other kinds of partial atimia, but they seem to have had only a temporary application at the end of the Peloponnesian war; and the passage {De Myst. p. 36) is so obscure or corrupt, that nothing can be inferred from it with any certainty. (Wachsmuth, Hellen. Allertli. vol. ii. p. 1,98, 2d ed.) Partial atimia, when once inflicted, lasted during the whole of a man’s life.
The children of a man who had been put to death by the law were also atimoi (Dem. c. Aristog. p. 779; compare heres) ; but the nature or duration of this atimia is unknown.
If a person, under whatever kind of atimia he was labouring, continued to exercise any of the rights which he had forfeited, he might immediately be subjected to faraywyfi or cvSeifys: and if his transgression was proved, he might, without any further proceedings, be punished immediately.
The offences which were punished at Sparta with atimia are not as well known ; and in many cases it does not seem to have been expressly mentioned by the law, but to have depended entirely upon public opinion, whether a person was to be considered and treated as an atimos or not. In general, it appears that every one who refused to live according to the national institutions lost the rights of a full citizen (o/^totos, Xenoph. de Rep. Laced, x. 7 ; iii. 3). It was, however, a positive law, that whoever did not give or could not give his contribution towards the syssitia, lost his rights as a citizen. (Aristot. Polit. ii. 6. p. 59, ed. Gottling.) The highest degree of infamy fell upon the coward (rpetras) who either ran away from the field of battle, or returned home without the rest of the army, as Aristodemus did after the battle of Thermopylae (Herod, vii. 231), though in this case the infamy itself, as well as its hmni-
