124 EDwARD M. HARRIS
any information about liens on the property. For instance, when Demosthenes
won a private suit for damages against his former guardian Aphobus, who did
not pay him, Demosthenes went to seize some land belonging to Aphobus.
Onetor, the brother-in-law of Aphobus, drove him away from the property,
claiming that he had taken it from Aphobus who had not returned the dowry
of his sister after he divorced her (Dem. 30.8). Demosthenes brought a suit
against Onetor for ejectment on the grounds that Aphobus never provided
Onetor’s sister with a dowry and that the divorce was a sham (Dem. 30.4–5).
There were apparently no written records to prove Demosthenes’ allegations
about the property: he produced witnesses to show that the dowry was not
paid to Aphobus, which undermined Onetor’s claim that his property was
pledged as security. In another speech attributed to Demosthenes, the speaker
recounts how his opponent Phaenippus in a lawsuit about a trierarchy, drew up
an inventory of his property in which he stated that there were several debts
made on the security of his farm at Cytherus. To refute this statement, the
speaker does not cite public records but has two of the lenders testify that the
debts were paid long ago (Dem. 42.26–29).^45 Yet it is striking in both cases that
each litigant had no difficulty in locating the property owned by his opponent,
who could not deny that the property belonged to him.
The records of sales also did not contain any information about the size
of the property or its precise borders. When Phaenippus’ opponent wished
to discover the extent of his farm, he had to walk around it to determine its
size (Dem. 42.5).^46 This implies that there were boundary-markers in place or
physical features such as roads or riverbeds that clearly separated his property
from that of his neighbors.^47 These boundaries may have been established by
mutual consent or local custom and knowledge, but the state took a role in
policing them. According to Aristotle (Pol. 1321b27–30), every state should
have officials called agronomoi, who supervise boundary-markers. An inscrip-
tion from fifth-century Chios provides regulations about horophylakes (‘guard-
ians of the boundary stones’), who obviously carried out this task.^48 Similar
officials are attested at Miletus.^49
Even in cases where there were no written records, the Athenian legal sys-
tem provided another means for owners to prove title. In Athenian law, the
contract of sale imposed the duty of warranty of title on all sellers.^50 This
meant that if one sold property to another person, then later a third party
claimed that the property belonged to him and that the seller did not have title,
the seller was required to support the buyer in court. If he failed to perform
his duty, he could be sued for damages by a special private action called the
dike bebaioseos.^51 Even though there were many written records, much of the
information about ownership still resided in the memory of local inhabitants.
The Athenian legal system was, however, willing to accept this oral evidence
in court and gave owners a legal mechanism to ensure that sellers provide the