76 MARK wOOLMER
and not you (the demos), are responsible for mishaps which occur during a voy-
age’ (Dem. 58.53–54). In order to finance these activities the Athenians sought
to raise money from states with mercantile interests: Demosthenes (8.24–25)
describes a symbiotic relationship in which the Athenians provided phylake
(protection) for merchants with their navy, and the states whose citizens
benefited footed the bill.^36 If, in the long-term, these convoys failed to provide
adequate protection, a more permanent solution was to either colonize the
region or establish a series of naval outposts. The most dramatic example of the
Athenians implementing such a policy was their establishment of a colony in
the Adriatic in c. 325 BCE.^37 The inscription recording the decision to found
the colony clearly states that its primary purpose was to secure one of the most
important Athenian grain routes and, by means of the newly constructed naval
base, to protect all commercial shipping from the threat of Etruscan pirates.^38
The Athenian policy of using naval outposts and colonies as a deterrent against
continued acts of piracy (either state-sponsored or carried out by unaffiliated
operators) can be traced back to the fifth century BCE.^39 The inscription IG
I^3 61 (dating to around to the 430s or 420s) refers to a group of officials called
the Guardians of the Hellespont, which operated out of one such outpost and
whose primary duty was to regulate and tax trade in the Hellespont (lines
39–41). Considered as a whole, the evidence documenting Athenian efforts to
curtail piracy reveals a genuine concern with guaranteeing the safety of mer-
chants. However, this was not a purely altruistic policy: by protecting mercan-
tile shipping, the Athenians were able to reduce the transaction costs incurred
when trading in Athens, thereby ensuring that their markets were competitive
and thus attractive to foreign merchants.Asylia
Linked to Athenian efforts to reduce mercantile transaction costs via the
suppression of piracy was the bestowal of asylia. In essence asylia (inviolabil-
ity) was a guarantee of protection for the honorand and his property against
forcible seizure.^40 Syla and its cognates are broad terms, which are generally
used to denote the seizure of person or property in an effort to remedy an
injustice.^41 Such seizures could constitute direct reprisals (i.e., an aggrieved
party seizing the property of those who had caused offence or someone
closely connected to him) or indirect (i.e., when the aggrieved party was
unable to gain satisfaction against the offender, his property, or someone
connected to him and thus seized a fellow citizen, or the property belong-
ing to a fellow citizen, of the offender). Moreover, these seizures could be
endorsed at state level: for instance, a polis could sanction the seizure of any
citizen or property belonging to a rival state. A grant of asylia can therefore
be understood as denoting that certain individuals – or, on occasion, certain