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396 396 On the Birth-Year of Demosthenes, abovequoted passage), to prove that his minority ended in the year of Cephisodorus. On the third of Corsini's assumptions, that the period of minority lasted exactly eighteen years, it was needless for Mr Clinton formally to express his dissent, since according to his own calculation the length of that period was no more than sixteen years. But this difference of two years with regard to so remarkable and important an epoch as the legal maturity of the Athenian citizen, while it places the controversy itself in its most interesting point of view, also seems to present a better prospect of arriving at a satisfactory decision between the conflicting dates, than has been afforded by any of the argviments we have hitherto examined. And here it is that Mr Clinton, while he has successfully combated the error of Petitus, who maintained that the legal age of manhood began at Athens in the citizen^s twentieth year, and while he no less justly vindicates the character of Demosthenes from an im- putation which Mr Mitford had too hastily brought forward under the shelter of an extraordinary oversight, seems not sufficiently to have noticed the difficulties involved in his own supposition. These difficulties indeed are not quite so great as those which would arise if we adopted the date of Diony- sius, but as this date is not very wide of Mr Clinton'^s, both are liable, though not in an equal degree, to the same objec- tion. Corsini argues against that of Dionysius on the suppo- sition that Demosthenes came of age in the year of Polyzelus, when, if he was born under Demophilus, he could only have been in his fifteenth year. But Mr Clinton has shown that this is an arbitrary supposition, and that if Demosthenes was admitted to his estate under Cephisodorus, he might consis- tently with the date of Dionysius have entered upon his six- teenth year at the time, that is, if he was born early enough in the year of Demophilus. Still even this is an earlier commencement than any author appears ever to have assigned to the age of maturity : for Mr Clinton himself interprets the words of Didymus in Harpocratio {eirl Siere^ rf^ricFai. A£0f/ui09 (pr](jLv' avTi tov eav eKKaioeKa erwu yevojmevoi) to mean that minors were admitted to their estates in their seventeenth year. But we should certainly need no autho- rity to convince us that the Athenian law could not hare