Martin Fone's Blog, page 296
May 12, 2017
What Is The Origin Of (127)?…
Nine days’ wonder
We use this phrase to describe something which grabs attention and then its popularity wanes after a short while – unlike this blog, I hope. A modern day equivalent would be Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame.
It is tempting when investigating the genesis of phrases to be lured into thinking that there is a historical character at the bottom of it. Take Lady Jane Grey who was named his successor to the English throne by Edward VI on his death bed. However, she lasted just nine days, the Privy Council changing sides and backing the claims of Henry VIII’s first daughter, Mary. Jane was dispatched to the Tower of London and had her head chopped off the following year. A nine days’ wonder, for sure, and in retrospect a Protestant martyr but the origin of the phrase – no.
And then there is the Elizabethan clown, William Kemp, upon whom Shakespeare is thought to have based Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing. For a bet he danced a morris dance all the way from London to Norwich in 1599 – the Town Council still hold a document recording the payment of his prize money. Kemp completed the hundred or so mile journey by dancing for nine days, although in elapsed time it took a number of weeks because, sensibly, he decided to stop and recuperate after each day’s terpsichorean activity. To silence those who doubted his achievement, Kemp wrote an account of his exploits, published in 1600, entitled Kemps nine daies wonder.
Charming as this story is, Kemp is not the originator of the phrase. The Oxford English Dictionary regards the phrase as belonging to Middle English and cites as an example its appearance in the Harley Lyrics which are dated around 1325. About fifty years later Geoffrey Chaucer came up with a variant in Troilus and Chriseyde, “ek wonder last but nyne nyght nevere in towne”. Charles d’Orleans, a French prince and poet, was captured at the Battle of Agincourt and spent a number of years languishing in an English jail, whiling away his time by writing poetry, including this extract, “For this a wondyir last but dayes nyne, an oold proverb is seid”. Clearly by the 15th century our phrase, or at least a variant of it, had attained the status of a proverb.
Shakespeare used a variant of the conceit in As You Like It, “I was seven out of the nine days out of the wonder before you came” but the first recorded version of our phrase to appear in print was in George Herbert’s poem, published in 1633, called The Temple; “the brags of life are but a nine days wonder”. Byron in Don Juan (1819) used the phrase in its modern sense of something that mercurially grabs the public’s attention and then fades quickly away; “the pleasant scandal which arose next day/ the nine days’ wonder that was brought to light/ and how Alfonso sued for a divorce/ were in the English newspapers, of course”.
So the phrase has a long pedigree but why nine days? The number nine appears in the Bible 49 times and symbolises finality. The novena, a period of devotional praying, lasted nine days and nights. But this explanation doesn’t sit well with the sense of the phrase and, in any event, a number of other phrases use the number nine – lives, stitches, possession in the eyes of the law, to name just three. And then I remembered a line from Athenian playwright, Euripides, “Since luck’s a nine days’ wonder, wait their end”, a pre Christian era usage.
The precise reason for using nine days may be shrouded in mystery but our phrase, it would seem, is anything but a nine days’ wonder.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Dogberry, Don Juan, Euripides, George Herbert, morris dancing from London to Norwich, novena, origin of nine days' wonder, the Harley Lyrics, William Kemp
May 11, 2017
I Don’t Want To Belong To Any Club That Will Accept People Like Me As A Member – Part Thirty Six
The Society of Brothers Club
The Society of Brothers Club, not to be confused with the religious grouping that later became the Bruderhof Group, had a very short lifespan, lasting from 1711 until 1713. It was formed by Henry St John II in the turbulent political atmosphere leading up to the death of Queen Anne and the Hanoverian ascendency as an exclusively Tory dining club. Although it was relatively short-lived and not particularly successful, we know a lot about it because the satirist, Jonathan Swift, was a member. Indeed Swift had a major hand in compiling the rules of the Society.
They met every Thursday – there had been a forerunner of the club called the Saturday Club which, unsurprisingly, met on Saturdays – and their objective, according to Swift, was “to advance conversation and friendship, and to reward learning without interest or recommendation”. As for membership, Swift declared “we take in none but men of wit, or men of interest; and if we go on as we began, no other Club in this town will be worth talking of”. Having a relative as a member was no guarantee that you would get in. The Duke of Beaufort proposed his brother-in-law, the Earl of Danby, as a member but the proposal was successfully opposed by Swift because “Danby is not above twenty, and we will have no more boys”.
In the early days there were no more than around 20 members – Swift records “we are now, in all, nine lords and ten commoners…and we want but two to make up our number”. The Society met at the Thatched House Tavern on St James’ Street, a choice that was perhaps geographically convenient but put a strain on the Club’s coffers. The Duke of Ormond was in the chair one week and the meal, described as “four dishes and four without a dessert” cost an astonishing £20. That was without wine which was usually provided by the Society’s President.
There was soon dissension in the ranks over costs. The Treasurer, reported Swift, was in a rage over costs and soon afterwards “our Society does not meet now as usual”. In fact, the club met once a fortnight and held a committee meeting every other week to determine upon some charitable good cause to support. Often the beneficiaries of the Society’s largesse were impoverished writers and artists. One subscription was launched for a poet who had lampooned the Duke of Marlborough, all the members donating two guineas each, other than Swift, Arbuthnot and Friend who gave just one each.
Still dissatisfied with the expense of the Thatched House the Club had a bit of an itinerant existence. Arbuthnot, as president, hosted a dinner in “Ozinda’s Coffee-house, just by St James’s. We were never merrier or better company, and did not part till after eleven”. Then fifteen members dined under a canopy at Parson’s Green leading Swift to remark, “I never saw anything so fine and romantic”. Eventually, the Club settled for the Star and Garter in Pall Mall, although costs still were complained of.
According to Swift’s Journal to Stella, meetings were convivial where there was “much drinking, little thinking” – sounds my kind of club – and often the business which they had assembled to consider was put off to a more convenient time. Members would, however, entertain each other with their latest exploits or readings of their latest masterpiece. Swift’s The Fable of Midas “passed wonderfully at our Society tonight”.
By now, though, Swift and Arbuthnot had devised Martinus Scriblerus and went off to form the Scriblerus Club and the Brothers’ star waned.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Bruderhof Group, John Arbuthnot, Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella, the Saturday Club, The Scriblerus Club, The Society of Brothers Club, the Star and Garter in Pall Mall, the Thatched House Tavern in St James'
May 10, 2017
Book Corner – May 2017 (1)
Alexander Hamilton – Ron Chernow
This is a tome of a book and not one for the faint-hearted. At times it is heavy going – for a non-American the detailed analysis of Hamilton’s Federalist papers which played a major part in defining the constitutional arrangements that define the workings of the government in the States to this day almost persuaded me to give the book up. But perseverance is well rewarded and the reader comes away with a profound understanding of what made one of the most colourful characters of the post-revolutionary United States tick.
For those who like to see such things, there are some astonishing modern parallels. Hamilton was born in the West Indies and he could never free himself from the jibes of his critics that he was a foreigner and had no right to hold high office in the States. He possessed incredible amounts of energy and as soon as he was appointed to the position of Treasury Secretary by George Washington he unleashed a flurry of orders and initiatives that would have made the Donald blanche. He was a prolific writer of pamphlets and articles. He would have been inexhaustible on Twitter.
Hamilton’s greatest achievements were in establishing the American economy on a firmer footing, nationalising debt, binding the rather fractious individual states together and establishing banks, stock markets and credit, the familiar instruments that fuel a modern economy. In many ways Hamilton’s legacy is the thriving and influential country that the States is today.
But Hamilton was clearly a Marmite character – you either loved him or loathed him – and he had the unerring knack of rubbing powerful enemies up the wrong way and rarely knew when to back down. He hitched his horse close to that of Washington – he was effectively Washington’s aide-de-camp during the Revolutionary War and was rewarded for his efforts with high office – but he had an uneasy relationship which became toxic with Washington’s successor, Adams. Worse still, Jefferson, the third President, represented much of what he abhorred – land owning, slave-owning and enamoured with the French Revolution – and their feud ultimately wrecked Hamilton’s political ambitions. Even worse, both Adams and Jefferson outlived Hamilton by decades and had plenty of time to tarnish their opponent’s reputation and burnish their side of the story.
Mind you, Hamilton made his own significant contributions to his own downfall. Bizarrely, he had a dalliance with a married woman which exposed him to blackmail. Equally astonishingly, he decided to make a clean breast of it by publishing a detailed account of the affair, to the mortification of his long-suffering wife, Eliza, to whom Chernow takes quite a shine and to the gratification of his enemies. And then there was the simmering rivalry and feud with Aaron Burr who by the time of the fateful duel was Vice President, albeit effectively sidelined by Jefferson.
The fateful duel occurred on July 11th 1804 at Weehawken. Chernow makes a convincing case that Hamilton intended to waste his shot, hoping that Burr would return the compliment. It is not clear, though, who fired first. Hamilton’s shot was way off target which might have meant that he fired first and was true to his word or it may have been an involuntary shot after he had been winged. The awful tragedy was that he never signalled his intentions to Burr and paid for it with his life. The reintroduction of duelling would certainly brighten up our politics.
For all its length and wearisome passages and at times Chernow is too close and defensive of his subject, I came away with a better understanding of a remarkable man. I can’t believe they have made a musical out of it, though.
Filed under: Books Tagged: Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow, the Federalist Papers, Thomas Jefferson, Weehawken
May 9, 2017
A Measure Of Things – Part Three
Alcohol proof
As a drinker, I’m mildly interested in the alcoholic strength of the potion before me. I might select a drink because of its ABV or alcohol by volume, a comparative scale that allows me to judge the relative strength of one drink against another. My mood, the time of day and the amount I have already consumed will be inputs to determining which alcoholic beverage of which strength I will choose. The ABV is helpful as a guide of relatively but does not help in the other major determinant, taste. Oh, and of course, price!
There are only two certainties, they say, in life – death and taxes – and it was taxes that were behind the institution of a proof system for alcohol. The word proof means a test or trial or demonstration and from around the 16th century the tax authorities were interested in establishing the amount of alcohol in a particular drink, the greater the strength, the higher the tax rate. The test was fairly rudimentary but ingenious in a way, involving a pellet of gunpowder. This was soaked in the liquor in question and the wet gunpowder was ignited. If it went off, then the alcohol was rated as above proof and attracted a higher tax rate. If the gunpowder failed to go off, then it was taxed at the lower rate.
The science behind this is that the tipping point for a spirit like rum to allow the gunpowder to burn was an ABV of 57.1% ethanol by volume and this was used to represent 100% proof. This rather quaint and possibly dangerous way of proofing alcohol persisted until the late 18th century but more rigorous tests were being conducted. In the 1740s the Customs & Excise and many London distillers used an instrument devised to measure spirit strength called Clark’s hydrometer. This was improved upon by Bartholomew Sikes and was adopted as the standard following the enactment of the Hydrometer Act in 1818.
The measure for 100% proof was 12/13ths the specific gravity of pure distilled water at the same temperature. As luck would have it, it was the equivalent of 57.15% ABV.So, to convert proof into ABV, all you had to do was to multiply it by 1.75. Thus alcohol with a proof of 100% will have an ABV of 175% and a standard gin with a 40% ABV will have a proof of 70%. This method of proofing remained in place in Britain until 1st January 1980.
The Americans, however, chose to use a different system. In around 1848, they developed a measuring system that based on the percentage of alcohol present in the drink by volume rather than worrying about more complex matters like specific gravity. Under this measuring scale, a liquor with 100% proof would have 50% alcohol by volume.
The French, naturally, took a different route, adopting a scale developed by a famous chemist, Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac in 1824. This system gave a spirit which was 100% alcohol by volume a notation of 100 and pure water a notation of 0. It m ay be unfashionable to say, but this seemed perfectly rational. But for the drinker at the time a liquor marked as 100% on the American scale was only 50% proof on the French scale and about 87.6% on the British scale. Enough to give the drinker a headache!
Whilst the American system is still in use, the EU, including Britain who adopted it from 1st January 1980, deploy the ABV system which is based on Gay-Lussac’s scale.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: alcohol proof, Bartholomew Sikes, Clark's hydrometer, Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, the American system of proofing alcohol, the gunpowder test for proofing alcohol, the Hydrometer Act of 1818
May 8, 2017
The Streets Of London – Part Fifty Eight
Tokenhouse Yard, EC2
If you walk down Lothbury towards London Wall you will come across on the left hand side a grand entrance to Tokenhouse Yard, its name bearing testimony to an interesting piece of England’s economic history. The issuance of coinage was a royal prerogative but during the first half of the 17th century, the Stuarts showed little interest in the fiddly bits of small change, like pennies, halfpennies and farthings, and outsourced their production to favoured courtiers. The civil war and the collapse of the monarchy meant that there was a severe shortage of the small change that is meat and drink to a thriving economy.
In response towns and merchants started to issue tokens, often in lead, brass, copper or tin, which took the place of the smaller coinage. It is estimated that there were some 20,000 distributors of tokens throughout the land and at least 3,000 in London. The tokens had no official status and often could only be exchanged in the place of issuance, a bit like a gift voucher – a handy way of a tradesman ensuring customer loyalty. It was not until 1672 that the crown regained control of the issuance of small coinage, Charles II introduced copper halfpennies and farthings and stamped out the trade in tokens. Those found counterfeiting the new currency were to be “chastised with exemplary severity” and most of the tokens in circulation were melted down, disappearing as quickly as they appeared.
That being the case, it is not surprising that Tokenhouse Yard takes its name from an office on the site which issued these tokens. The yard itself occupies the erstwhile site of the house and gardens of the Earl of Arundel who decamped to the Strand and dates from the time of Charles I. It was built by the polymath, Sir William Petty (1620 – 1687), who as well as being an economist was an early member of the Royal Society. Together with John Graunt, Petty developed human population statistical methodologies which led to the former publishing his Bills of Mortality, the first attempt to develop human mortality tables.
Tokenhouse Yard has a name check in Daniel Defoe’s fictional account of the Great Plague of London, a Journal of the Plague Year, published in 1722. “In my walks I had many dismal scenes before my eyes, as particularly of persons falling dead in the streets, terrible shrieks and screeching of women, who oin their agonies would throw open their chamber windows, a cry out in a dismal surprising manner. Passing through Tokenhouse Yard, in Lothbury, of a sudden a casement violently opened just over my head, and a woman gave three frightful screeches, and then cried “Oh! Death, death, death” in a most inimitable tone, which struck me with horror, and chillness in my very blood. There was nobody to be seen in the whole street, neither did any other window open, for people had no curiosity now in any case, nor could anybody help one another”.
Walking down Lothbury today, navigating my way past the smombies glued to their screens and looking at their latest emails, it is hard to imagine this area was the scene of such terrible human tragedy. But, then, London has many surprising twists and turns in its long and chequered history.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: a Journal of the Plague Year, Bills of Mortality, Daniel Defoe, introduction of copper halfpennies, John Graunt, smombies, Tokenhouse Yard, trading tokens, William Petty
May 7, 2017
Cant Of The Week (3)
We had a County Council election on Thursday. Only two of the candidates in our ward, the Conservative and one of the Independents, bothered to put their election address through the gilded letter box of Blogger Towers. The Ukippers popped a generic “newspaper” on to our door mat. So I went to the polling booth not knowing who I was casting my vote for or what they were standing for. If the politicos can’t be arsed, why should we?
Still, for the logophile the general election is offering more promise. Boris Johnson called the hapless Corbyn a “mutton-headed old mugwump.” A mugwump is a 19th century American term for someone who disdains the hurly-burly of political dispute, although, I’m told, in the Harry Potter books it refers to a superior type of wizard.
Tom Watson, not someone I would associate with ploughing through a lexicon, responded by calling Boris a “caggie-handed cheese-headed fopdoodle with a talent for slummocking about.” A fopdoodle is a stupid or insignificant fellow, a fool or a simpleton and a slummock is a slovenly or unruly person. Caggie-handed is a pejorative term for someone who is left-handed while a chicken head is a screw with a raised head.
In order to continue this level of elevated political debate, can I suggest that for round two the Tories consider dandiprat, a person of no significance, or a grumbletonian, a person constantly dissatisfied with life. Perhaps the Labour camp should deploy Captain Queernabs, a 17th century term for a shabby person, or a gollumpus, a large and clumsy person. It would certainly make a welcome change from the strong and stable mantra.
Filed under: Humour, News Tagged: Boris Johnson, Camberley West ward, Captain Queernabs, dandiprat, fopdoodle, gollumpus, grumbletonian, mugwump, slummock, Surrey County Council elections, Tom Watson
May 6, 2017
Shed Of The Week
As we meander up to the general election, it is good to be reminded that deep at heart the Tories share working class aspirations. Former prime minister, David Cameron, I learned this week, has just bought himself what many an ordinary man yearns for, a shed.
Mind you, it is no ordinary shed. It is hand-built shepherd’s hut and comes replete with sheep’s wool insulation, a wood-burning stove, (a chimney, I hope), Bakelite light switches and hardwood stable doors. Although you can get a basic Red Sky shepherd’s hut for as little as £16,500, this one is reported to have set him back a cool twenty-five grand, a smidge above the annual benefit cap for low-income families.
I just hope it is strong and stable.
Filed under: Humour, News Tagged: Benefits cap, David Cameron, Red Sky Shepherd Huts, working men and sheds
May 5, 2017
What Is The Origin Of (126)?…
Disgruntled
One of the deficiencies in the way English is taught – even in my far distant schooldays – is the absence of any formal study of grammar and the noble art of parsing. We were taught to analyse, decline and parse Greek and Latin words until the cows came home but it never crossed our paedogogues’ minds – or ours, for that matter – to apply the same analytical techniques to our native language. A shame really as we missed out on the joys of intensifiers and the frequentative.
To rectify this lamentable situation we will look at the word disgruntle where both grammatical terms can be found alive and well. The meaning of the word, invariably used in its past participle adjectival form, is plain enough. Someone so described is angry or dissatisfied. I started pondering the word the other day when I was rereading P G Wodehouse’s The Code of the Woosters, published in 1938. There he uses a wonderful play on words in the sentence, “he spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled”.
Was gruntled just a Wodehousian neologism, devised to make an amusing pun, I wondered? Well, not really. John Bunyan used the word in 1680 in his The Life and Death of Mr Badman; “..he could speak no more than a Swine or Bear. Therefore, like one of them, he would gruntle and make an ugly noise..” So to gruntle was to make an inhuman, animal-like noise – not exactly the antonym of disgruntle. Its origins, though, are even earlier. It was used in the early 15th century in the sense of making a little or low grunt and by around the 1580s it was used to convey discontent or complaint. It was in this sense that it was used by Emerson Hough in his 1922 novel, The Covered Wagon, “they dismounted…they gruntled as they unloaded the two larger mules”.
The le in the word is what grammarians call the frequentative and gives the sense of repetition as in sparkle which is a repeated form of spark. Dis as a prefix is normally used to transform the root word into a negative. Add dis to the word appear and instead of having something revealing itself in front of you it vanishes. But the prefix in our word acts as an intensifier. It means that we are more than gruntled – muttering and complaining to ourselves – we are pissed. So Wodehouse is guilty of a little grammatical inexactitude but I think he can be forgiven because of the quality of his pun.
One of my favourite words is discombobulate. It is used to convey the sense of someone being confused or discomfited, first appearing on the other side of the pond in the New York Sun in 1834; “maybe some of you don’t get discombobulated”. Five years later it turned up in a New York sporting rag, The Spirit of the Times; “finally, Richmond was obliged to trundle him, neck and heels, to the earth, to the utter discombobulation of his wig”. Journalists aren’t so florid in their prose these days.
The question arises as to whether the prefix dis is used as a negative or an intensifier. The problem, however, is that combobulate or bobulate does not exist as a word. It was probably a piece of nonsense used to accentuate the state of confusion in the subject. In that case, then, the prefix would be an intensifier as it is in disgruntled.
It is all very discombobulating but fun, nevertheless.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: grammatical frequentative, grammatical intensifiers, origin of discombobulated, origin of disgruntled, origin of gruntled, P G Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters
May 4, 2017
A Better Life – Part Nine
The Icarians
Perhaps calling yourselves after the ill-fated aeronaut, Icarus, was a bit of a hostage to fortune but, nonetheless, the various communities that sprung up in the United States under this banner proved to be one of the longest-lived non-religious community experiments in American history.
The starting point was a novel published in 1834 written by the French anti-monarchist, Etienne Cabet, called Voyage en Icarie, which detailed in allegorical terms his economic and social theories. In essence, he envisaged a simpler, more primitive way of life where private property was abolished and where there were equal educational opportunities for both sexes. The book sold well and by 1843 Cabet was able to claim some 50,000 followers who saw him as some sort of messiah and urged him to put his ideas into practice.
In May 1847 Cabet published an article Allons en Icarie, seeking volunteers to cross the Atlantic to set up an Icarian community. He reckoned that ten to twenty thousand would answer the call but in reality only 69 set out to colonise a piece of land Cabet had bought sight unseen which was supposed to have been near the Red River in Texas. Cabet himself wasn’t in the group.
When the Icarians got to the land, they found that it was not only some 25 miles away from the river but consisted of a patchwork of non-contiguous plots. The land was unsuitable for cultivation and the Icarians were ravaged by cholera and malaria and the one medic went insane. By this time some 1,500 colonists had arrived in New Orleans and on hearing of the disaster in Texas held a meeting to decide what to do. By this time Cabet had arrived in America and some 280 souls agreed to accompany him to establish a new colony at a former Mormon settlement in Illinois called Nauvoo. Many of the original colonists, though, had had enough, returned home and sued Cabet for fraud.
The new community in Nauvoo was established in accordance with Cabet’s theories – money and private property was eschewed, meals were taken communally, all living accommodation was identical, every adult employed in workshops or on farms. They elected annually a president – Carnet (natch) – and heads of finance, farming, industry and education. Candidates were admitted to the community if they had lived there for four months and were approved by 75% of the male colonists, after pledging $80. Children upon reaching the age of four lived and were educated communally, living away from their parents. Music and plays were a regular form of entertainment.
In 1852 Cabet had to go back to France to defend himself against fraud charges and on his return 18 months later started to lay the law down, prohiting talking in the workshops and the use of alcohol and tobacco. This tyrannical behaviour didn’t go down well and the community split into two. The Dissenters gained the upper hand and forced Cabet and his loyalists to set up a new colony, this time in Cheltenham, Missouri. The problem for those left in Nauvoo was that with a diminished labour force and the loss of Cabet’s ability to drum up funds from France, they soon got into financial difficulties and the colony disbanded in 1860.
The colony in Cheltenham didn’t fare much better. The Civil War depleted it of fit young men and those who remained were ravaged by disease. This community disbanded in 1865. Other colonies lasted a bit longer – one in Corning, Iowa didn’t disband until 1898 and one in Cloverdale, California struggled on until 1886. Despite their struggles and frequent bouts of factionalism, one man summed up life as an Icarian perfectly to the visiting Charles Nardhoff in 1874, “it is very plain but we are independent – no man’s servants – and we are content”.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Allons en Icarie, Charles Nardhoff, Etienne Cabet, Nauvoo Icarian community, the Icarians, the Red River Icarian community, Voyage enn Icarie
May 3, 2017
Double Your Money – Part Eighteen
Zenothemis and Hegestratos
The entrepreneur is concerned with risk. After all, to spot and exploit a gap in the market takes chutzpah and a certain amount of money. If you can do it with someone else’s money, so much the better. And a shrewd entrepreneur will try to what we term nowadays de-risk the enterprise. A classic example of this strategy is a couple of likeable rogues who may have perpetrated the world’s first insurance scam.
I’m indebted to the Athenian orator, Demosthenes (384 -322 BCE) for this insight into ancient financial skulduggery but it may be worth sounding a note of caution. Demosthenes was renowned for his oratorical skills and he was known to embellish his story to obtain maximum rhetorical effect. He was prosecuting Zenosthemis and so would have been keen to put the merchant in the worst possible light. We don’t have Zenosthemis’ side of the story and Hegestratos didn’t live to tell the tale. But the case did trouble the Attic courts and so we have to assume that there is a nugget of truth in the orator’s account of the escapade.
Maritime trade was a risky business. The principal risks were that the ship would capsize and the goods sink to the bottom of the sea or that the ship would be boarded by pirates. Often the merchants would take risks themselves, funding the journey and reaping all of the rewards. But increasingly more often during the second half of the 4th century BCE the merchants would seek passive investors who would fund some or all of the venture, receiving as their reward a cut of the profits one the voyage had been completed. The downside of the deal was that if the vessel sank or was hijacked, the investors would lose their money – an early form of what we now know as bottomry.
Our shady duo cooked up a scheme which would rely on the rules of bottomry. They would raise the money necessary for filling their ship up with corn from innocent investors, pocketing the monies which they would send to their home town of Massalia, now modern-day Marseilles. They would then sail away in an empty ship and some way out at sea, they would scuttle it, making their escape by means of a small boat they were towing behind. The crew may have gone down to Davy Jones’ locker but under the terms of the contract Zenothemis and Hegestratos would keep all of the money.
So the empty boat set out with some passengers and when it was some two or three days out at sea, Hegestratos went down to the hold. Zenothemis stayed on the deck with the passengers, pretending to be unaware of what was afoot. Hegestratos prceeded to cut away the bottom of the boat but the noise he made alerted suspicion and members of the crew and some of the passengers went down to the hold and caught the fraudster red-handed. Realising that the game was up, Hegestratos made good his escape, jumping overboard but as it was dark, he missed the rescue boat and drowned for his pains, suffering the fate that he had intended for the innocent passengers and crew. Zenothemis was arrested as details of the fraud were revealed and was left to face the Athenian courts and the rhetorical mastery of Demosthenes.
The prospect of making a few bob by skulduggery has been irresistible since age immemorial, it would seem.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: bottomry, Demosthenes, Hegostratos, the world's first insurance scam, Zenothemis
