A merchant died owing money on a Black Sea wine voyage, and his brother, a pupil of Isocrates, told the Athenian court he was not the heir

A speech in the works of Demosthenes, Against Lacritus, preserves a loan contract. Androcles of Sphettus and Nausicrates of Carystus lent 3,000 drachmas to Artemo and Apollodorus of Phaselis for a round trip to the Black Sea. Interest was 225 drachmas per thousand, 300 if the ship left the Black Sea after the rising of Arcturus. The security was 3,000 jars of wine from Mende, to be carried on Hyblesius's twenty-oared ship and sold toward the Bosporus or the Borysthenes, with the proceeds brought back to Athens. Androcles says fewer than 500 jars were loaded, the cargo was pledged again to a lender from Chios, and the ship never returned to Athens. The borrowers said it was wrecked off Crimea with their salt fish and Coan wine. Then Artemo died. Androcles sued his brother Lacritus, who had drafted and sealed the contract and, Androcles says, held all of Artemo's property in Athens and at Phaselis. Androcles predicts Lacritus will say "he is not the heir" and has nothing to do with his brother's affairs. Lacritus filed a plea that the suit could not be brought. The verdict is not recorded. A Yale case study calls the speech "the only surviving maritime loan contract from the period." Edward Harris argues the Athenian maritime-suit law covered all contract and wrong claims by merchants and shipowners on voyages to and from Athens.