Apollodorus Against Polycles for Expenses Incurred while Serving as Trierarch (15-17)

They saw also that my resources were by now exhausted, that the state was neglectful of them, that our allies were in need, and the generals not to be depended on, and that they had been deceived by the words of many of them; and they knew that the term of my trierarchy had expired and that their voyage was not to be homeward and that no successor had arrived to take command from whom they could expect any relief. For the more ambitious I had been to man my ship with good rowers, by so much was the desertion from me greater than from the other trierarchs.

For the others had this advantage at any rate, that the sailors who had come to their ships drawn from the official lists, stayed with them in order to make sure of their return home when the general should discharge them; whereas mine, trusting in their skill as able rowers, went off wherever they were likely to be re-employed at the highest wages, thinking more of their gain for the immediate present than of the danger impending over them, if they should ever be caught by me.

Consequently when my affairs were in the condition which I have described, and at the same time I was ordered by the general, Timomachus, to sail to Hieron[*] to convoy the grain, though he provided no pay (word had been brought that the Byzantines and the Calchedonians were again bringing the ships into port and forcing them to unload their grain), I borrowed money from Archidemus of Anaphlystus,[*] fifteen minae at interest, and I secured from Nicippus, the shipowner, who happened to be in Sestus,[*] eight hundred drachmae, as a maritime loan at 12 1/2 per cent, on condition that I should pay him principal and interest when the ship should get safely back to Athens.