Surety in the contracts for the lease of the sacred lands in Attica in the second half of the 4th century BC

The article discusses the issue of the surety system during the lease of the sacred lands (the temenos) in Attica (the Athens region) in the second half of the 4^th century BC. The main purpose is to present what types of guarantees existed in the process of the land transactions in the Athenian polis of the second half of the 4^th century BC. For the first time in historiography, based on the information contained in the epigraphic material, a comprehensive study of the guarantees that existed during the lease of the sacred lands in Attica is carried out. Through the analysis of the epigraphic material, various types of guarantees were identified that were used during the lease of the temenos in the Athenian polis of the second half of the fourth century BC, among them the pledge of a real estate, the personal participation of the citizens who acted as the guarantors of the fulfillment of the terms of the transaction. The prosopographical analysis of the names of the guarantors demonstrates that most of them had a high social status, which, apparently, indicates their attitude to the participation in the lease of the sacred lands as a special kind of obligation, a kind of liturgy. A comparison of the information obtained from the inscriptions on the lease of the temenos in Attica with the analogous information from other areas of the Greek world, in particular, from the territory of Delos and Thespia, makes it possible to conclude that the types of the guarantees in different areas of Ancient Greece are similar.

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