At the last stage of the Corinthian war, Anytos, one of the sitophylakes of Athens in 388/7, advised corndealers (sitopolai) to stop striving against each other, because he believed that it would be advantageous to consumers if the corndealers bought grain as cheaply as possible. Complying with the advice of Anytos, a considerable number of corndealers must have bought grain cooperatively. Soon, this caused the repulsion of importers (emporoi). Their collusion seems to have violated a law that no one must buy more than 50 phormoi of grain, so the corndealers were accused. Lysias' oration 22 Against the corndealers', written for an unknown speaker, has produced a difficult question. What caused the accusation against the corndealers? Most scholars have thought that they bought more than 50 phormoi of grain striving for individual monopoly. However, as T. Figueira pointed out, this interpretation has a weakness, when we take into consideration the pattern of grain importation and consumption in Attika. The law forbade anyone or any group in Attika to buy more than 50 phormoi of grain at a time. The purpose of the law was to prevent the wealthy from hoarding more grain than was needed. The corndealers admitted that they contravened the law and bought more than 50 phormoi of grain in cooperation. However, they explained that they acted according to the advice of a sitophlax for the benefit of Athenian citizens. We do not know the result of the case, but it is clear that the plan of Anytos to hold down the price of grain failed.
