Greek Texts & Translations

28.18Is not the wrong I have suffered from the beginning great indeed, and great the harm they are striving to do me now, because I seek to obtain redress? Who of you would not rightly feel indignation against this man and pity for me, seeing that to the estate of more than ten talents which he inherited there has been added my own of such considerable size, while I have not only been defrauded of my inheritance, but am by the rascality of these men being robbed even of what they have now repaid me? To what are we to turn, if you give a different decision regarding them? To the goods mortgaged to our creditors? But they belong to the holders of the mortgage. To what is left after the creditors are paid? But that becomes the property of the defendant, if you condemn me to pay an obol on each drachma. ^note 28.19Do not, men of the jury, be to us the cause of such deep distress; do not allow my mother, my sister and myself to suffer undeserved misfortunes. It was not to prospects such as these that my father left us. Nay, my sister was to be the wife of Demophon with a dowry of two talents, my mother the wife of this most ruthless of all men with a dowry of eighty minae, and I as my father's successor was to perform state services as he had done. 28.20Succor us, then, succor us, for the sake of justice, for your own sakes, for ours, and for my dead father's sake. Save us; have compassion on us since these, our relatives, have felt no compassion. It is to you that we have fled for protection. I beseech you, I implore you by your children, by your wives, by all the good things you possess. So may heaven give you joy of them, do not look upon me with indifference nor cause my mother, deprived of the hopes in life that are left her, to suffer a lot unworthy of her. 28.21She now thinks that she is to welcome me home after I have won a just verdict from you, and that my sister will not be portionless. But, if you decide adversely (which may heaven forfend) what, think you, will be her anguish of soul when she sees me not only robbed of my patrimony, but disenfranchised as well, and has no hope that my sister will find an establishment that befits her station because of the poverty that will be ours? 28.22I have not deserved, men of the jury, to fail of justice at your hands, nor has Aphobus deserved that he should retain all the money that he has wrongfully taken. Regarding myself, even though you have as yet had no experience to prove what manner of man I am in my relations to you, yet it is fair to expect that I shall not be worse than my father; but of this man you have had experience, and you know well that, though he inherited a large estate, he has shown no generosity toward you, but has been proven to be a defrauder of others.

28.23Look, then, to this, and bear in mind the other facts; and then cast your vote on the side of justice. You have evidence that is adequate, evidence from witnesses, from depositions, from probabilities, from the statements of these men themselves who acknowledge that they took possession of my entire estate. They say they have spent it, but they have not spent it; they have it all in their own possession.

28.24All these things should be in your minds, and you should show some consideration for us, knowing that, if I recover my property through your aid, I shall naturally be ready to undertake public services, being grateful to you for rightfully restoring to me my estate; while this fellow, if you make him master of my goods, will do nothing of the kind. Do not imagine that he will be ready to undertake public services for you on behalf of property which he denies having received. Nay; he will conceal it rather, that it may appear that he was justly acquitted.