Greek Texts & Translations

29.42There are many points from which one may see your rascality, but most of all if one hears how you acted regarding the will. For although my father, men of the jury, wrote a will containing an inventory of all that he left, with instructions for letting the property, this will Aphobus never gave up to me, lest I should learn from it the value of the estate, and admitted possessing only those items which were so well known that he could not deny that he had them. 29.43The will, according to his statement, contained these provisions: that Demophon should at once receive two talents, and should marry my sister when she should come of age (this would be in ten years); that Aphobus himself should have eighty minae with my mother, and the house to live in; and that Therippides should enjoy the interest on seventy minae until I should reach manhood. All the rest of the property left to me apart from these items, and the clause regarding the letting of the estate, he suppressed from the will, not thinking that it was to his interest that these matters should be made known in your court. 29.44However, since it was admitted by Aphobus himself that my father on his death-bed gave to each of these men such large sums of money, the jurymen at the former trial considered these admissions to be a proof of the size of the estate. For when a man gave out of his estate four talents and three thousand drachmae by way of marriage-portion and legacy, it was plain that he took these sums, not from a small estate, but from one (bequeathed to me) of more than double this amount. 29.45 ^note For it cannot be supposed that he would wish to leave me, his son, in poverty, and be eager further to enrich these men, who were already wealthy. No; it was because of the size of the estate left to me that he gave to Therippides the interest on seventy minae, and to Demophon that on the two talents—though he was not yet to marry my sister. These moneys it has been proved that Aphobus never gave over to me, nor even an amount slightly less. Part of it he said he had spent, part he had never received, part he knew nothing about, part was in the hands of so-and-so, part was in the house, and of part he could say anything except when and where he had paid it over.

29.46As to his story of money left in the house I shall clearly prove to you that he is lying. This argument he speciously introduced, when it had become clear that the property was large and was unable to show that he had paid it back, in order that it might appear a reasonable inference that I was wrongfully seeking to recover what was already in my possession. 29.47 ^note If my father had no confidence in these men it is plain that he would neither have entrusted them with the rest of his property, nor, if he had left this money in the way alleged, would he have told them of it. How, then, do they know about it? But, if he had confidence in them, he would not, I take it, have given into their hands the bulk of his property, and not have put them in charge of the rest. Nor would he have entrusted this remainder to my mother to keep and then have pledged her herself in marriage to this man, who was one of the guardians. For it is not reasonable that he should seek to make the money secure through her, and yet put one of the men whom he distrusted in control both of her and of it. 29.48Furthermore, if there were any truth in all this, do you suppose that Aphobus would not have taken my mother to wife, bequeathed to him as she was by my father? He had already taken her marriage-portion—the eighty minae—as though he were going to marry her; but he subsequently married the daughter of Philonides of Melite, from motives of avarice, in order that, in addition to what he had received from us, he might get from him other eighty minae. But, if there had been four talents in the house, and in her custody, as he alleges, don't you imagine he would have raced to get possession both of her and of them?