| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 39.10 | Dem. 39.19 (Greek) | >>Dem. 39.28 |
39.16What if the name be involved in the filing of any other suit, or, in general, in any unpleasant scandal? Who, among people at large, will know which of the two it is, when there are two Mantitheuses having the same father? Suppose, again, that he should be prosecuted for evasion of military service, and should be serving as chorister when he ought to be abroad with the army—as, a while ago, when the rest went over to Tamynae, note he was left behind here keeping the feast of Pitchers, note and remained here and served in the chorus at the Dionysia, note as all of you who were at home saw;
39.17then, after the soldiers had come back from Euboea, he was summoned on a charge of desertion, and I, as taxiarch of our tribe, note was compelled to receive the summons, since it was against my name, that of my father being added; and if pay had been available for the juries, note I should certainly have had to bring the case into court. If this had not occurred after the boxes note had already been sealed, I should have brought you witnesses to prove it.
39.18Well then; suppose he were summoned on the charge of being an alien. And he does make himself obnoxious to many, and the way in which my father was compelled to adopt him is no secret. You, on your part, while my father was refusing to acknowledge him, believed that his mother was telling the truth; but when, with his parentage thus established, he makes himself odious, you will some day on the contrary conclude that my father's story was true. Again, what if my opponent, in the expectation of being convicted of perjury for the services note which he freely grants his associates, should allow the suit to go by default? Do you think it would be a slight injury that I should be my whole life long a sharer of his reputation and his doings?
39.19Pray observe that my fear regarding the things I have set forth to you is not a vain one. He has already, men of Athens, been defendant in certain suits, in which, although I have been wholly innocent, odium has attached to my name as well as his; and he has laid claim to the office to which you had elected me; and many unpleasant things have happened to me because of the name; regarding each one of which I will produce witnesses to inform you fully.
Witnesses
39.20You see, men of Athens, what keeps happening and the annoyance resulting from the matter. But even if there were no annoying results, and if it were not absolutely impossible for us both to have the same name, it surely is not fair for him to have his share of my property by virtue of the adoption which my father made under compulsion, and for me to be robbed of the name which that father gave me of his own free will and under constraint from no one. I, certainly, think it is not. Now, to show you that my father not only made the entry in the list of the clansmen in the manner which has been testified to you, but that he gave me this name when he kept the tenth day after my birth, note please take this deposition.
Deposition
39.21You hear then, men of Athens, that I have always been in possession of the name Mantitheus; but that my father, when he was compelled to enter him, entered the defendant in the list of clansmen as Boeotus. I should be glad, then, to ask him in your presence, “If my father had not died, what would you have done in the presence of your demesman? Would you not have allowed yourself to be registered as Boeotus?” But it would have been absurd to bring suit to force this and then afterwards to seek to prevent it. And yet, if you had allowed him, my father would have enrolled you in the register of demesmen by the same name as he did in that of the clansmen. Then, O Earth and the Gods, it is monstrous for him to claim that Mantias is his father, and yet to have the audacity to try to make of none effect what Mantias did in his lifetime.
39.22He had the effrontery, moreover, to make before the arbitrator the most audacious assertions, that my father kept the tenth day after birth for him, just as for me, and gave him the name Mantitheus; and he brought forward as witnesses persons with whom my father was never known to be intimate. But I think that not one of you is unaware that no man would have kept the tenth day for a child which he did not believe was rightly his own; nor, if he had kept the day and shown the affection one would feel for a son, would afterward have dared to deny him. 39.23For even if he might have got into some quarrel with the mother of these children, he would not have hated them, if he believed them to be his own. note For man and wife are much more apt, in cases where they are at variance with one another, to become reconciled for the sake of their children, than, on the ground of the injuries which they have done one to the other, to hate their common children also. However, it is not from these facts alone that you may see that he will be lying, if he makes these statements; but, before he claimed to be a kinsman of ours, he used to go to the tribe Hippothontis to dance in the chorus of boys. note
| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 39.10 | Dem. 39.19 (Greek) | >>Dem. 39.28 |
