Greek Texts & Translations

Call these people, please.Witnesses

57.39These witnesses, then, you have heard giving their testimony and taking their oaths. I will call also one who is our kinsman on both sides, and his sons. For Timocrates, who is my mother's brother, born from the same father and the same mother, had a son Euxitheus, and Euxitheus had three sons. All these persons are still living.

Call, please, those of them who are in the city.Witnesses

57.40Now take, please, the depositions of the members of the clan belonging to the same gens as my mother, and of the members of the deme, and of those who have the right of burial in the same tombs.Depositions

As to my mother's lineage, then, I prove to you in this way that she was an Athenian on both the male and the female side. My mother, men of the jury, first married Protomachus, to whom she was given by Timocrates, her brother born of the same father and the same mother ^note; and she had by him a daughter. Then she married my father and gave birth to me. But how it was that she came to marry my father you must hear; for the charges which my opponent makes regarding Cleinias and my mother's having served as nurse—all this too I will set forth to you clearly. 57.41Protomachus was a poor man, but becoming entitled to inherit a large estate by marrying an heiress, ^note and wishing to give my mother in marriage, he persuaded my father Thucritus, an acquaintance of his, to take her, and my father received my mother in marriage at the hands of her brother Timocrates of Melitê, in the presence of both his own uncles and other witnesses; and of these as many as are still living shall give testimony before you. 57.42Some time after this, when by now two children had been born to her, she was compelled at a time when my father was absent on military service with Thrasybulus and she herself was in hard straits, to take Cleinias, the son of Cleidicus, to nurse. This act of hers was, Heaven knows, none too fortunate with reference to the danger which has now come upon me (for it was from this nursing that all the slander about us has arisen); but in view of the poverty with which she had to cope she did what was perhaps both necessary and fitting. 57.43Now it is plain, men of Athens, that it was not my father who first received my mother in marriage. No; it was Protomachus,and he had by her a son, and a daughter whom he gave in marriage. And he, even though dead, bears testimony by what he did that my mother was an Athenian and of civic birth.

To prove that these statements of mine are true, call first, please, the sons of Protomachus, and next the witnesses who were present when my mother was betrothed to my father, and from the members of the clan the kinsfolk to whom my father gave the marriage-feast in honor of my mother. After them call Eunicus of Cholargus, ^note who received my sister in marriage from Protomachus, and then my sister's son. Call them.Witnesses

57.44Would not my lot, men of Athens, be more piteous than that of any other, if, when all this host of witnesses deposes and swears that they are of my kin, and when no one disputes the citizenship of any one of these, you should vote that I am an alien?

Take, please, also the deposition of Cleinias and that of his relatives; for they, I presume, know who my mother was who once served as his nurse. Their oath requires them to bear witness, not to what I say today, but to what they have always known regarding her who was reputed to be my mother and the nurse of Cleinias. 57.45For even if a nurse is a lowly thing, I do not shun the truth. For it is not our being poor that would mark us as wrong-doers, but our not being citizens; and the present trial has to do, not with our fortune or our money, but with our descent. Many are the servile acts which free men are compelled by poverty to perform, and for these they should be pitied, men of Athens, rather than be brought also to utter ruin. For, as I am informed, many women have become nurses and laborers at the loom or in the vineyards owing to the misfortunes of the city in those days, women of civic birth, too; and many who were poor then are now rich. However, I shall speak of these matters by and by.

For the moment, please call the witnesses.Witnesses