speaker's father

Inasmuch as my father, men of the jury, through this man Theocrines was brought to disaster in his relations to the state and condemned to pay a fine of ten talents, and as this fine has been doubled, so that we have not the slightest hope of deliverance, I have thought it my duty to lodge this criminal information with a view to taking vengeance upon the defendant with your aid, without taking in …

In his accusation against my father, men of the jury, when he was prosecuting the indictment for illegality against him, he stated that a plot had been formed against the boy, regarding whom the decree was drawn—the decree, that is, in which my father moved that maintenance in the Prytaneum should be granted to Charidemus, son of Ischomachus.

and they fined my father ten talents as being in the scheme with Polyeuctus, and gave credence to Theocrines as having come to the boy’s defence.

For our father left us an estate great in reputation, but in real value small and far less than others';

on the one hand, the honours of my father, with which you honoured him as a good man who, all the time he lived, justly presided over this city;

For my grandfather, together with my mother, obtained from the emperor of that time, who was his friend, at one and the same time the Roman citizenship and yours;

But Boeotus feels no shame in disparaging before you the man whom he compelled to become his father, and has even come to such a pitch of vulgarity that, although the laws forbid speaking ill even of other men’s fathers after they are dead, he will slander the man whose son he claims to be;

For instance, I have not only had the misfortune in the beginning that Plangon, the mother of these men, by deceit and manifest perjury, compelled my father to bring himself to acknowledge them, and that consequently I was robbed of two-thirds of my inheritance;

and will allege that when the property of Pamphilus, who was the father of Plangon, was confiscated, my father took from out the council-chamber the surplus proceeds and he will thus try to show that his own mother brought a dowry of more than one hundred minae, while my mother (he will claim) brought my father no portion whatever.

for she had been set free by my father, and she lived in a separate house, and had taken a husband.

Yet my father left to each of us, my brother and myself, an estate of forty-five minae merely, on which it is not easy to live, while your fathers were possessed of such wealth that each of them set up a tripod in honor of choregic victories at the Dionysia.

But I will show that I have expended large sums—I, who inherited that slender estate from my father.

But since my father into whose possession he came, was a banker and taught him letters and instructed him in his business and put him in control of large sums of money, he has become wealthy, having found the good luck which brought him into our family the foundation of all his present wealth.

And, then, did you speak evil of me, and inquire what manner of man my father was?

I bid adieu to this fellow and appeal to those to whom my father left me as my helpers and friends—to you, men of the jury.

When our father took her in marriage, he gave a wedding-feast and invited three of his friends as well as his relatives, and he gave a marriage-banquet to the members of his ward according to their statutes.

My grandfather received her back again—without, however, recovering the dowry which he had given, owing to the embarrassed condition of Nausimenes' affairs—and gave her in a second marriage to my father with a dowry of one thousand drachmae.

Again, our father at our birth introduced us to the members of his ward, having declared on oath, in accordance with the established laws, that he was introducing the children of an Athenian mother duly married;