Against Aphobus I

And now, in seeking to recover what is mine, I have come into the greatest peril; for if the defendant is acquitted (which heaven forbid!) I shall have to pay one-sixth of the damages,[*](The plaintiff in a private suit who was so far from being able to prove his case that he did not receive a fifth part of the votes, was subject to a fine of one-sixth of the damages claimed (an obol for each drachma). Failure to pay entailed the loss of civic rights. Compare Dem. 28.18, end. In the case of Aphobus, the amount for which he would be held liable, if he lost suit, would be fixed by the court.) one hundred minae. The defendant, if you give judgement against him, will be liable for a sum to be determined, and will make payment, not out of his own funds, but out of mine; while in my case the sum is fixed, so that I shall not only have been robbed of my inheritance, but shall also lose my civic rights, unless you now take pity on me.

I beg you, therefore, men of the jury, I entreat, I implore you, to remember the laws and the oaths which you took as jurors, to render me the aid that is my due, and not to count the pleas of this man of higher worth than mine. It is your duty to show pity, not toward the guilty, but toward those in unmerited misfortune; not upon those who so cruelly rob another of his goods, but upon me, who have for so long a time been deprived of my inheritance and treated with outrage by these men, and who am now in danger of losing my civic rights.

Loudly methinks, would my father groan, should he learn that I, his son, am in danger of being forced to pay the sixth part of the marriage-portions and legacies given by himself to these men; and that, while others of our countrymen out of their own funds have dowered the daughters of impoverished kinsfolk and even friends, Aphobus refuses to pay back even the marriage-portion which he took, and that too in the tenth year.