Against Nausimachus and Xenopeithes

Moreover, I think I can also prove that you might with good reason refuse to hear a word from them in regard to the guardianship.[*](The following passage is repeated almost verbatim from the preceding oration, Dem. 37.58 ff.) For suppose one should grant that they have suffered the greatest possible wrongs, and that everything which they will now allege about these matters is true, this, at least, I presume you would all admit: that it has happened to others ere now to have suffered many wrongs more serious than pecuniary wrongs. For involuntary homicides, outrages on what is sacred, and many other such crimes are committed; yet in all these cases the fact they have yielded to persuasion and given a release is appointed for the parties wronged as a limit and settlement of the dispute.

And this just principle is so binding among all men, that, if one, having convicted another of involuntary homicide, and clearly shown him to be polluted, subsequently takes pity upon him, and releases him, he has no longer the right to have the same person driven into exile. If, then, when life and all that is most precious are at stake, a release has this power and validity, shall it be without effect, when money is at stake, or claims of lesser importance? Surely not. For the thing most to be feared is, not that I should fail to obtain justice in your court, but that a just practice, established from the beginning of time, should now be done away with.

They did not let our property, they will perhaps say. No; for your uncle Xenopeithes did not want it let, but, after Nicidas had denounced him for this,[*](If a guardian did not fulfil the duties imposed by his position, any citizen might charge him before the archon with breach of trust.) induced the jurors to allow him to administer it; and this everybody knows. They robbed us of huge sums. Well, for this you have received from them the damages upon which you agreed; and, I take it, you are not entitled to recover it again from me.

But, that you may not think there is anything in all this—it is of course not fair (how could it be?) after having come to a settlement with the guilty parties, to accuse persons who know nothing about the case—none the less, Xenopeithes and Nausimachus, if you have the idea that your claims are so marvellously valid, pay back three talents, and go on with your suit. After having exacted so large a sum for not pressing your charges, you are bound to keep silent until you have paid this back—not to make the charges and keep the money; that is the very extreme of unfair dealing.

Now it is likely that they will talk about their trierarchies, and say that they have expended their property upon you. That their statements will be false; that they have squandered much of their property upon themselves, while the state has received but a small share; and that they will deem it right to reap from you a gratitude that is not deserved nor due—all this I shall pass over. I myself, men of the jury, deem it right that somewhat of gratitude should be accorded by you to all who bear the public burdens. But to whom should you accord most gratitude? To those who, while in their actions doing what is of service to the state, do not bring to pass what all would call a shame and a reproach.

But those who while performing public services have squandered their own property, bring the state into disrepute instead of rendering her service. For no man ever yet blamed himself; on the contrary, he declares that the state has taken away his property. But those who with ready hearts perform all the duties you lay upon them, and who by the soberness of their lives in other matters preserve their property, rightly have the better of the others in this respect, that they both have been and will be of service, and also because this service accrues to you from them without reproach. We shall be found to be men of this type in our relations to you; as for them, I shall pass them by, that they may not charge that I am speaking evil of them.

I should not be surprised if they try to shed tears and make themselves seem worthy of pity. But I deem that, in view of this, you should all remember that it is the part of shameless men, or rather of men with no sense of right, after having squandered their fortune in gluttony and wine-bibbing along with Aristocrates and Diognetus and others of that stamp in shameful and evil fashion, to weep and wail now in the hope of getting what belongs to others. You would have good cause to weep over your former doings. Yet it is not now a time to weep, but to prove that you did not give a release, or that action may be had afresh for the matters released, or that it is legal to bring an action after the lapse of twenty years, when the law has fixed five years as the limit. These are the questions which these gentlemen are to decide.

If they are unable to prove these things, as they will be unable, we beg of you all, men of the jury, not to deliver us up as prey to these men, nor to give yet a fourth fortune to those who have mismanaged three others—that which they received from their guardians without compulsion, that which they exacted by compromising their suits, and that which the other day they took from Aesius by a judgement—but to allow us, as is right, to retain what is our own. It is of greater service to you in our hands than in theirs. And surely it is more just that we should have what is our own than that they should have it.

I do not know what reason there is why I should say more[*](The speaker closes with a brief paragraph which occurs also at the end of Dem. 36.); for I believe that nothing that I have said has escaped you. Pour out the water.