Against Nausimachus and Xenopeithes

That, therefore, these men have no right of action against us for the debts which our father collected before the settlement, or, in general, for monies which he received by virtue of his guardianship, seeing that they have given a release for their claims, I think you have all adequately learned from the laws themselves and from the release. Moreover, that it is impossible that the collection of these funds should have been made subsequently (this is the story they are making up to lead you astray), I wish to prove.

As for my father, they cannot charge that he received them; for he died three or four months after the settlement was made with them; and that Demaretus, whom our father left as our guardian, could not have received them either (for they have written his name also in their complaint), this, too, I shall show.

These men are themselves our strongest witnesses; for they will be shown never to have brought suit against Demaretus in his lifetime; but, more than that, anyone who examines and studies the case itself will see, not only that he did not receive the money, but that it was impossible that he should have received it. For the debt was in Bosporus, a place which Demaretus never visited; how, then, could he have collected it? Ah, but, they will say, he sent someone to get the money.

But look at the matter in this way. Hermonax owed these men one hundred staters,[*](The Athenian stater was a gold coin worth twenty drachmae.) which he had received from Nausicrates. Aristaechmus was for sixteen years the guardian and caretaker of these men. Therefore, the money which Hermonax paid in his own person after these men had come of age, he had not paid when they were minors; for he certainly did not pay the same debt twice. Now is there any man so silly as voluntarily to pay money to one not entitled to it, who demanded it by letter, when he had for so long a time evaded payment to the rightful owners? For my part, I think there is not.