Against Boeotus I

You have heard from the witnesses the manner in which our father enrolled us; I shall now show to you that, as the defendant did not choose to abide by this enrollment, it was both just and necessary for me to bring suit. For I am surely not so stupid nor unreasonable a person as to have agreed to take only a third of my father’s estate (though the whole of it was coming to me), seeing that my father had adopted these men, and to be content with that, and then to engage in a quarrel with my kin[*](Literally, to strive with one under the same yoke. Such metaphors were very common in Greek antiquity, when horses as well as oxen were driven under the same yoke.) about a name, were it not that for me to change mine would bring great dishonor and a reputation for cowardice, while for my opponent to have the same name as myself was on many accounts impossible.