Against Boeotus II

Besides all this, my mother is shown to have been first given in marriage to Cleomedon, whose father Cleon, we are told,[*](A striking instance of the Greek preference for the spoken rather than the written word.) commanded troops among whom were your ancestors, and captured alive a large number of Lacedaemonians in Pylos,[*](This was in 425 B.C. The account is given in Thuc. 4.3 ff.) and won greater renown than any other man in the state; so it was not fitting that the son of that famous man should wed my mother without a dowry, nor is it likely that Menexenus and Bathyllus, who had large fortunes themselves, and who, after Cleomedon’s death, received back the dowry, defrauded their own sister; rather, they would themselves have added to her portion, when they gave her in marriage to my father, as they themselves and the others have testified before you.