Theomnestus and Apollodorus Against Neaera

Now let me bring before you another deposition of Phrastor and his clansmen and the members of his gens, which proves that the defendant Neaera is an alien. Not long after Phrastor had sent away the daughter of Neaera, he fell sick. He got into a dreadful condition and became utterly helpless. There was an old quarrel between him and his own relatives, toward whom he cherished anger and hatred; and besides he was childless. Being cajoled, therefore, in his illness by the attentions of Neaera and her daughter—

they came while he lay sick and had no one to care for him, bringing him the medicines suited to his case and looking after his needs; and you know of yourselves what value a woman has in the sick-room, when she waits upon a man who is ill—well, he was induced to take back and adopt as his son the child whom the daughter of this woman Neaera had borne after she was sent away from his house in a state of pregnancy, after he had learned that she was the daughter, not of Stephanus, but of Neaera, and was angered at their deceit.

His reasoning in the matter was both natural and to be expected. He was in a precarious condition and there was not much hope that he would recover. He did not wish his relatives to get his property nor himself to die childless, so he adopted this boy and received him back into his house. That he would never have done this, if he had been in good health, I will show you by a strong and convincing proof.

For no sooner had Phrastor got up from that sickness and recovered his health and was fairly well, than he took to wife according to the laws an Athenian woman, the legitimate daughter of Satyrus, of Melitê, and the sister of Diphilus. Let this, therefore, be a proof to you that he took back the child, not willingly, but forced by his sickness, by his childless condition, by the care shown by these women in nursing him, and by the enmity which he felt toward his own relatives, and his wish that they should not inherit his property, if anything should happen to him. This will be proved to you even more clearly by what followed.

For when Phrastor at the time of his illness sought to introduce the boy born of the daughter of Neaera to his clansmen and to the Brytidae, to which gens Phrastor himself belongs, the members of the gens, knowing, I fancy, who the woman was whom Phrastor first took to wife, that, namely, she was the daughter of Neaera, and knowing, too, of his sending the woman away, and that it was because of his illness that Phrastor had been induced to take back the child, refused to recognize the child and would not enter him on their register.

Phrastor brought suit against them for refusing to register his son, but the members of the gens challenged him before the arbitrator to swear by full-grown victims that he verily believed the boy to be his own son, born of an Athenian woman and one betrothed to him in accordance with the law. When the members of the gens tendered this challenge to Phrastor before the arbitrator, he refused to take the oath, and did not swear.