On the Estate of Menecles

it was enough that he himself was unfortunate. [His words clearly prove that he loved her when he put her away; for no one utters supplications for one whom he hates.][*](This sentence is inappropriate and has clearly come into the text from a marginal gloss.) He, therefore, begged us to do him the favor of marrying her to someone else with his consent. We told him that it was for him to persuade her in the matter, for we would do whatever she agreed.

At first she would not even listen to his suggestion, but in course of time she with difficulty consented. So we gave her in marriage to Elius of Sphettus,[*](A deme south-west of Athens.) and Menecles handed over her dowry to him—for he had become part-lessee of the estate of the children of Nicias[*](See Introduction, p. 38.)—and he gave her the garments which she had brought with her to his house and the jewelry which there was.

Some time after this Menecles began to consider how he could put an end to his childless condition and have someone to tend his old age and bury him when he died and thereafter carry out the customary rites over him. He saw that my opponent had only one son; so he thought it wrong to ask him to give him his son to adopt and so deprive him of male offspring.

Thus he could find no nearer relative than us; he, therefore, approached us and said that he thought it right, since fate had decreed that he should have no children by our sister, that he should adopt a son out of the family from which he would have wished to have a son of his own in the course of nature; “I should like, therefore,” he said,“to adopt one of you two, whichever is willing.”

My brother, on hearing this,[*](The words bracketed in the text have certainly come in from a marginal note and are unsuited to the context here.) expressed his approval of Menecles' proposal and agreed that his age and solitary condition required someone who would look after him, and remain at home; “I,” he said, “as you know, go abroad; but my brother here” (meaning me) “will look after your affairs as well as mine, if you wish to adopt him.” Menecles approved of his suggestion and thus adopted me.

I wish next to prove to you that the adoption was carried out in the proper legal manner. So please read me the law which ordains that a man can dispose as he likes of his own property, if he does not possess male issue of his own. The law-giver, gentlemen, legislated thus, because he saw that for childless persons the only refuge for their solitary condition, and the only possible comfort in life, lay in the possibility of adopting whomsoever they wished.

The law thus allowing Menecles, because he was childless, to adopt a son, he adopted me, not by a will made at the point of death, as other citizens have done, nor during illness; but when he was sound in body and mind, and fully aware of what he was doing, he adopted me and introduced me to his fellow-wardsmen in the presence of my opponents and enrolled me among the demesmen and the members of his confraternity.[*](A private religious association, cf. Isaeus 9.30.)

At the time my opponents raised no objection to his action on the ground that he was not in his right mind, although it would have been much better to have tried to win him over to their point of view during his lifetime rather than insult him now that he is dead and try to desolate his house. For he lived on after the adoption, not one or two years, but twenty-three, and during all this period he never regretted what he had done, because it was universally acknowledged that he had been well advised in what he did.