On The Estate of Ciron

Thus I acted in this manner under compulsion; but in order that they might gain no advantage over me by alleging to you that I bore no part of the funeral expenses, I consulted the interpreter of the sacred law and by his advice I paid for at my own expense and offered the ninth-day offerings in the most sumptuous manner possible, in order that I might confound their sacrilegious tricks, and that it might not seem that they had paid for everything and I for nothing, but that I might be thought to have done my share.

Such in substance, gentlemen, are the events which have occurred and the causes of all this trouble. If you understood the impudence of Diocles and his behavior on all other occasions, you would have no difficulty in believing anything in my story. For the fortune which he now possesses, and with which he makes such a brave show, is not really his; for when his three half-sisters, the children of his mother, were left heiresses, he represented himself as the adopted son of their father, though the latter left no will to this effect.