Abdicatus

A son who had been disowned studied medicine. When his father became insane and had been given up by the other doctors, he cured him by administering a remedy, and was again received into the family. After that, he was ordered to cure his stepmother, who was insane, and as he refused to do so, he is now being disowned again.[*](The words in italics are supplied to give the approximate sense of those lost in the Greek text. )

There is nothing novel or surprising, gentlemen of the jury, in my father’s present course, and this is not the first time that he has displayed such anger ; on the contrary, he keeps this law always in readiness and resorts to this court by habit.[*](The law permitting a father to disown his son, and the court before which his complaint had to be presented. No certain case of disownment at Athens is known; but Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Arch., II, 26) says that provisions for it were included in the codes of Solon, Pittacus, and Charondas, there is one in Plato’s Laws (XI, 928D; it involves a family council), and Egyptian documents attest it. P. M. Meyer, in publishing one of them (Juristische Papyri, No. XI) cites Cod. Just., VIII, 46, 6: abdicatio, quae Graeco more ad alienandos liberos usurpatur et apoceryxis dicebatur, Romanis legibus non comprobatur. ), There is, however, something of novelty in my present plight, in that I am under no personal charge, but am in jeopardy of punishment on behalf of my profession because it cannot in every particular obey his behests. But what could be more absurd than to give treatment under orders, in accordance, not with the powers of the profession, but with the desires of my father? I could wish, to be sure, that medical science had a remedy

For my part, in cases which can be cured I do not wait to be summoned; on the previous occasion, for instance, I came to his relief uncalled. But when a case is perfectly desperate, I am unwilling even to essay it. And in respect to this woman I am with good reason even less venturesome, since I take into consideration how I should be treated by my father if I were to fail, when without having so much as begun treating her I am disowned. I am indeed pained, gentlemen of the jury, at my stepmother’s serious condition (for she was a good woman), at my father’s distress on her account, and most of all at my own apparent disobedience and real inabilit to do the'service which is enjoined upon me, bot because of the extraordinary violence of the illness and the ineffectiveness of the art of healing. I do not think, however, that it is just to disown a man who declines at the outset to promise what he cannot perform.

The charges on which he disowned me before can be readily understood from the present situation. To those charges I have made a sufficient answer, I

I who am so difficult and disobedient, who so disgrace my father and act so unworthily of my family, on the former occasion thought it behoved me to make little opposition to him when he was making all that clamour and straining his lungs. On leaving the house, I expected to have a grand jury and a true verdict in my subsequent life, with its disclosure that I was at a very great remove from those offences with which I had been charged by my father, that I had devoted myself to the noblest of pursuits, and that I was frequenting the best company. I foresaw, too, something like this, suspecting even then that it indicated no great sanity in a father to be angry unjustly and to concoct false accusations against a son. And there were those who held all that to be the beginning of madness, the hostile demonstration and skirmish-fire of the disease that was soon to fall upon him—the insensate hatred, the cruel law, the ready abusiveness, the grim tribunal, the clamour, the anger, and in general the atrabiliousness which impregnated the whole proceedings. Therefore I expected that perhaps I should some day need a knowledge of medicine.

I went abroad, then, studied with the most famous physicians in foreign parts, and by dint of great labour and insistent zeal thoroughly mastered the art. On my return I found my father by then defin-

Since I saw that my father was still within hope and his ailment not beyond professional skill, after long observation and accurate investigation of all details I set my hand to it at last and compounded my remedy confidently, although many of those present were suspicious of my prescription, critical of my treatment of the case, and ready to bring charges against me.

My stepmother was present also, panic-stricken and distrustful, not because she hated me but because she was fearful and well aware that he was in a bad way; she knew it because she alone associated exclusively with him and lived side by

To sum it up, he became well at once, recovered his sanity, and was thoroughly in command of his faculties. Those present were amazed, and my stepmother was full of praise, making it plain to all that she was delighted with my success and his sanity. And as for my father here (for I am able to testify on his behalf) without delay and without asking any advice in this matter, as soon as he had heard the whole story from those who were there, he annulled the disownment and made me his son once more, calling me his saviour and benefactor, admitting that he had tested me thoroughly, and defending himself for his former charges. This event gave joy to many, the men of rectitude who were there, and pain to those who preferred the disownment of a son to his resumption. I saw, anyhow, at the time that not all were equally pleased with the affair, but at once one or another showed changed colour, disturbed eyes, and an angry face, such as comes from jealousy and hatred.

Well, we were rejoicing and making merry, as was natural, since we had regained each other,

when after a short time my stepmother suddenly began to be afflicted, gentlemen of the jury, with an ailment which was severe and unusual. I observed the

Seeing this, I was distressed and pitied the woman, who was worthy of it and unfortunate beyond her deserts.

My father, in his inexperience (for he does not know either the origin of the trouble that holds her in its grip, or its cause, or the extent of the infirmity), bade me treat her and give her the same medicine; for he thinks that madness has but one form, that the ailment is simple, and that her illness is identical with his, permitting the same treatment. When I say what is as true as true can be, that it is impossible to save his wife and confess that I am worsted by the disorder, he is indignant and angry, and says that I am deliberately shirking and giving the woman up, thus making the ineffectiveness of the art of medicine a reproach against me. He does, indeed, what is habitually done by people who are offended; all are angry at those who speak the truth in frankness. In spite of that, I shall plead to the best of my ability against him, not only for myself but for my art.

First, I shall begin with the law under which he wishes to disown me, in order that he may discover that his power is now no longer what it was before. The lawgiver, father,has not permitted all to exercise the privilege of disownment, or upon all sons, or as often as they choose, or upon all manner of grounds. On the contrary, just as he has conceded to fathers the right to exercise such anger, just so he has made provision in behalf of sons, that they may not suffer it unjustly ; and for that reason he has not allowed the punishment to be inflicted freely or without trial, but has ordered men to be summoned to court and empanelled as investigators who will not be influenced either by anger or by malice in determining what is just. For he knew that many people on many occasions are obsessed by senseless reasons for anger; that one believes a malicious falsehood, while another relies upon a servant or an unfriendly female. It was not his idea, therefore, that the thing should go untried or that sons should at once lose their case by default. Water is measured,[*](Time for speaking is apportioned to each side by the waterclock (κλέψυδρα). ) a hearing is given, and nothing is left uninvestigated.

Accordingly, since it is within your powers, since my father controls only the charge, and you who sit in judgement control the decision whether his accusation is reasonable, do not yet consider his specific allegation against me and the ground of his present indignation, but first examine that other point, whether he should still be allowed to disown a son when, after once for all disowning him, using the privilege that derives from the law and exercising to the full this paternal suzerainty, he has subsequently

When that son was born there was no way, of course, to ascertain whether he would turn out to be bad or good, and on that account the privilege of repudiating children who are unworthy of their family has been allowed to their parents, since they determined to bring them up at a time when they were unaware ofthis.

When, however, under no constraint but able to do as he pleases, a man himself, of his own motion and after putting his son to the test, takes him back, what pretext for change of mind remains, or what further recourse to the law? The legislator would say to you: “If he was bad and deserved to be disowned, what made you ask him back? Why did you readmit him to your house? Why did you nullify the law? You were free and at liberty not to do this. Surely it cannot be conceded that you should make sport of the laws and that

In Heaven’s name, gentlemen of the jury, do not permit him, once he has effected the reinstatement of his own free will, set aside the decision of the former court, and nullified his anger, to reinvoke the same penalty and to recur to the right of a father when its term by now is over and done with, inoperative in his case alone because it is already used up. You perceive, surely, that in all courts where jurors are drawn by lot, if a man thinks that the verdict is unjust, the law allows him to appeal from them to another tribunal; but if people have themselves of their own accord agreed upon jurors and willingly committed the arbitrament to them, that is not then the case. For there was no need to consult them at all; but if a man has selected them of his own choice, he ought to remain content with their decision. So it is with you: a son who seemed to you unworthy of his lineage need never have been taken back, but one whom you have pronounced good and taken

Even if I were not your own son, but adopted, and you wished to disown me, I should not think you could; for what it was possible not to do at all, it is unjust to undo once it has taken place. But when a son has been got by birth, and then again by choice and decision, how is it reasonable to put him away again and deprive him repeatedly of that single relationship? If I happened to be a slave, and at first, thinking me vicious, you had put me in irons, but on becoming convinced that I was not a wrongdoer you had let me go and set me free, would it be in your power, if you became angry on occasion, to bring me back into the same condition of slavery? By no means, for the laws require that such pacts should be permanent and under all circumstances valid.

Upon the point that it is no longer in his power to disown one whom he has once disowned and then of his own accord taken back I still have much to say ; nevertheless, I shall make an end.

But consider what manner of man he will now be disowning. I do

It is no trifling or commonplace benefit, gentlemen of the jury, that I have conferred upon him; and yet I am accounted worthy of treatment like this. Although he himself does not know what happened then, you all know how he acted and felt and what his condition was when, taking him in hand after the other doctors had given up, while the members of the family were avoiding him and not venturing even to approach him, I made him what you see him, so that he is able to bring charges and argue about the laws. Stay! you can see your counterpart, father; you were nearly as your wife is now, when I brought you back to your former sanity. Truly it is not just that I should receive such a recompense for it, or that

Will you, gentlemen of the jury, empower this man to punish his benefactor, to banish his saviour, to hate the one who made him sane, to take vengeance on the one who set him on his feet? Not if you do what is just. For if I were really now guilty of the greatest offences, there was no slight gratitude owing me previously; keeping this in sight and in mind, he would have done well to ignore the present and to be prompt to forgive for the sake of the past, especially if the benefaction were so great as to overtop everything subsequent. That, I think, is true of mine toward this man, whom I saved, who is my debtor for the whole of his life, to whom I have given existence, sanity, and intelligence, and that at a time when all the others had finally given up and were confessing themselves defeated by the malady.

My benefaction, I think, is the greater because,

What do you suppose my sufferings were, what my exertions, to be with him, to wait upon him, to watch my opportunity, now yielding to the full force of the ailment, now bringing my professional skill to bear when the disorder abated a little? And truly, of all these duties that are included in medical science, the most dangerous is to treat such patients and to approach people in that condition, for often they loose their frenzy upon those who are near them, when their ailment has become severe. And yet none of these considerations made me hesitant or faint-hearted. I joined battle with the disease and measured myself against it in every way, and so at last prevailed by means of my remedy.

Let no one, hearing this, be quick to remark: “What sort of feat is it, and how great, to give a remedy?”’ Many things must precede this; one must prepare the way for the medicine, make the

When a man has endured all this, has wrestled with an illness so serious, and has conquered the ailment of all ailments most difficult to master, will you empower the plaintiff to disown him again, permit him to interpret the laws in any way he will against a benefactor, and allow him to fight with nature?

I, obeying nature, save and preserve my father for my own sake, gentlemen of the jury, even if he wrongs me; but that father, following, he says, the laws, ruins the son that has done him a benefit, and deprives him of his family. He is his son’s enemy, I am my father’s friend. I cherish nature, he slights and insults her just claims. To think of a father who hates his son unjustly! To think of a son that loves his father still more unjustly! For I bring it as a charge

Truly, truly, this matter is not as you will have it tobe. Youillinterpret the laws, father, for they are well made. Nature and law are not at war in the matter of good-will; they go hand in hand there, and work together for the righting of wrongs. You mistreat your benefactor; you wrong nature. Why wrong the laws, as well as nature? They mean to be good, and just, and kindly to children, but you will not allow it, inciting them repeatedly against one son as if his name were legion, and not suffering them to rest contented with punishments when they are willing to rest contented with demonstrations of filial affection; and yet they were not made, surely, as a menace to those who have done no wrong. Indeed, the laws permit suit to be brought on the charge of ingratitude against persons who do

That it is neither possible for him to disown a son after having already once for all exhausted his paternal right and made use of the laws, nor yet just to thrust away one who has shown himself so great a benefactor and exclude him from the house has been, I think, sufficiently established.