On the Property of Aristophanes: Against the Treasury

My father, finding that these people had been accredited by Conon, and were of proved respectability and—at that time at least[*](So far there were no signs of their later disloyalty.)—in the good graces of the city, was persuaded to bestow her: he did not know the slander that was to follow. It was a time when anyone among you would have deemed it desirable to be connected with them; for it was not done for the sake of money, as you may readily judge from my father’s whole life and conduct.

When he was of age, he had the chance of marrying another woman with a great fortune; but he took my mother without a portion, merely because she was a daughter of Xenophon,[*](One of the Athenian generals to whom the Potidaeans surrendered in 430 B.C. He was killed in a fight with the Chalcidians in Thrace, 429 B.C. (cf. Thuc. 2.70, 79).) son of Euripides, a man not only known for his private virtues but also deemed worthy by you of holding high command, so I am told.

Again, my sisters he refused to certain very wealthy men who were willing to take them without dowries, because he judged them to be of inferior birth: he preferred to bestow one upon Philomelus of Paeania,[*](A township of Attica.) whom most men regard as an honorable rather than a wealthy man, and the other upon a man who was reduced to poverty by no misdemeanor,—his nephew, Phaedrus[*](The same person who appears in Plato’s Phaedrus and Symposium.) of Myrrhinous,[*](A township of Attica.)—and with her a dowry of forty minae; and he later gave her to Aristophanes with the same sum.

Besides doing this, when I could have obtained a great fortune he advised me to take a lesser one, so long as I felt sure of allying myself with people of an orderly and self-respecting character. So now I am married to the daughter of Critodemus of Alopece,[*](A township of Attica.) who was killed by the Lacedaemonians after the sea-fight at the Hellespont.[*](At Aegospotami, 405 B.C. After surprising the Athenian fleet (there was practically no sea-fight) Lysander executed 3000 Athenians who were captured.)