On the Property of Aristophanes: Against the Treasury

and moreover his relatives both by blood and by marriage, in whose hands he would have left it, are admittedly poor people. So it is evident that we have been greatly deceived both in men of hereditary riches and in those who have recently gained a name for wealth. The cause of this, in my opinion, is that people make light of stating that such an one has got many talents by his office. As to the common statements about dead people, I am not so much surprised, since there is no disproof to fear from them; but what of the lies with which they assail the living?

Why, you yourselves were told of late in the Assembly that Diotimus[*](An Athenian general, 388-387 B.C.) had got forty talents more from the ship-masters and merchants[*](In return for the protection given them in their business by the general.) than he himself admitted; and when he rendered an account on his return, and was indignant at being slandered in his absence, nobody put that matter to the proof, although the State was in need of money,

and he was ready to show his accounts. Just imagine what the position would have been if, after all the Athenians had been told that Diotimus had forty talents, something had then happened to him before he reached our shores. His relatives would then have been in the gravest danger, if they had been obliged to defend themselves against that monstrous slander without any knowledge of the facts of the case. So, for your being deceived in many people even now, and indeed for the ruin that some have unjustly incurred, you have to thank those who make light of telling lies and are bent on bringing malicious charges against their fellows.

For I suppose you know that Alcibiades held command for four or five years[*](411-407 B.C.) in succession, keeping the upper hand and winning victories over the Lacedaemonians: the cities thought well to give him twice as much as any other commander, so that some people supposed that he had more than a hundred talents. But when he died[*](He was murdered in Phrygia, 404 B.C.) he left evidence that this was not true: for he bequeathed a smaller fortune to his children than he had inherited himself from his guardians.