Against Diogeiton

If the matters in dispute were not important, gentlemen of the jury, I should never have allowed these persons to appear before you; for I regard a dispute with one’s relations as most disgraceful, and I know that you reprobate not merely those who are guilty of wrong, but also anyone who is unable to tolerate the sharp practice of a kinsman. But, gentlemen, since they have been robbed of a great sum of money and, after suffering numerous outrages from those who should have been the last to act in such a way, have sought refuge in me, their brother-in-law, I find it incumbent on me to speak for them.

I am married to their sister, a child of Diogeiton’s daughter; and after many appeals I at first prevailed on both parties to submit the case to the arbitration of their friends, as I held it most desirable that their affairs should not be known to anyone else. But since Diogeiton would not allow himself to be advised by any of his own friends regarding the property which he was plainly convicted of holding, but preferred to be prosecuted, to sue against the validity of judgements, and to encounter the utmost risks, rather than do the just thing which would relieve him of all their complaints, I entreat you,

if I prove that the guardianship of their grandfather has been conducted more disgracefully than any heretofore held in the city by persons who had no bond of relationship, to give them the support of justice: otherwise, believe this man entirely, and reprobate us henceforward. I will now try to inform you on the matter from the beginning.

Diodotus and Diogeiton, gentlemen of the jury, were brothers born of the same father and mother, and they had divided between them the personal estate, but held the real property in partnership. When Diodotus had made a large fortune in shipping business, Diogeiton induced him to marry the one daughter that he had, and two sons and a daughter were born to him.

Some time later, when Diodotus was enrolled for infantry service, he summoned his wife, who was his niece, and her father, who was also his father-in-law and his brother, and grandfather and uncle of the little ones, as he felt that owing to these connections there was nobody more bound to act justly by his children: he then gave him a will and five talents of silver in deposit;

and he also produced an account of his loans on bottomry, amounting to seven talents and forty minae---and two thousand drachmae invested in the Chersonese.[*](In Thrace. This sentence is evidently defective.) He charged him, in case anything should happen to himself, to dower his wife and his daughter with a talent each, and to give his wife the contents of the room; he also bequeathed to his wife twenty minae and thirty staters of Cyzicus.[*](See Lys. 12.11, note.)

Having made these arrangements and left duplicate deeds in his house, he went to serve abroad with Thrasyllus. He was killed at Ephesus[*](409 B.C. Thrasyllus was one of the commanders who were executed after Arginusae, 406 B.C.): for a time Diogeiton concealed from his daughter the death of her husband, and took possession of the deeds which he had left under seal, alleging that these documents were needed for recovering the sums lent on bottomry.

When at length he informed them of the death, and they had done what is customary,[*](This comprised the lying in state, the burial or cremation, the funeral feast, sacrifices offered on the third and ninth days, and mourning with black garments and shaven heads for thirty days.) they lived for the first year in the Peiraeus, as all their provisions had been left there. But when these began to give out, he sent up the children to the city, and gave their mother in marriage with a dowry of five thousand drachmae,—a thousand less than her husband had given her.

Seven years later the elder of the boys was certified to be of age[*](In his eighteenth year: cf. Lys. 10.31.); when Diogeiton summoned them, and said that their father had left them twenty minae of silver and thirty staters, adding,—Now I have spent a great deal of my own money on your support: so long as I had the means, I did not mind; but at this moment I too am in difficulties myself. You, therefore, since you have been certified and have attained manhood, must henceforth contrive to provide for yourself.

On hearing these words they went away, aghast and weeping, to their mother, and brought her along with them to me. It was pitiful to see how they suffered from the blow: the poor wretches, turned out of doors, wept aloud and besought me not to allow them to be deprived of their patrimony and reduced to beggary by the last persons who ought to have committed this outrage upon them, but to give my best aid, for their sister’s sake as well as their own.

Of the mourning that filled my house at that time it would take long to tell. In the end, their mother implored and entreated me to assemble her father and friends together, saying that even though she had not before been accustomed to speak in the presence of men, the severity of their misfortunes would compel her to give us a full account of their hardships.

I went first and expressed my indignation to Hegemon, the husband of this man’s daughter; I then discussed the matter with the other relations; and I called upon this man to allow his handling of the money to be investigated. Diogeiton at first refused, but finally he was compelled by his friends. When we held our meeting, the mother asked him what heart he could have, that he thought fit to take such measures with the children, when you are their father’s brother, she said, and my father, and their uncle and grandfather.

Even if you felt no shame before any man, you ought to have feared the gods. For you received from him, when he went on the expedition, five talents in deposit. I offer to swear to the truth of this on the lives of my children, both these and those since born to me, in any place[*](i.e., in some temple.) that you yourself may name. Yet I am not so abject, or so fond of money, as to take leave of life after perjuring myself on the lives of my own children, and to appropriate unjustly my father’s estate.

And she convicted him further of having recovered seven talents and four thousand drachmae of bottomry loans, and she produced the record of these; for she showed that in the course of his removal from Collytus[*](A district to the north of the Acropolis.) to the house of Phaedrus the children had happened upon the register, which had been mislaid, and had brought it to her.

She also proved that he had recovered a hundred minae which had been lent at interest on land mortgages, besides two thousand drachmae and some furniture of great value; and that corn came in to them every year from the Chersonese.[*](Where evidently the 2000 drachmae invested by Diodotus (see Lys. 32.6) brought in an annual supply of corn as interest.) After that, she said, you had the audacity to state, when you had so much money in your possession, that their father bequeathed them two thousand drachmae and thirty staters,—just the amount that was bequeathed to me, and that I gave you after his decease!

And you thought fit to turn these, the children of your daughter, out of their own house, in worn-out clothes, without shoes or attendant or bedding or cloaks; without the furniture which their father bequeathed to them, and without the money which he had deposited with you.

And now you are bringing up the children you have had by my step-mother in all the comforts of affluence; and you are quite right in that: but you are wronging mine, whom you ejected from the house in dishonor, and whom you are intent on turning from persons of ample means into beggars. And over proceedings of this sort you feel neither fear of the gods nor shame before me who am cognizant of the facts, nor are you mindful of your brother, but you put money before us all.

Thereupon, gentlemen of the jury, after hearing all the severe things spoken by the mother, the whole company of us there were so affected by this man’s conduct and by her statements,—when we saw how the children had been treated, and recalled the dead man to mind and how unworthy was the guardian he had left in charge of his estate, and reflected how hard it is to find a person who can be trusted with one’s affairs,—that nobody, gentlemen, among us there was able to utter a word: we could only weep as sadly as the sufferers, and go our ways in silence. Now, first, will you come forward, witnesses, to support what I say.

WitnessesWell, gentlemen of the jury, I ask that due attention be given to this reckoning, in order that you may take pity on the young people for the depth of their misfortune, and may consider that this man deserves the anger of everyone in the city. For Diogeiton is reducing all men to such a state of suspicion towards their fellows that neither living nor dying can they place any more confidence in their nearest relations than in their bitterest enemies;

since he has had the face to deny one part of his debt and, after finally confessing to the rest, to make out a sum of seven talents of silver and seven thousand drachmae as receipts and expenses on account of two boys and their sister during eight years. So gross is his impudence that, not knowing how he should enter the sums spent, he reckoned for the viands of the two young boys and their sister five obols a day[*](At this period the daily cost of food for an adult could be reckoned at one obol: in the present case, for the food (other than cereal) of three children, the charge of five obols is at least twice what it should be. A more reasonable scale is suggested by the speaker at Lys. 32.28 below.); for shoes, laundry and hairdressing he kept no monthly or yearly account, but he shows it inclusively, for the whole period, as more than a talent of silver.