Against Diogeiton

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.