"I did as Thisbe exhorted me; and taking my sword, she going before me with a torch, went towards my mother's bedchamber. When I arrived there, and perceived there was a light burning within, my passion rising, I burst open the door, and, rushing in, cried out, 'Where is the villain, the vile paramour of this paragon of virtue?' and thus exclaiming, I advanced, prepared to transfix them both, when my father, Ο ye gods! leaping from the bed, fell at my feet, and besought me, 'Ο my son! stay your hand, pity your father, and these grey hairs which have nourished you. I have used you ill, I confess, but not so as to deserve death from you. Let not passion transport you; do not imbrue your hands in a parent's blood!'
"He was going on in this supplicatory strain, while I stood thunderstruck, without power either to speak or stir. I looked about for Thisbe, but she had withdrawn. I cast my eyes in amaze round the chamber, confounded and stupified: the sword fell from my hand.
"Demæneta, running up, immediately took it away; and my father, now seeing himself out of danger, laid hands upon me, and ordered me to be bound, his wife stimulating him all the time, and exclaiming, 'This is what I foretold; I bid you guard yourself from the attempts of this youth; I observed his looks, and feared his designs.'—'You did,' he replied; 'but I could not have imagined he would carry his wickedness to such a pitch.' He then kept me bound; and though I made several attempts to explain the matter, he would not suffer me to speak.
"When the morning was come, he brought me out before the people, bound as I was; and flinging dust upon his head, thus addressed them: 'I entertained hopes, Ο Athenians, when the gods gave me this son, that he would have been the staff of my declining age. I brought him up genteelly; I gave him a first-rate education;[15] I went through every step needful to procure him the full privileges of a citizen of Athens; in short, my whole life was a scene of solicitude on his account. But he, forgetting all this, abused me first with words, and assaulted my wife with blows; and at last broke in upon me in the night, brandishing a drawn sword, and was prevented from committing a parricide only by a sudden consternation which seized him, and made the weapon drop from his hand. I have recourse, therefore, to this assembly for my own defence and his punishment. I might, I know, lawfully have punished him even with death myself; but I had rather leave the whole matter to your judgment than stain my own hands with his blood:' and, having said this, he began to weep.
"Demæneta too accompanied him with her tears, lamenting the untimely but just death which I must soon suffer, whom my evil genius had armed against my parent; and thus seeming to confirm by her lamentations the truth of her husband's accusations.
"At length I desired to be heard in my turn, when the clerk arising put this pointed question to me: Did I attack my father with a sword? When I replied, 'I did indeed attack him, but hear how I came so to do'—the whole assembly exclaimed that, after this confession, there was no room for apology or defence. Some cried out I ought to be stoned; others, that I should be delivered to the executioner, and thrown headlong into the Barathrum.[16] During this tumult, while they were disputing about my punishment, I cried out, 'All this I suffer on account of my mother-in-law; my step-mother makes me to be condemned unheard.' A few of the assembly appeared to take notice of what I said, and to have some suspicions of the truth of the case; yet even then I could not obtain an audience, so much were all minds possessed by the disturbance.
"At length they proceeded to ballot: one thousand seven hundred condemned me to death; some to be stoned, others to be thrown into the Barathrum. The remainder, to the number of about a thousand, having some suspicions of the machinations of my mother-in-law, adjudged me to perpetual banishment; and this sentence prevailed: for though a greater number had doomed me to death, yet there being a difference in their opinions as to the kind of death, they were so divided, that the numbers of neither party amounted to a thousand.
"Thus, therefore, was I driven from my father's house and my country: the wicked Demæneta, however, did not remain unpunished; in what manner you shall hear by-and-by.—But you ought now to take a little sleep; the night is far advanced, and some rest is necessary for you."
"It will be very annoying to us," replied Theagenes, "if you leave this wicked woman unpunished."—"Hear, then," said Cnemon, "since you will have it so.
"I went immediately from the assembly to the Piræus, and finding a ship ready to set sail for Ægina, I embarked in her, hearing there were some relations of my mother's there. I was fortunate enough to find them on my arrival, and passed the first days of my exile agreeably enough among them. After I had been there about three weeks, taking my accustomed solitary walk, I came down to the port; a vessel was standing in; I stopped to see from whence she came, and who were on board. The ladder was no sooner let down, when a person leapt on shore, ran up to me, and embraced me. He proved to be Charias, one of my former companions.—'Ο Cnemon!' he cried out, 'I bring you good news. You are revenged on your enemy: Demæneta is dead.'—'I am heartily glad to see you, Charias,' I replied; 'but why do you hurry over your good tidings as if they were bad ones? Tell me how all this has happened; I fear she has died a natural death, and escaped that which she deserved.'—'Justice,' said he, 'has not entirely deserted us (as Hesiod[17] says); and though she sometimes seems to wink at crime for a time, protecting her vengeance, such wretches rarely escape at last: neither has Demæneta. From my connexion with Thisbe, I have been made acquainted with the whole affair.