And now, Athenogenes, proceed to consider how the law stands, not only with respect to slaves, but also concerning free men. Even you, I suppose, know that children born of a lawfully betrothed wife are legitimate. The lawgiver, however, was not content with merely providing that a wife should be betrothed by her father or brother, in order to establish legitimacy. On the contrary, he expressly enacts that “if a man shall give a woman in betrothal justly and equitably, the children born of such marriage shall be legitimate,” but not if he betroths her on false representations and inequitable terms. Thus the law makes just betrothals valid, and unjust ones it declares invalid.
Again, the law relating to testaments is of a similar nature. It enacts that a man may dispose of his own property as he pleases, “provided that he be not disqualified by old age or disease or insanity, or by influenced by a woman’s persuasions, and that he be not in bonds or under any other constraint.” In circumstances, then, in which marriages and testaments relating solely to a man’s own property are invalidated, how can it be right to maintain the validity of such an agreement as I have described, which was drawn up by Athenogenes in order to steal property belonging to me?
Can it be right that the disposition of one’s property by will should be nullified if it is made under the persuasions of a woman, while, if I am persuaded by Athenogenes’ mistress and am entrapped by them into making this agreement, I am thereby to be ruined, in spite of the express support which is given me by the law? Can you actually dare to rest your case on the contract of which you and your mistress procured the signature by fraud, which is also the very ground on which I am now charging you with conspiracy, since my belief in your good faith induced me to accept the conditions which you proposed? You are not content with having got the forty minas which I paid for the slaves, but you must needs plunder me of five talents in addition, plucking me like a bird taken in a snare. To this end you have the face to say that you could not inform me of the amount of the debts which Midas had contracted, because you had not the time to ascertain it. Why, gentlemen, I, who brought absolute inexperience into the arrangement of commercial matters, had not the slightest difficulty in learning the whole amount of the debts and the loans within three months; but he, with an hereditary experience of three generations in the business of perfumery; he, who was at his place in the market every day of this life; he, who owned three shops and had his accounts made up every month, he, forsooth, was not aware of the debts! He is no fool in other matters, but in his dealings with his slave it appears he at once became a mere idiot, knowing of some of the debts, while others, he says, he did not know of—those, I take it, which he did not want to know of. Such a contention, gentlemen, is not a defense, but an admission that he has no sound defense to offer. If he states that he was not aware of the debts, it is plain that he cannot at the same time plead that he told me all about them; and it is palpably unjust to require me to discharge debts of the existence of which the vendor never informed me.
Well, then, Athenogenes, I think it is tolerably plain on many grounds, that you knew of Midas’ debts, and not the least from that fact that you demanded. . . .[2]
If, however, you did not inform me of the total amount of the debts simply because you did not know it yourself, and I entered into the contract under the belief that what I had heard from you was the full sum of them, which of us ought in fairness to be liable for them—I, who purchased the property after their contraction, or you who originally received the sums borrowed? In my opinion it should be you; but if we differ on this point let the law be our arbiter. The law was not made either by infatuated lovers or by men engaged in conspiracy against their neighbor’s property, but by the most public-spirited of statesmen, Solon. Solon, knowing that sales of property are common in the city, enacted a law—and one universally admitted to be just—to the effect that fines and expenditures incurred by slaves should be discharged by the master for whom they work. And this is only reasonable; for if a slave effect a good stroke of business or establish a flourishing industry, it is his master who reaps the profit of it. You, however, pass over the law in silence, and are eloquent about the iniquity of breaking contracts. Whereas Solon held that a law was more valid than a temporary ordinance, however just that ordinance might be, you demand that a fraudulent contract should outweigh all laws and all justice alike.
I am told, however, that the defendant has another plea in reserve, and will argue that I brought all this mischief on my own head by disregarding his advice. He will declare that he offered to let me take the two boys, but that he urged me to leave Midas to him and not to buy him. I, however, he says, refused and insisted on buying all three. And this, they say, he intends to plead before a court such as the present! His object, of course, is to assume the appearance of fair dealing, but he must have forgotten that he will not be addressing an audience of fools, but one quite capable of seeing through his shameless effrontery. Let me tell you the actual facts, and you will see that they are of a piece with the rest of the conduct of himself and his confederate. He sent the boy, whom I mentioned just now, to me, to say that he could not be mine unless I bought his father and his brother as well as himself. I had actually assented to this and promised to pay the price for all three of them, when Athenogenes, thinking that he now had the upper hand and wishing me to have as much trouble as possible, came to some of my friends. . . .[3]
Now I am no professional perfume-seller, neither have I learned any other trade. I simply till the land which my father gave me. It was solely by this man’s craft that I was entrapped into the sale. Which is more probable on the face of things, Athenogenes, that I was coveting your business (a business of which I had no sort of experience), or that you and your mistress were plotting to get my money? I certainly think the design was on your side. . . .[4]
Further, at the time of the war against Philip he left the city shortly before the battle, and instead of marching out with us to Chaeronea he migrated to Troezen. By so doing he broke the law which enacts that if a man migrates from the city during time of war he shall be liable to impeachment and summary arrest whenever he returns. His action shows that he had made up his mind that the city would escape peril, while he laid ours under sentence of death; and he corroborated this by not marrying his daughters here in Athens, but giving them to husbands in Troezen. . . .[5]
So while he has broken the general covenant which every citizen makes with his state, he lays stress on the private covenant which he made with me, apparently expecting people to believe that a man who is indifferent to justice in his dealings with you would have been careful to observe it in his dealings with me! Why, so universal and impartial was he in his want of principle that, when he had gone to Troezen, and the people of Troezen had conferred their citizenship upon him, he put himself under the directions of Mnesias of Argos, and having been appointed archon by his means, expelled the citizens from their own city. They will prove this to you themselves, since they are living here in exile. You, gentlemen, gave them an asylum when they were expelled from their country, you gave them your citizenship, who shared with them every privilege that you possess. You remembered the service which they had rendered to you more than a hundred and fifty years ago, during the war with Persia, and you recognized the duty of helping in the hour of their misfortune those who had aided you in the hour of your peril. But this scoundrel, this deserter from Athens who had procured admission as a citizen of Troezen, when once his position was thus secured, cared nothing for either the State or the welfare of the citizens, but behaved with the utmost barbarity towards the city which had granted him its hospitality. . . .[6]
To prove the truth of these assertions the clerk shall read to you, first, the law which forbids resident aliens to migrate in time of war; secondly, the evidence of the Troezenians; and finally the ordinance which these same Troezenians passed in your honor, in return for which you gave them asylum here and conferred your citizenship upon them. Read.