You have heard the testimony of these witnesses, and I am persuaded that even Leochares himself will not venture to assert that they are perjured; but he will have recourse perhaps to this defense, that Dicaeogenes has fully performed his agreement, and that his own office of surety is completely satisfied. If he allege this, he will speak untruly and will easily be confuted; for the clerk shall read to you a schedule of all the effects which Dicaeogenes, the son of Menexenus, left behind him, together with an inventory of those which the defendant unjustly took; and if he affirms that our uncle neither had them in his lifetime nor left them to us at his death, let him prove his assertion; or if he insists that the goods were indeed ours, but that we had them returned to us, let him call a single witness to that fact; as we have produced evidence on our part that Dicaeogenes promised to give us back the two-thirds of what the son of Menexenus possessed, and that Leochares undertook to see him perform his promise. This is the ground of our action, and this we have sworn to be true. Let the oath be read.
[The Oath]
Now, judges, if the defendants intended only to clear themselves of this charge, what has already been said would be sufficient to ensure my success; but, since they are prepared to enter once more into the merits of the question concerning the inheritance, I am desirous to inform you on our side of all the transactions in our family; that, being apprised of the truth, and not deluded by their artifices, you may give a sentence agreeable to reason and justice.
Menexenus our grandfather had one son named Dicaeogenes, and four daughters, of whom Polyaratus my father married one; another was taken by Democles of Phrearrhi; a third by Cephisophon of Paeania; and the fourth was espoused by Theopompus the father of Cephisodotus. Our uncle Dicaeogenes, having sailed to Cnidos in the Parhalian galley, was slain in a sea fight; and, as he left no children, Proxenus the defendant’s father brought a will to our parents, in which his son was adopted by the deceased and appointed heir to a third part of his fortune; this part our parents, unable at that time to contest the validity of the will permitted him to take; and each of the daughters of Menexenus, as we shall prove by the testimony of persons then present, had a decree for her share of the residue.
When they had thus divided the inheritance and had bound themselves by oath to acquiesce in the division, each person possessed his allotment for twelve years; in which time, though the courts were frequently open for the administration of justice, not one of these men thought of alleging any unfairness in the transaction; until, when the state was afflicted with troubles and seditions, this Dicaeogenes was persuaded by Melas the Egyptian, to whom he used to submit on other occasions, to demand from us all our uncle’s fortune and to assert that he was appointed heir to the whole.
When he began his litigation we thought he was deprived of his senses; never imagining that the same man, who at one time claimed to be heir to a third part, and at another time an hear to the whole, could gain any credit before this tribunal; but when we came into court, although we urged more arguments than our adversary and spoke with justice on our side, yet we lost our cause; not through any fault of the jury, but through the villainy of Melas and his associates, who, taking advantage of the public disorders, assumed a power of seizing possessions to which they had no right, by swearing falsely for each other. By such men, therefore, were the jury deceived; and we, overcome by this abominable iniquity, were stripped of our effects; for my father died not long after the trial and before he could prosecute, as he intended, the perjured witnesses of his antagonist.
On the very day when Dicaeogenes had thus infamously prevailed against us, he ejected the daughter of Cephisophon, the niece of him who left the estate, from the portion allotted to her; took from the wife of Democles what her brother had given her as co-heiress; and deprived both the mother of Cephisodotus and the unfortunate youth himself of their whole fortune. Of all these he was at the same time guardian and spoiler, next of kin, and cruelest enemy; nor did the relation which he bore them excite in the least degree his compassion; but the unhappy orphans, deserted and indigent, became destitute even of daily necessities.
Such was the guardianship of Dicaeogenes their nearest kinsman! who gave to their avowed foes what their father Theopompus had left them, illegally possesses himself of the property which they had from their maternal uncle and their grandfather; and (what was the most open act of cruelty) having purchased the house of their father and demolished it, he dug up the ground on which it stood, and made that handsome garden for his own house in the city.
Still further; although he receives an annual rent of eighty minas from the estate of our uncle, yet such are his insolence and profligacy that he sent my cousin, Cephisodotus, to Corinth as a service attendant on his brother Harmodius; and adds to his other injuries this cruel reproach, that he wears ragged clothes and coarse buskins; but is not this unjust, since it was his own violence which reduced the boy to poverty?
On this point enough has been said, I now return to the narration from which I have thus digressed. Menexenus then, the son of Cephisophon, and cousin both to this young man and to me, having a claim to an equal portion of the inheritance, began a prosecution against those who had perjured themselves in the former cause, and convicted Lycon, whom he had first brought to justice, of having falsely sworn that our uncle appointed this Dicaeogenes heir to his whole estate; when, therefore, this pretended heir was disappointed in his hopes of deluding you, he persuaded Menexenus, who was acting both for our interest and his own, to make a compromise, which, though I blush to tell it, his baseness compels me to disclose.