Against Aphobus I (61-65)

The rest of the estate—an amount twice as large—they might have invested profitably, and, if greedy for money, have taken a reasonable amount for themselves, and have increased my estate from the income, besides keeping the principal intact. Yet they did nothing of the sort. Instead, by selling to one another the most valuable of the slaves and by absolutely doing away with the rest, they destroyed the existing source of my income and secured a considerable one for themselves at my cost.

Having taken all the rest thus shamefully, they unite in maintaining that more than half of my property was never left to me at all. They have rendered an account as though the estate were one of five talents only; they do not produce the principal, though reporting no income from it, but have the impudence to tell me that the capital itself has been expended. And for this audacity they feel no shame.

What, pray, would have been my plight, if I had continued longer as their ward? They would have hard work to tell. For when, after the lapse of ten years, I have recovered so little from two of these men, and by the third am even set down as a debtor, have I not good ground for indignation? Nay, it is wholly clear. If I had been left an orphan of a year old, and had been six years longer under their guardianship, I should never have recovered even the pitiful amounts I now have. For, if the expenditures they have made were justifiable, the sums they have handed over to me would not have lasted six years, but they would either have had to support me themselves or to have let me perish from hunger.

Yet is it not an outrage, if estates left to others of a value of one or two talents have as a result of letting been doubled or trebled, so that the owners have been called upon for state services,[*] while mine, which has been wont to equip triremes and to make large contributions in taxes, will be unable to contribute even small sums thanks to the shameless acts of these men? What words are gross enough to describe their conduct? They have done away with the will, thinking to avoid discovery, their own estates they have administered from the income, and have greatly increased their capital by drawing upon my funds, while, as for my own estate, they have destroyed my entire capital, as if in requital for some grievous wrong we had done them.

You, on your part, do not act thus even toward those who sin against you: when you give judgement against any of them, you do not take away all that they have, but in pity for their wives and children you leave something even to these. But these men are so different from you that, although they had received legacies from us to make them administer their trust faithfully, they have done us these outrageous wrongs. They felt no touch of shame for their ruthlessness toward my sister, who, though my father left two talents as the dowry due her, will now get no fitting portion. Nay, they have recked nothing of kinship, as though they had been left to us, not as friends and kinsfolk, but as bitterest enemies.