Against Onetor, An Ejectment Suit II (13-14)

And this is what appears to me to be exactly the plight of Onetor. For tell me, how can it be just, if you set up pillars for eighty minae, that the dowry should be eighty minae; and, if for more, more; and, if for less, less? Or how is it just, when your sister up to this present day has never lived with any other man, or been separated from Aphobus, when you have neither paid the dowry, nor been willing to have recourse to the torture, or to any other fair means of determining the matters at issue, that because you claim to have set up pillars, the farm shall belong to you? I certainly do not see how it can be. It is the truth to which we must look, not to arguments which a man has contrived (as you are doing) in order to seem to speak with some plausibility.

Then—the most outrageous thing of all—suppose you had in reality paid the marriage-portion (which you have not paid), whose fault was it? Was it not yours? For you paid it on the security of my property. Was it not ten full years before he became your brother-in-law that Aphobus took possession of my estate for which judgement has been rendered against him? And was it right for you to recover the whole amount, while I, who had been awarded damages against him, I, an orphan who had been wronged and robbed of a marriage-portion that was genuine, I who with better right than any other man should have been exempted from the risk of having to pay costs,[*] should be forced to suffer thus, and should have recovered nothing whatever, though ready to meet any of your[*] proposals, had you been willing to do anything that justice required?