A Friend Pleading for Phormio (36-40)

That you may know, men of Athens, what large sums he has received from the rents and from the debts[*]—he, who will presently wail as though he were destitute and had lost everything—hear a brief account from me. This man has collected twenty talents in all owing to debts he has recovered from the papers which his father left, and of these sums more than half he keeps in his possession; for in many instances he is defrauding his brother of his share.

From the lessee, for the eight years during which Phormio had the bank, he received eighty minae a year, half of the whole rent. These items make ten talents and forty minae.[*] For ten years after that, during which they subsequently leased the bank to Xeno and Euphraeus and Euphro and Callistratus, he received a talent every year.[*]

Besides this he has had for about twenty years the income of the property originally divided, of which he himself had charge, more than thirty minae. If you add all these sums together,—what he got from the distribution, what he recovered from the debts, and what he has collected as rent, it will be plain that he has received more than forty talents, to say nothing of the present Phormio made him, and his inheritance from his mother, and what he has had from the bank and does not pay back—two and one-half talents and six hundred drachmae.

Ah, but, you will tell us, the state has received these sums, and you have been outrageously treated, having used up your fortune in public services! No; what you expended in public service out of the undivided funds, you and your brother expended jointly; and what you gave after that does not amount to the interest, I will not say on two talents, but even on twenty minae. Do not, then, accuse the state, nor say that the state has received that portion of your patrimony which you have shamefully and wickedly squandered.

That you may know, men of Athens, the amount of property which he has received, and the public services which he has assumed, the clerk shall read to you the items one by one.

Please take this list and this challenge and these depositions.

The List. The Challenge. The Depositions