A Friend Pleading for Phormio (41-45)

All these monies he has received; he has debts due him to the value of many talents, which he is collecting, some by voluntary payments, some by bringing action. These debts were owing to Pasio—quite apart from the rent of the bank and the other property which he left;—and these the two brothers have recovered. He has expended upon public services merely what you have heard, the smallest fraction of his income, not to say of his capital; and yet he will assume a bragging air, and will talk about his expenditures for trierarchal and choregic services.[*]

I have shown you that these assertions of his will be false; however, even if they should all prove to be true, I think it more honorable and more just that he should continue to render public service from his own funds, than that you should give him the defendant’s property, and while receiving yourselves but a small portion of the whole, should see the defendant reduced to extreme poverty, and the plaintiff in wanton insolence and spending his money in the manner that has been his wont.[*]

With regard now to Phormio’s wealth and his having got it from your father’s estate, and the questions you said you were going to ask as to how Phormio acquired his fortune, you have the least right of any man in the world to speak thus. For Pasio, your father, did not acquire his fortune, any more than Phormio did, by good luck or by inheritance from his father, but he gave proof to the bankers, Antisthenes and Archestratus, who were his masters, that he was a good man and an honest, and so won their confidence.

It is remarkable what a striking thing it is in the eyes of people who are active in commercial life and in banking, when the same man is accounted industrious and is honest.[*] Well; this quality was not imparted to Pasio by his masters; he was himself honest by nature; nor did your father impart it to Phormio. It was yourself, rather than Phormio, whom he would have made honest, if he had had the power. If you do not know that for money-making the best capital of all is trustworthiness, you do not know anything at all. But, apart from all this, Phormio has in many ways shown himself useful to your father and to you, and in general to your affairs. But your insatiate greed and your character, I take it, no one could adequately express.

I am surprised that you do not of yourself make this reflection, that Archestratus, to whom your father formerly belonged, has a son here, Antimachus, who fares not at all as he deserves, and who does not go to law with you and say that he is outrageously treated, because you wear a soft mantle, and have redeemed one mistress, and have given another in marriage (all this, while you have a wife of your own), and take three attendant slaves about with you, and live so licentiously that even those who meet you on the street perceive it, while he himself is in great destitution.