Mantitheus Against Boeotus II (6-10)

My mother, men of the jury, was the daughter of Polyaratus, of Cholargus[*], and sister of Menexenus, and Bathyllus and Periander. Her father gave her in marriage to Cleomedon, son of Cleon,[*] adding a talent as her marriage-portion; and at the first she dwelt with him as his wife, and bore him three daughters and one son, Cleon. After this her husband died, and she left his family, receiving back her marriage-portion.

Her brothers, Menexenus and.Bathyllus (for Periander was still a boy) then gave her again in marriage with the talent for her dowry, and she dwelt with my father as his wife. There were born to them myself and another brother, younger than I, who died while still a child.

To prove that I am speaking the truth, I will first bring forward witnesses to establish these facts.

The Witnesses

My father, then, having thus married my mother, maintained her as his wife in his own house; and he brought me up and showed me a father’s affection such as you also all show to your children. But with Plangon, the mother of these men, he formed a connection of some sort or other (it is not for me to say what it was);

however, he was not so wholly the slave of his passion as to deem it right even after my mother’s death to receive the woman into his own house, or to admit that the defendants were his children. No, for all the rest of the time they lived as not being sons of my father, as most of you know; but after Boeotus had grown up and had associated with himself a gang of blackmailers,[*] whose leaders were Mnesicles and that Menecles who secured the conviction of Ninus, in connection with these men he brought suit against my father, claiming that he was his son.

Many meetings took place about these matters, and my father declared that he would never be convinced that these men were his children, and finally Plangon, men of the jury (for the whole truth shall be told you), having in conjunction with Menecles laid a snare for my father, and deceived him by an oath that among all mankind is held to be the greatest and most awful,[*] agreed that, if she were paid thirty minae, she would get her brothers to adopt these men, and that, on her own part, if my father should challenge her before the arbitrator to swear that the children were in very truth his sons, she would decline the challenge. For if this were done, she said, the defendants would not be deprived of their civic rights,[*] but they would no longer be able to make trouble for my father, seeing that their mother had refused the oath.