Unknown Pleader Against Phaenippus, On an Exchange of Properties (23-24)

But you cannot show it, for you have learned secrecy and evasion and how to do everything to escape rendering service to your fellow-citizens here. But I will show that I have expended large sums—I, who inherited that slender estate from my father.

(To the clerk.) Now read me first that law which declares that no mining property shall be included in the inventory, and the challenge and then the depositions proving that this fellow Phaenippus has inherited two estates that performed public services.

The Law. The Challenge. The Depositions

There is one thing only, men of the jury, in which anyone could show that this man Phaenippus has been ambitious of honor from you: he is an able and ambitious breeder of horses,[*] being young and rich and vigorous. What is a convincing proof of this? He has given up riding on horseback, has sold his war horse, and in his place has bought himself a chariot—he, at his age!—that he may not have to travel on foot; such is the luxury that fills him. This chariot he has included in his inventory to me, but of the barley and wine and the rest of the farm-produce not a tenth part.