Sositheus Against Macartatus in Regard to the Estate of Hagnias (56-60)

And yet, men of the jury, how can you fail to think it strange that Theopompus never made any claim for the hand of the heiress, who was the daughter of the first cousin of Hagnias on his father’s side, and yet demands to have the estate of Hagnias contrary to the laws? Could there be persons more shameless or more abominable than these?

(To the clerk.) Read the other laws also.

TheLaws

Proclamation shall be made in the market-place to the shedder of blood by a kinsman within the degree of cousin and cousinship, and cousins and sons of cousins and sons-in-law and fathers-in-law and clansmen shall join in the pursuit. To secure condonation, if there be father or brother or sons, all must concur, or whoever opposes shall prevail. And if there be none of these and the slaying was involuntary, and the Fifty-one, the Ephetae,[*] shall agree that the slaying was involuntary, let the clansmen, ten in number, grant the right of entrance to the shedder of blood, if they see fit; and let these be chosen by the Fifty-one according to rank. And those who had shed blood before the enactment of this statute shall be bound by its provisions.—And when persons die in the demes and no one takes them up for burial, let the Demarch give notice to the relatives to take them up and bury them, and to purify the deme on the day on which each of them dies.

In the case of slaves he shall give notice to their masters, and in the case of freemen to those possessing their property; and if the deceased had no property, the Demarch shall give notice to the relatives of the deceased. And if, after the Demarch shall have given notice, the relatives do not take up the body, the Demarch shall contract for the taking up and burial of the body, and for the purification of the deme on the same day at the lowest possible cost. And if he shall not so contract, he shall be bound to pay a thousand drachmae into the public treasury. And whatsoever he shall expend, he shall exact double the amount from those liable; and if he does not exact it he shall himself be under obligation to repay it to the demesmen. And those who do not pay the rents due for the lands of the goddess or of the gods and the eponymous heroes shall be disenfranchised, themselves and their family and their heirs, until they shall make payment.

All these duties which the laws lay upon relatives to perform, they lay upon us, and compel us to perform them, men of the jury. But to Macartatus here they say not a word, nor to Theopompus, his father; for they belong in no sense to the family of Hagnias. Why, then, should the laws lay any duties upon them?

But the defendant, men of the jury, while he has no just argument whatever to make against the laws and the depositions which we produce, makes a show of indignation, and says he is being cruelly treated because, his father being dead, it falls to him to be defendant in this suit. But he does not bear in mind, men of the jury, that his father was a mortal man, and has met his end along with many others both younger and older than himself. Yet if Theopompus, the father of the defendant, is dead, the laws are not dead, nor is justice, nor are the jurymen with whom the verdict rests.