Apollodorus Against Stephanus, Charged with False Testimony II (11-15)

Furthermore, even from the tablet upon which the deposition is written one can tell that he has given false evidence. For it is whitened, and was prepared at home.[*] Yet it is only those who testify to facts who should offer depositions prepared at home; those who testify to challenges, who stand forward on the spur of the moment, should present their depositions written in wax, in order that, if one wants to add or to erase anything, it may be easier to do so.

In all these things, then, he is shown to have given false testimony, and to have given it contrary to law; but I wish to prove this further fact, that our father did not make a will, and could not legally make one. For, if anyone should ask you in accordance with what laws we should live as citizens, you would of course answer, the established laws. But look you, the laws ordain, nor shall it be permitted to enact a law applying to an individual, unless the same law applies also to all the Athenians.

This law, then, ordains that we should live as citizens under the same laws and not one under one law, another under another. But my father died during the archonship of Dysnicetus,[*] and Phormio became an Athenian citizen during the archonship of Nicophemus,[*] in the tenth year after my father died. How, then, could my father, not knowing that Phormio was to become an Athenian citizen, have given him in marriage his own wife, and thus have outraged us, shown his contempt of the gift of citizenship which he had received from you, and disregarded your laws? And which was the more honorable course for him—to do this during his lifetime, supposing he wished to do it, or to leave behind him at his death a will which he had no legal right to make?

And verily, when you have heard the laws themselves you will see clearly that Pasio had no right to make a will.

(To the clerk.) Read the law.

The Law

Any citizen, with the exception of those who had been adopted when Solon entered upon his office, and had thereby become unable either to renounce or to claim an inheritance,[*] shall have the right to dispose of his own property by will as he shall see fit, if he have no male children lawfully born, unless his mind be impaired by one of these things, lunacy or old age or drugs or disease, or unless he be under the influence of a woman, or under constraint or deprived of his liberty.[*]

You have heard the law, then, which does not permit a man to dispose of his property by will, if he have male children lawfully born. But these men declare that my father made this will, yet they cannot prove that they were present at the time. Another thing also deserves to be borne in mind, that it is to those who had not been adopted, but were lawfully born, that the law gives the right, in case of their being childless, to dispose of their property by will. Now my father had been adopted as a citizen by the people, so that on this account also he had not the right to make a will, especially in regard to his wife, of whom he was not even the legal guardian; and besides he had children.