Euxitheus Against Eubulides, an Appeal (16-20)

The reason was, men of the jury, that Eubulides knew very well that, if an opportunity of speaking should be granted me and if all the men of the deme should be present to support me and the ballots honestly given out, those who had leagued themselves with him would be nowhere!

How these people came to form their conspiracy against me I will tell you, if you wish to hear it, as soon as I shall have spoken about my parentage.

In the meantime what do I hold to be just, and what am I prepared to do, men of the jury? To show you that I am an Athenian on both my father’s and my mother’s side, and to produce to prove it witnesses whose veracity you will not question, and to break down the calumnies and the charges brought against me. It will rest with you, when you have heard my statements, if you conclude that I am a citizen and the victim of a conspiracy, to come to my rescue; but if you reach a different conclusion, to act in whatever way your regard for your oaths may bid you. I will begin with this proof.

They have maliciously asserted that my father spoke with a foreign accent. But that he was taken prisoner by the enemy in the course of the Decelean war[*] and was sold into slavery and taken to Leucas, and that he there fell in with Cleander,[*] the actor, and was brought back here to his kinsfolk after a long lapse of time—all this they have omitted to state; but just as though it were right that I should be brought to ruin on account of his misfortunes, they have made his foreign accent the basis of a charge against him.

On my part, however, I think that these very facts will more than anything else help me to demonstrate that I am an Athenian.

In the first place, to prove that my father was taken prisoner and was ransomed, I will bring witnesses before you; then, that when he reached home he received from his uncles his share of the property; and furthermore, that neither among the members of the deme nor among those of the clan nor anywhere else did anyone ever accuse him (despite his foreign accent) with being a foreigner.

(To the clerk.) Please take the depositions.

The Depositions

You have heard, then, of my father’s being taken prisoner by the enemy and of the good fortune which brought him back here. To prove now that he was your fellow-citizen, men of the jury (for this you may depend upon as being the veritable truth), I will call as witnesses those of my relatives on my father’s side who are still living.

(To the clerk.) Call first, please, Thucritides and Charisiades; for their father Charisius was brother to my grandfather Thucritides and my grandmother Lysaretê, and uncle to my father (for my father had married his sister born of a different mother).[*]