Euxitheus Against Eubulides, an Appeal (46-50)

Well then, that I am a citizen on both my mother’s and my father’s side you have all learned, partly from the testimony which has just been given and partly from that previously given regarding my father. It remains for me to speak to you about myself—and my statement is, I think, the simplest and the most reasonable—, that, since I am of civic birth on the side of both parents and have shared by inheritance both the property and the family, I am a citizen. Nevertheless I will produce witnesses to establish also all the circumstances which befit a citizen—that I was inducted into the clan, that I was enrolled on the register of the demesmen, that by these men themselves I was nominated among the noblest-born to draw lots for the priesthood of Heracles, and that I passed the scrutiny and held offices.

(To the clerk.) Call them, please.

The Witnesses

Is it not an outrage, men of the jury, that, whereas, if I had been chosen by lot as priest, even as I had been nominated, it would have been my duty to offer sacrifice on behalf of these people, and Eubulides would have had to join in the sacrifice with me,—is it not an outrage, I ask, that these same people should not allow me even to share in the sacrifices with them? It is plain, then, men of Athens, that in all previous time I have been acknowledged as a citizen by all those who now accuse me;

for surely Eubulides would never have suffered the foreigner or resident alien, as he now calls me, either to hold offices or to draw lots with himself as a nominee for the priesthood; for he too was one of the nominees who drew lots. Nor, men of Athens, seeing that he is an old enemy of mine, would he have waited for the present opportunity, which no one could foresee, if he had known any such facts regarding me. But he did not know them.

So, then, although he continued throughout all the past to act as a member of the deme and to draw lots for offices together with me without seeing any of these objections, yet, when the whole city was roused to sharp indignation against those who had recklessly forced their way into the demes, then, and not till then, he laid his plots. The earlier time would have suited one who was convinced of the truth of his charges; but the present suits an enemy and one who will stoop to malicious pettifoggery.

For my own part, men of the jury (and I beg you by Zeus and the gods, let no one make an outcry or be vexed at what I am going to say), I hold myself to be an Athenian on the same grounds on which each one of you holds himself to be one, having from the first regarded as my mother her whom I represent as such to you, and not pretending to be hers while really belonging to another; and in regard to my father the case is the same.