On the Estate of Menecles (18-20)

After this, Menecles began to look about for a wife for me, and said I ought to marry. So I married the daughter of Philonides. Menecles exercised the forethought on my behalf which a father would naturally exercise for his son, and I tended him and respected him as though he were my true father, as also did my wife, so that he praised us to all his fellow-demesmen.

That Menecles was not insane or under the influence of a woman but in his right mind when he adopted me, you can easily understand from the following facts. In the first place, my sister, with whom most of my opponent's argument has been concerned, and under whose influence he alleges that Menecles adopted me, had remarried long before the adoption took place, so that, if it had been under her influence that he was adopting his son, he would have adopted one of her boys; for she has two.

But, gentlemen, it was not under her influence that he adopted me as his son; his chief motive was his loneliness, and, secondly, the other causes I have mentioned, and the goodwill which he felt towards my father, and, thirdly, because he had no other relative from whose family he might have adopted a son. These were the motives which at the time induced him to adopt me; so that it is quite clear that he was not insane or under the influence of a woman, unless, indeed, my opponent wishes to describe his loneliness and childlessness in these terms.