On the Estate of Menecles (9-11)

At first she would not even listen to his suggestion, but in course of time she with difficulty consented. So we gave her in marriage to Elius of Sphettus,[*] and Menecles handed over her dowry to him—for he had become part-lessee of the estate of the children of Nicias[*]—and he gave her the garments which she had brought with her to his house and the jewelry which there was.

Some time after this Menecles began to consider how he could put an end to his childless condition and have someone to tend his old age and bury him when he died and thereafter carry out the customary rites over him. He saw that my opponent had only one son; so he thought it wrong to ask him to give him his son to adopt and so deprive him of male offspring.

Thus he could find no nearer relative than us; he, therefore, approached us and said that he thought it right, since fate had decreed that he should have no children by our sister, that he should adopt a son out of the family from which he would have wished to have a son of his own in the course of nature; “I should like, therefore,” he said,“to adopt one of you two, whichever is willing.”