On The Estate Of Pyrrhus (40-44)

As for his dishonesty, most of you know all about it without any words from me, so that at any rate I have abundant witnesses when I say anything about him. But I should like in the first place to convict him in the following manner of the most impudent lying in this evidence of his. Come, tell me this, Nicodemus: If you had given your sister in marriage to Pyrrhus and if you knew that Pyrrhus was leaving a legitimate daughter by her,

how is it that you allowed the inheritance to be adjudicated to our brother[*] without the disposal of the legitimate daughter whom you say our uncle left behind him? Did you not know that by the demand that the estate should be adjudicated an attempt was being made to bastardize your niece? For, when he claimed to have the estate adjudicated to him, he thereby sought to bastardize the daughter of him who left the estate.

To go still further back, the adoption of my brother by Pyrrhus had a similar effect; for no one has the right to devise or dispose of any of his property without also disposing of any legitimate daughters whom he may have left at his decease. You will understand this when you hear the text of the laws read out. Read these laws to the judges.

Laws

Can you suppose that the man who has declared in evidence that he gave his sister in marriage would have allowed any of these things to be done, and, at the moment when Endius claimed to be given possession and applied to the court, would not have set up his niece's title and lodged a protestation that her paternal inheritance was not adjudicable to Endius? And yet that our brother claimed to have the estate adjudicated to him and that no one contested his claim, is proved by a deposition. Read it.

Deposition

When this claim then for the adjudication of the estate was made, Nicodemus did not dare to contest the succession or put in a protestation that his niece was a legitimate daughter left by Pyrrhus.