On the Estate of Nicostratus (20-24)

Shall I be told that, after having performed none of these duties, he administered Nicostratus's property?[*] Evidence of these facts, too, has been given you, and even he himself does not deny most of them. Makeshift excuses have, of course, been found to explain all his acts; for what other resource remains to one who expressly admits the facts?

You must now be well aware, gentlemen, that these persons have no legal right to the property of Nicostratus, but wish to deceive you and to deprive my clients, who are his kinsmen, of an inheritance which lawfully belongs to them. Chariades is not the only person who has acted thus; many other claimants to the property of men who have died abroad have arisen, sometimes even without having been acquainted with them.

For they consider that, if they are successful, it will be possible for them to enjoy the property of others, while, if they fail, the risk is inconsiderable; there are always men who are willing to perjure themselves, and the attempted refutations of their evidence are dealing with the unknown. In a word, there is a vast difference between claiming by right of kinship and claiming under a will. But your duty, gentlemen, is first of all to examine the will and decide whether you think that it is genuine; for this is what the laws enjoin and is the justest course.

But since you have no certain personal knowledge of the truth, and since the witnesses to the will were friends not of the deceased but of Chariades, who wishes to seize property which does not belong to him, what could be juster than by your verdict to award the property of a kinsmen to his kinsmen? For, indeed, if anything had happened to my clients, their property would have passed to none other than Nicostratus; for he would have claimed it by the same right of kinship, being their first cousin, the son of their father's own brother.

But, by Heaven, I am forgetting; Hagnon and Hagnotheus are not kinsmen of Nicostratus according to the allegation of our adversaries, but his kinsmen are quite different people. Are these kinsmen then bearing witness in favor of the claimant under the will rather than themselves contesting the property by right of kinship? Surely they are not so insane as to believe so easily in the will and renounce their claim to so much money! Nay, to judge from what these men themselves say, it is to the advantage of these supposed kinsmen themselves that my clients, rather than Chariades, should have the estate of Nicostratus adjudicated to them.