On the Estate of Dicaeogenes (20-24)

Yet if he had not given surety in the presence of the judges, five hundred in number, and of those who were present in court, I don't know what he could have done.[*] To prove, therefore, that they are obviously lying, we are producing as witnesses those who were present when Dicaeogenes (III.) gave up two-thirds of the estate and promised to hand it over without further dispute to Dicaeogenes' (II.) sisters, and Leochares undertook to be surety that he would actually perform what he promised. And we beseech you, gentlemen, if any of you were present on that occasion, to recollect whether we are speaking the truth and to aid us.

For, gentlemen, if Dicaeogenes (III.) is speaking the truth, what advantage was it to us to have won our case, and what disadvantage was it to my opponent to be defeated? For if he simply renounced, as he alleges, his claim to the two-thirds of the estate but did not agree to hand it over without further dispute, what did he lose by renouncing property, the value of which he was still holding? For even before he lost his case, the property which we are claiming was not in his possession but in the hands of those who bought it from him or held it on mortgage, whom he ought to have paid off and then given us our share.

That is why we insisted on his providing sureties, because we had no confidence that he would carry out his agreement. Indeed except two small buildings outside the walls and sixty plethra[*] of land in the Plain[*] we have recovered nothing: the rest is in the possession of those to whom he sold or mortgaged it. We are making no attempt to eject them, because we are afraid of losing suits against them; for when we tried to eject Micion from the bath-house at the suggestion of Dicaeogenes (III.), who said that he would not confirm his title,[*] we were fined forty minae, all through Dicaeogenes, gentlemen.

For thinking that he would not confirm any title to any of the property to which he renounced his claim in our favor in the court, we vigorously attacked Micion before the judges, being willing to run any risk of Dicaeogenes (III.) confirming Micion's title to the bath-house, and never imagining that he would do the very opposite of what he had agreed to do, our sole reason for so acting being that the sureties had been given.

Dicaeogenes (III.), however, having renounced the portion of the property which he still admits that he renounced in our favor, confirmed Micion's title to the bath-house. Thus I was in the unfortunate position of not only having received nothing from the estate but of having also lost forty minae, and left the court having been fooled by Dicaeogenes (III.). Of these things I will now produce witnesses before you.