On the Estate of Dicaeogenes (21-23)

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.