On the Estate of Philoctemon (10-14)

That he made a will and adopted a son when he was in full possession of his faculties, as he was entitled to do, has been proved to you; it follows from this that Androcles has been proved to have committed perjury. But since he has further stated in his protestation that my opponent is a legitimate son of Euctemon, I will prove this also to be false. The real sons of Euctemon, the father of Philoctemon, namely, Philoctemon himself, Ergamenes, and Hegemon, and his two daughters and their mother, Euctemon's wife, the daughter of Meixiades of Cephisia, are well known to all their relatives and to the members of the ward and to most of the demesmen, and they shall testify to you;

but no one is aware or ever heard a word during Euctemon's lifetime of his having married any other wife who became mother by him of our opponents. Yet it is only natural that these should be most trustworthy witnesses; for relatives ought to know about such matters. Please call them first and read the depositions.

Depositions

Further, I will prove that our adversaries have actually given evidence in support of these facts. When the interrogations took place before the archon, and my opponents paid money into court in support of their claim that these young men were the legitimate sons of Euctemon, on being asked by us who, and whose daughter, their mother was, they could not supply the information, although we protested and the archon ordered them to reply in accordance with the law. It was surely a strange proceeding, gentlemen, to make a claim on their behalf as legitimate and to lodge a protestation, and yet not be able to state who was their mother or name any of their relatives.

At the time they alleged that she was a Lemnian and so secured a delay; subsequently, when they appeared at the interrogation, without giving time for anyone to ask a question, they immediately declared that the mother was Callippe and that she was the daughter of Pistoxenus, as though it was enough for them merely to produce the name of Pistoxenus. When we asked who he was and whether he was alive or not, they said that he had died on military service in Sicily, leaving a daughter, this Callippe, in the house of Euctemon, and that these two sons were born to her while she was under his guardianship, thus inventing a story surpassing the limits of impudence and quite untrue, as I will prove to you first of all from the answers which they themselves gave.

Fifty-two years have passed since the Sicilian expedition, reckoning from the date of its departure in the archonship of Arimnestus;[*] yet the elder of these two alleged sons of Callippe and Euctemon has not yet passed his twentieth year. If these years are deducted, more than thirty years still remain since the Sicilian expedition; so that Callippe, if she were thirty years of age,[*] ought to have been no longer under a guardian, nor unmarried and childless, but long ago married, given in marriage either by her guardian, according to the law, or else by an adjudication of the court.