On The Estate of Apollodorus (30-34)

All men, when they are near their end, take measures of precaution on their own behalf to prevent their families from becoming extinct and to secure that there shall be someone to perform sacrifices and carry out the customary rites over them. And so, even if they die without issue, they at any rate adopt children and leave them behind. And there is not merely a personal feeling in favor of this course, but the state has taken public measures to secure that it shall be followed, since by law it entrusts the archon with the duty of preventing families from being extinguished.

Now it was quite clear to Apollodorus that, if he left his estate in the hands of my opponents, he would be securing the extinction of his house. For what did he see before his eyes? He saw that these sisters of Apollodorus (II.) inherited their brother's estate, but never gave him a son by adoption, though they had sons of their own, and that their husbands had sold the landed property which he left behind him and his possessions for five talents and divided up the proceeds, but that his house had been left shamefully and deplorably desolate. Knowing that their brother had been treated thus, could he himself have ever expected, even if there had been friendship between him and them, to receive the customary rites from them, being only their cousin and not their brother?

Surely he could have no such expectation. And now please summon the witnesses to show that my opponents have viewed with indifference their brother's childlessness, and are in possession of his fortune, and have allowed a family to die out which was obviously capable of supporting the expense of a trierarchy.

Witnesses

Since such was the disposition of the cousins towards one another and so grave the resentment towards Apollodorus who adopted me, how could he have done better than follow the course which he did? Would he, in Heaven's name, have done better if he had chosen a child from the family of one of his friends and adopted him and given him his property? But even such a child's own parents would not have known, owing to his youth, whether he would turn out a good man or worthless.

On the other hand, he had had experience of me, having sufficiently tested me; he well knew what had been my behavior towards my father and mother, my care for my relatives and my capacity for managing my own affairs. He was well aware that in my official capacity as thesmothete[*] I have been neither unjust nor rapacious. It was then not in ignorance, but with full knowledge, that he was making me master of his property.