On The Estate of Ciron (5-9)

It is a difficult task therefore, gentlemen, for one who is wholly without experience of litigation, when such important interests are at stake, to contend against fabricated stories and witnesses whose evidence is false; yet I have great hopes that I shall obtain my rights from you, and that I shall myself speak sufficiently well at least to state what those rights are, unless some such chance should befall me as it is now my lot to anticipate.[*] I beg you, therefore, gentlemen, to listen to me with goodwill, and, if I seem to have been wronged, to aid me to obtain my rights.

First, then, I shall prove to you that my mother was Ciron's legitimate daughter; for events which have happened long ago I shall rely on report and statements which have been heard by witnesses, while for events within living memory I shall employ witnesses who know the facts, and proofs which are better than any evidence. When I have established this, I shall then show that we have a better claim to Ciron's estate than our opponents. Starting, therefore, from the point at which they began their narrative of the events, I, too, shall try and put my version before you.

My grandfather Ciron, gentlemen, married my grandmother, his first cousin, herself the daughter of his own mother's sister. She did not live long with him; she bore my mother, and died after four years. My grandfather, being left with an only daughter, married the sister of DiocIes as his second wife, who bore him two sons. He brought up his daughter in the house with his wife and her children,

and while the latter were still alive, he gave her in marriage, when she reached the proper age, to Nausimenes of Cholargus, giving her a dowry of twenty-five minae including raiment and jewelry. Three or four years later Nausimenes fell ill and died without leaving any issue by our mother. My grandfather received her back again—without, however, recovering the dowry which he had given, owing to the embarrassed condition of Nausimenes' affairs—and gave her in a second marriage to my father with a dowry of one thousand drachmae.

How is one to prove clearly that all these events occurred in face of the imputations which our opponents are now uttering? I sought and discovered a way. Whether my mother was or was not the daughter of Ciron, whether she lived in his house or not, whether he did or did not on two occasions give a feast in honor of her marriage, and what dowry each of her husbands received with her—all these things must necessarily be known to the male and female slaves who belonged to Ciron.