On the Mysteries (117-130)

And now, gentlemen, you would perhaps like to know what motive Callias had in putting the bough on the altar. I will explain why he tried to trap me. Epilycus, son of Teisander, was my uncle, my mother’s brother.[*] He died in Sicily without male issue, but left two daughters who ought now to have passed to Leagrus and myself.[*]

His private affairs were in confusion. The tangible property which he left did not amount to two talents, while his debts came to more than five. However, I arranged a meeting with Leagrus[*] before our friends and told him that this was the time for decent men to show their respect for family ties.

We have no right to prefer a wealthy or successful alliance and look down upon the daughters of Epilycus, I argued: for if Epilycus were alive, or had died a rich man, we should be claiming the girls as their next of kin. We should have married them then either because of Epilycus himself or because of his money; we will do the same now because we are men of honour. Do you obtain an order of the court for the one, and I will do the same for the other.

He assented, gentlemen; so in accordance with our agreement we both applied for an order of the court. The girl claimed by me happened to fall ill, and died; the other is still alive. Now Callias tried to bribe Leagrus into letting him have this second daughter.[*] Directly I heard of it, I deposited a fee,[*] and began by obtaining leave to proceed against Leagrus, to this effect: If you will claim the girl for yourself, take her and good luck to you. If not, I will claim her myself.[*]

As soon as Callias learned of this, he entered a claim for the girl in his son’s name, on the tenth of the month, to prevent me from obtaining an order. Soon after the twentieth,[*] during the Mysteries which are just over, he gives Cephisius a thousand drachmae, gets an information lodged against me, and involves me in today’s trial. Then, when he saw that I was standing my ground, he put the bough on the altar, intending to have me either put to death without a trial or banished, and then to marry the daughter of Epilycus himself by bribing Leagrus.

However, he saw that even thus he would not get his way without coming into court; so he approached Lysistratus, Hegemon, and Epichares, whom he saw to be intimate friends of mine. He had insolence enough, he had contempt enough for the law to inform them that if I was prepared even now to relinquish my claims to the daughter of Epilycus, he was ready to stop persecuting me, to call off Cephisius, and to make amends for his behaviour with our friends as arbitrators.

I told him to proceed with his case and hire still more help. But if the people of Athens return a true verdict and I escape you, I warned him, you will find that it is your turn, I think, to fight for your life. And with your permission, gentlemen, I will not disappoint him. Kindly call witnesses to confirm what I have been saying.

Witnesses

But you must let me tell you how the son to whom Callias tried to have the daughter of Epilycus awarded was born and acknowledged by his father; it is quite worth hearing, gentlemen. Callias married a daughter of Ischomachus; but he had not been living with her a year before he made her mother his mistress. Was ever man so utterly without shame? He was the priest of the Mother and the Daughter; yet he lived with mother and daughter and kept them both in his house together.

The thought of the Two Goddesses may not have awoken any shame or fear in Callias; but the daughter of Ischomachus thought death better than an existence where such things went on before her very eyes. She tried to hang herself: but was stopped in the act. Then, when she recovered, she ran away from home; the mother drove out the daughter. Finally Callias grew tired of the mother as well, and drove her out in her turn. She then said she was pregnant by him; but when she gave birth to a son, Callias denied that the child was his.

At that, the woman’s relatives came to the altar at the Apaturia[*] with the child and a victim for sacrifice, and told Callias to begin the rites. He asked whose child it was. The child of Callias, son of Hipponicus, they replied. But I am he. Yes, and the child is yours. Callias took hold of the altar and swore that the only son he had or had ever had was Hipponicus, and the mother was Glaucon’s daughter. If that was not the truth, he prayed that he and his house might perish from the earth—as they surely will.

Now some time afterwards, gentlemen, he fell in love with the abandoned old hag once more and welcomed her back into his house, while he presented the boy, a grown lad by this time, to the Ceryces, asserting that he was his own son. Calliades opposed his admission; but the Ceryces voted in favour of the law which they have, whereby a father can introduce his son, if he swears that it is his own son whom he is introducing. So Callias took hold of the altar and swore that the boy was his legitimate son by Chrysilla. Yet he had disowned that same son. Call witnesses to confirm all this, please.

Witnesses

Let us just see, gentlemen, whether anything of this kind has ever happened in Greece before. A man marries a wife, and then marries the mother as well as the daughter. The mother turns the daughter out. Then, while living with the mother, he wants to marry the daughter of Epilycus, so that the granddaughter can turn the grandmother out. Why, what ought his child to be called?

Personally, I do not believe that there is anyone ingenious enough to find the right name for him. There are three women with whom his father will have lived: and he is the alleged son of one of them, the brother of another, and the uncle of the third. What ought a son like that to be called? Oedipus, Aegisthus, or what?

As a matter of fact, I want to remind you briefly, gentlemen, of a certain incident connected with Callias. As you may remember, when Athens was mistress of Greece and at the height of her prosperity, and Hipponicus was the richest man in Greece, a rumour with which you are all familiar was on the lips of little children and silly women throughout the city: Hipponicus, they said, has an evil spirit in his house, and it upsets his books.[*] You remember it, gentlemen.