Against Athenogenes (1-5)

When I told her what had happened and explained that Athenogenes was rude to me and unwilling to come to any reasonable agreement, she said that he was always like that and told me not to worry, as she would support me in everything herself.

Her manner when she said this could not have been more sincere, and she took the most solemn oaths to prove that she was thinking only of my welfare and was telling me the plain truth. So, to be quite honest with you, gentlemen of the jury, I took her at her word. That is how love, I suppose, upsets a man’s natural balance when it takes a woman as its ally. She, at any rate, by this act of wholesale trickery pocketed, as a reward for her kindness, a further three hundred drachmas, ostensibly to buy a girl.

Perhaps there is nothing very surprising, gentlemen of the jury, in my having been taken in like this by Antigone, a woman who was, I am told, the most gifted courtesan of her time and who has continued to practise as a procuress ⋯ has ruined the house of ⋯ of the deme Chollidae which was equal to any. And yet if that was how she behaved on her own, what do you think her plans are now when she has taken Athenogenes into partnership, who is a speechwriter, a man of affairs and, most significant of all, an Egyptian?

At all events, to make a long story short, she finally sent for me again later and said that after a long talk with Athenogenes she had with difficulty managed to persuade him to release Midas and both his sons for me for forty minas.[*] She told me to produce the money as quickly as I could before Athenogenes changed his mind on any point.

After I had collected it from every source and been a nuisance to my friends I deposited the forty minas in the bank and came to Antigone. She brought us both together, Athenogenes and myself, and after reconciling us asked us to treat each other as friends in future. I consented to this and Athenogenes, the defendant, replied that I had Antigone to thank for what had passed. And now, he said, I will show you how well I am going to treat you for her sake.[*] You are going to put down the money, he went on, for the liberation of Midas and his sons. Instead I will sell them to you formally as your own, so that no one shall interfere with, or seduce the boy, and also so that the slaves themselves shall abstain from being troublesome, for fear of the consequences.