On the Confiscation of the Property Of The Brother Of Nicias (21-25)

For at this moment Diomnestus, my brother and I, three of one household, are equipping warships, and when the State requires money we raise a special contribution on these properties. Since, then, we are of this way of thinking, and our ancestors have evinced the same character, spare us.

Else we should have no escape, gentlemen, from the most miserable plight: after being left orphans in the time of the Thirty we should be stripped of our property under the democracy,—we, to whom fortune vouchsafed that, as mere children, we should succor the people by going to the tent of Pausanias! Having such a record behind us, with what judges would we have chosen to take refuge?

Surely with those who support a constitution for which both our father and our kinsmen gave their lives. And so today this is the sole return that we ask of you for all that we have done,—that you do not suffer us to be reduced to destitution or left in want of bare necessaries, and that you do not ruin the prosperity that was our ancestors’, but much rather give an example to those who desire to do the State good service of the treatment that they will receive from you in times of danger.

We therefore owe our isolation to the merits of our kinsmen and the calamities of the State. Bearing all this in mind, you ought to succor us, judging those to be rightful recipients of your favours under democracy who bore their share of calamity under oligarchy.