On the Property of Aristophanes (11-15)

It is difficult indeed, gentlemen, to defend oneself against an impression which some people have received of the property of Nicophemus, and in face of a scarcity of money that is now felt in the city, and when our contention is against the Treasury. Nevertheless, even in these circumstances, you will easily perceive that the accusations are not true; and I request you with all the insistence in my power to give us a kindly hearing to the end, and to deliver the verdict that you may esteem best for you and most agreeable to your oaths.

My father, finding that these people had been accredited by Conon, and were of proved respectability and—at that time at least[*]—in the good graces of the city, was persuaded to bestow her: he did not know the slander that was to follow. It was a time when anyone among you would have deemed it desirable to be connected with them; for it was not done for the sake of money, as you may readily judge from my father’s whole life and conduct.

When he was of age, he had the chance of marrying another woman with a great fortune; but he took my mother without a portion, merely because she was a daughter of Xenophon,[*] son of Euripides, a man not only known for his private virtues but also deemed worthy by you of holding high command, so I am told.

Again, my sisters he refused to certain very wealthy men who were willing to take them without dowries, because he judged them to be of inferior birth: he preferred to bestow one upon Philomelus of Paeania,[*] whom most men regard as an honorable rather than a wealthy man, and the other upon a man who was reduced to poverty by no misdemeanor,—his nephew, Phaedrus[*] of Myrrhinous,[*]—and with her a dowry of forty minae; and he later gave her to Aristophanes with the same sum.