Against Diogeiton (16-20)

And you thought fit to turn these, the children of your daughter, out of their own house, in worn-out clothes, without shoes or attendant or bedding or cloaks; without the furniture which their father bequeathed to them, and without the money which he had deposited with you.

And now you are bringing up the children you have had by my step-mother in all the comforts of affluence; and you are quite right in that: but you are wronging mine, whom you ejected from the house in dishonor, and whom you are intent on turning from persons of ample means into beggars. And over proceedings of this sort you feel neither fear of the gods nor shame before me who am cognizant of the facts, nor are you mindful of your brother, but you put money before us all.

Thereupon, gentlemen of the jury, after hearing all the severe things spoken by the mother, the whole company of us there were so affected by this man’s conduct and by her statements,—when we saw how the children had been treated, and recalled the dead man to mind and how unworthy was the guardian he had left in charge of his estate, and reflected how hard it is to find a person who can be trusted with one’s affairs,—that nobody, gentlemen, among us there was able to utter a word: we could only weep as sadly as the sufferers, and go our ways in silence.

Witnesses

since he has had the face to deny one part of his debt and, after finally confessing to the rest, to make out a sum of seven talents of silver and seven thousand drachmae as receipts and expenses on account of two boys and their sister during eight years. So gross is his impudence that, not knowing how he should enter the sums spent, he reckoned for the viands of the two young boys and their sister five obols a day[*]; for shoes, laundry and hairdressing he kept no monthly or yearly account, but he shows it inclusively, for the whole period, as more than a talent of silver.