Against Diogeiton (6-10)

and he also produced an account of his loans on bottomry, amounting to seven talents and forty minae⋯and two thousand drachmae invested in the Chersonese.[*] He charged him, in case anything should happen to himself, to dower his wife and his daughter with a talent each, and to give his wife the contents of the room; he also bequeathed to his wife twenty minae and thirty staters of Cyzicus.[*]

Having made these arrangements and left duplicate deeds in his house, he went to serve abroad with Thrasyllus. He was killed at Ephesus[*]: for a time Diogeiton concealed from his daughter the death of her husband, and took possession of the deeds which he had left under seal, alleging that these documents were needed for recovering the sums lent on bottomry.

When at length he informed them of the death, and they had done what is customary,[*] they lived for the first year in the Peiraeus, as all their provisions had been left there. But when these began to give out, he sent up the children to the city, and gave their mother in marriage with a dowry of five thousand drachmae,—a thousand less than her husband had given her.

Seven years later the elder of the boys was certified to be of age[*]; when Diogeiton summoned them, and said that their father had left them twenty minae of silver and thirty staters, adding,—Now I have spent a great deal of my own money on your support: so long as I had the means, I did not mind; but at this moment I too am in difficulties myself. You, therefore, since you have been certified and have attained manhood, must henceforth contrive to provide for yourself.

On hearing these words they went away, aghast and weeping, to their mother, and brought her along with them to me. It was pitiful to see how they suffered from the blow: the poor wretches, turned out of doors, wept aloud and besought me not to allow them to be deprived of their patrimony and reduced to beggary by the last persons who ought to have committed this outrage upon them, but to give my best aid, for their sister’s sake as well as their own.