19. I ask you now, gentlemen of the jury, to hear my calculation, that
you may pity the boys for the magnitude of their misfortunes, and think
this man most deserving of your anger. For Diogeiton causes all men to
suspect one another, so as to trust neither the living nor the dead, nor
one's dearest ones more than one's enemies. 20. For he had the hardihood
to deny some of the facts, but finally acknowledged part, and showed the
receipts and expenses for the boys and their sister for eight years,
amounting to seven silver talents and four thousand drachmae. And he
became so shameless, that not being able to account for the money, he
charged five obols a day for the living of the boys and their sister, and
he made no itemized account for shoes and clothing, and the barber either
by the month or year, but made the sum-total amount to more than one
talent of silver. 21. And while not spending more than twenty-five minae
of the five thousand drachmae charged for their father's monument, he
charged half that amount to himself, and half to them. And for the
festival of Dionysus, gentlemen of the jury, (for I think it not out of
place to call this to your minds,) he entered a lamb as costing sixteen
drachmae, and charged the children with eight; at this we were the most
indignant. So, my friends, in great losses often the minor wrongs trouble
those who are injured no less (than more important ones), for they show
all too plainly the baseness of the offenders. 22. Then for other
festivals and sacrifices he charged to them more than four thousand
drachmae, and there were other large charges made, which were reckoned to
make out the amount, as if he had been made the children's guardian for
this, that he might show them accounts instead of money, and make up that
they were poor and not rich, and that, if they had any hereditary enemy,
they might forget him, and only contend with their guardian being bereft
of their patrimony.
23. If he had wanted to be just to the children, according to the laws
which exist about (the treatment of) orphans for the guidance of
guardians with and without property, he could have farmed out the estate
(thus) getting rid of all trouble, or bought land, and brought up the
children on the income from it. Whichever course he followed, they would
have been as rich as any Athenian. But now he seems to me never to have
taken any thought of securing the property, but to keep it for himself,
thinking that his baseness should be the dead man's heir.
24. Here is the worst count of all, gentlemen of the jury. For he, while
sharing as Trierarch with Alexis, the son of Aristodicus, claimed that he
had contributed forty-eight minae, and charged half of this to these
orphan children, whom the state has made exempt, not only because they
are children, but that when they are of age they are released from
liturgies for a year. But this man, their grandfather, illegally exacts
from the children of his own daughter half of his contribution as
Trierarch. 25. And having sent to Adria a merchant-ship worth two
talents, he told their mother when he dispatched it, that the risk was
the children's, but when it arrived in safety and doubled its value, he
said the profit was his own. And yet, if he puts down their losses, and
takes himself what is saved, he will find no difficulty in setting down
on the account what has been spent, and will easily become rich himself
from the money which does not belong to him. 26. It would be too much,
gentlemen of the jury, to go through the accounts point by point; but
when with some difficulty I got the accounts from him, in the presence of
witnesses I asked Aristodicus, the brother of Alexis, for he had died, if
he had any record of the trierarchy. He said he had, and going to his
house we found that Diogeiton had given over to him (Alexis) twenty-four
minae for the trierarchy. 27. The whole expense was here shown to have
been forty-eight minae, so that he charged them with what his whole
expense had been. And what do you think could have been his conduct in
matters of which no one had any knowledge but himself, and which he
managed alone, when in transactions which were carried on through others,
and were not difficult to find out, he had the hardihood to cheat his
daughter's children out of twenty-four minae. Now bring in the witnesses.