ABSTRACT
CASE XII: HYPEREIDES 3 – AGAINST ATHENOGENES
The fragmentary state of this speech reflects the circumstances of its survival. It was preserved in a papyrus rescued from the sands of Egypt, not in medieval manuscripts. Even so, its remarkable vigour is unmistakable. It concerns a purchase made by the speaker. As he tells it, he had fallen in love with a slave boy owned by Athenogenes. He had originally intended to secure the freedom of the boy, his father, Midas, and brother but was induced by Athenogenes, partly under the influence of a prostitute turned pimp named Antigona, to buy the slaves and the perfumery business in which they worked. After he made the purchase he discovered a number of undisclosed debts which Midas had contracted amounting to a total of five talents, an enormous sum. He is now suing Athenogenes, probably by the action for damages (dike blabes). The speech cannot have been delivered before 330, for in §31 we are told that the battle of Salamis occurred one hundred and fifty years earlier. Nor can it be later than 324, for the presence of Troizenian exiles in Athens (§33) indicates that Alexander’s decree of that year allowing the return of exiles to their cities had not yet been enacted. The speaker is a young man from a farming background.
