ABSTRACT
The lexicographers who do mention it display no doubt that Demosthenes is the author, and the first person ever to question the authorship seems to have been Westermann in 1834. He declared that the speech could not have been written by Demosthenes because of various mistakes and faults, both in the content and in the style. Three speeches against Aphobos are included in the corpus attributed to Demosthenes. Finley has attacked a sentence mentioning the failure of Aphobos to arrange for the estate of Demosthenes to be leased during his minority. Finley is wrong to reject the authenticity of the third speech against Aphobos on this ground. It is reasonable to accept it as a genuine speech of Demosthenes and as an authentic source of information about Athenian law. Demosthenes envisages that Aphobos may defend himself by maintaining that it was better that the estate should not be leased.
