ABSTRACT
The speech against Diogeiton does not survive in its entirety. It owes its preservation not to the medieval manuscript tradition of Lysias but to the fact that it was cited by the critic Dionysios of Halikarnassos, who lived in Rome during the first century BC, as an example of Lysias' style. Dionysios quoted only part of the speech. It is a suit for impropriety in the conduct of the position of guardian (dike epitropes), and concerns the children of a man named Diodotos. Diodotos had married the daughter of his brother Diogeiton (a common occurrence) before heading off to war, leaving behind a will which made his brother guardian of his young sons and their sister. Diodotos never returned, and it is alleged that over a period of years Diogeiton systematically plundered the estate, while also failing to provide for Diodotos' widow and daughter (both of whom were subsequently married) the dowries anticipated by Diodotos. Under Athenian law an orphan (by which is meant a fatherless child) could on reaching the age of majority require from his guardian a full financial account for the period of the wardship, and could then sue (by dike epitropes, ‘suit for guardianship’) if he believed that the estate had been managed in a dishonest manner. At least one of the boys is now of age, possibly both. The case for the prosecution however is presented not by the older boy but by the husband of their sister, who is acting as supporting speaker (synegoros), presumably because of the boys' youth. The date can be fixed fairly closely. Diodotos died on an expedition which can be dated to 410/9. The older boy came of age between seven and eight years later (§9; the Greek, counting inclusively, says ‘in the eighth year’), that is in 403/2 or 402/1. Since Diodotos has been delaying the case, we may plausibly put the hearing in 402/1 or 401/400. There is a commentary on this speech in C. Carey, Lysias: Selected Speeches (Cambridge 1989).
[1] If the subject at issue were not of great importance, judges, I would never have allowed these people to bring the case before you. I consider it quite shameful to quarrel with one's family, and I am aware that it is not only the guilty parties whose reputation suffers in your estimation but also those who cannot tolerate losing out to their relatives. However, judges, since the plaintiffs have been defrauded of large sums of money and have appealed to me as their in-law because they have suffered grave mistreatment at the hands of the people from whom they least should, I have felt compelled to speak on their behalf. [2] I am married to their sister, the grand-daughter of Diogeiton. After repeated requests to both sides I persuaded them to entrust the case to the arbitration of friends, since I thought it very important that no outsiders should know of their problems. But Diogeiton, though it was conclusively shown that he had the money, persistently refused to be influenced by any of his own friends but preferred to be sued, to move for the annulment of arbitration decisions and to face the most extreme risks rather than to do what was right and be rid of the plaintiffs' charges. [3] So I ask you: if I prove that the plaintiffs have suffered more shameful treatment by their grandfather as their guardian than anyone in the whole city has received from an outsider, help them as is right; if not, trust the defendant completely, and for the rest of time hold us in less esteem. I shall attempt to give you a full account from the beginning.
[4] Diodotos and Diogeiton were brothers, judges, by the same father and mother. They divided up their invisible property and held their visible property jointly. When Diodotos had made a substantial profit from trade, he was persuaded by Diogeiton to take the latter's only daughter in marriage. By her he had two sons and a daughter. [5] Some time later Diodotos was conscripted to serve as a hoplite under Thrasyllos. He called to him his wife, who was also his niece, and her father, who was his father-in-law and his brother, and grandfather and uncle to the children. Thinking that in view of these close bonds no-one had a stronger duty to do right by his children, Diodotos handed a will to him and five silver talents for his safe keeping. [6] He disclosed to him that there were seven talents and 40 mnai lent out on maritime loans (two thousand drachmas loaned out on property), and two thousand owed in the Chersonnesos. And he solemnly bound Diogeiton, in the event of his death, to give his wife in marriage with a dowry of a talent and to make her a gift of the contents of the bedroom, and to give his daughter in marriage with a dowry of a talent. He also left his wife twenty mnai and thirty Kyzikene staters.
[7] Having seen to this he left a copy of the documents in his house and went off to serve with Thrasyllos. After his death at Ephesos, Diogeiton concealed her husband's death from his daughter for a while, and collected the sealed documents, which Diodotos had left behind, on the pretext that he needed these documents to collect the maritime debt. [8] When he finally revealed the death to them and they had carried out the customary rites, for the first year they lived in Peiraieus, where all the stores had been left. When this supply ran out, he sent the children to the city and gave their mother in marriage with a dowry of five thousand drachmas, one thousand less than her husband had given. [9] Over seven years later, when the older of the lads passed his scrutiny for manhood, Diogeiton called them to him and told them that their father had left them twenty silver mnai and thirty staters. ‘Now, I have spent a good deal of my own money on your keep. While I was able to do so, I did not mind; but now I too am short of money. So as for you, now that you have passed your scrutiny and become a man, you must see to your needs for yourself.’
[10] On hearing this they went to their mother, shocked and weeping, and brought her along with them to my house. They were in a pitiful state, ejected miserably from their home, weeping and urging me not to stand by while they were robbed of their inheritance and reduced to beggary, treated outrageously by those who least should do so, but to help them for their sister's sake and their own. [11] It would take a long time to describe the extent of the grieving in my house at that point. But finally their mother implored and entreated me to arrange a meeting of her father and their friends. She said that even though she had previously not been in the habit of speaking in the presence of men, the magnitude of their misfortunes would compel her to tell the whole tale of their sufferings to us.
[12] I went and complained to Hegemon, who was now married to Diogeiton's daughter, I spoke to the rest of our circle of friends, and I demanded that Diogeiton submit to an investigation in the matter of the money. Initially he refused, but finally he was forced into it by his friends. When we met, the woman asked him what state of mind induced him to adopt such an attitude toward the boys, ‘when you are their father's brother and my father, both their uncle and their grandfather. [13] If you had no respect for any mortal,’ she said, ‘you should have feared the gods. For you certainly received five talents for safekeeping from Diodotos when he was setting sail. On this matter I am ready to stand my children beside me, both these ones and those I bore afterwards, and take an oath by them anywhere my father says. I am not so utterly lost, nor do I value money so much, as to die having perjured myself on the lives of my own children and deprive my father dishonestly of his property.’
[14] Furthermore, she demonstrated that he had taken receipt of seven talents and four thousand drachmas, which had been loaned at maritime rates, and she showed the documents relating to these. She said that during the process of separation, when Diogeiton was moving away from Kollytos into Phaidros' house, the boys found a discarded book roll and brought it .to her. [15] She demonstrated that he had received one hundred mnai which had been lent out at real estate rates, another two thousand drachmas and valuable furniture; and she said that the family received grain from Chersonnesos every year. ‘And then did you have the nerve,’ she said, ‘when you had so much money, to claim that their father left behind two thousand drachmas and thirty staters, the very sums which were left to me and which I handed to you after his death? [16] And you saw fit to eject these boys, your own grandsons, from their own house dressed only in short cloaks, barefoot, without attendant, without coverlets, without robes, without the furniture their father left them, and without the sums of money he left with you to keep safe for them. [17] And now you are bringing up my stepmother's children in wealth and luxury (which is fine in itself), while you mistreat my sons; you have driven them without respect from their home and are keen to reduce them from riches to rags. And for acts such as these you show no fear before the gods nor shame before myself, who know the truth, nor loyalty to your brother's memory; you regard all of us as less important than money.’
[18] At that point judges, having heard the woman's long and dreadful tale, all of us who were there were so shocked by Diogeiton's conduct and her speech, as we saw what the boys had suffered, and thought of the dead man and how unworthy was the guardian he left in charge of his estate, and reflected how difficult it is to find someone to trust with one's property, that none of us present, judges, was able to speak; weeping every bit as bitterly as the victims, we went out in silence.
First of all, will the witnesses to these facts please step up.
Witnesses[19] I wish you to pay attention to his accounting, judges; then you will pity the young men for the magnitude of their misfortunes and conclude that this man deserves the anger of the whole citizen population. For Diogeiton creates such mutual suspicion in all mankind that in life and in death they have no more confidence in their closest relatives than in their most bitter enemies. [20] This man had the nerve to deny the existence of some of the money and having finally admitted to possessing the rest to declare receipt and expenditure of seven silver talents and four thousand drachmas for the upkeep of two boys and their sister in eight years. Such was his brazenness that, at a loss how to account for the money, he calculated five obols a day for food for two little boys and their sister; for footwear and clothing and the barber's shop he had not entered a monthly or annual figure but a sum total for the whole period of more than a silver talent. [2l] For their father's memorial, though he spent less than twenty-five mnai from the declared sum of five thousand drachmas, he puts half of the latter figure down to himself and enters the other half against the boys. Again, he declared the purchase of a lamb for the Dionysia, judges – and I don't think it unreasonable of me to include this point – at a cost of sixteen drachmas, and put down eight drachmas to the boys. This enraged us as much as anything. As you can see, judges, amid large losses sometimes the small ones cause just as much pain to the victims; they reveal the dishonesty of the wrongdoer all too clearly. [22] For the rest of the festivals and sacrifices he set down to them expenditure of over four thousand drachmas, and a vast number of other payments which were included in the total, as though the sole reason he was appointed guardian to the boys was to present them with sums, not sums of money, and reduce them from riches to absolute rags, and to ensure they would forget any ancestral enemy they might have and wage war on their guardian for defrauding them of their inheritance.
[23] Yet if he had wanted to deal fairly with the boys, it was open to him under the laws relating to orphans, which are applicable to anyone whether able or unable to act as guardian, to lease out the property and be rid of a great deal of trouble, or to purchase property and support the boys from the income. Whichever of these courses he chose, they would have been as rich as anyone in Athens. As it stands, I think it was never his intention to make the extent of their property visible but to keep for himself what belonged to them; he thought his dishonesty should inherit the dead man's wealth.
[24] The worst thing of all, judges, is that this man, when he was serving as joint-trierarch with Alexis the son of Aristodikos, claimed that he had contributed forty-eight mnai, half of which he has charged to these boys who are orphans; yet the city has not only made orphans exempt when they are children, but has released them from all public services for a year even when they pass their scrutiny for manhood. But this man, their grandfather, illegally exacts half the cost of his own trierarchy from his daughter's children. [25] And he sent a merchant ship with a cargo worth two talents to the Adriatic. When he was sending it out, he told their mother that it was at the risk of the children, but when it returned safe and doubled the value, he maintained that the enterprise was his. Yet if he is to set down the losses as belonging to the boys but keep the money that comes back as his own, he will have no difficulty in finding sources of expense to enter in his accounts, and will find it easy to become personally rich from the property of others.
[26] To give you a detailed account, judges, would take a great deal of time. However, when after great difficulty they received the written account from him, I asked Aristodikos the brother of Alexis (Alexis himself was by now dead) in front of witnesses if he still had the account for the trierarchy. He said he did, and when we went to his house we found that Diogeiton had contributed twenty-four mnai to the trierarchy. [27] But Diogeiton had declared an expenditure of forty-eight mnai; so he has counted against the boys a sum equal to the whole of his outlay. But what do you imagine he has done on matters where no-one knew the facts and which he handled personally alone, when on business which was done through others, where it was not difficult to discover the facts, he had the nerve to tell lies and extract twenty-four mnai from his own grandsons? Will the witnesses to these facts please step up.
Witnesses[28] You have heard the witnesses, judges. What I shall do is calculate for him on the basis of the amount which he finally admitted to possessing, seven talents and forty mnai. I shall reckon in no income, but shall spend solely from the capital; and I shall suppose something without precedent in the city, an outlay of a thousand drachmas a year, a little less than three drachmas a day for two boys, their sister, an attendant for the boys and a maidservant. [29] In eight years the total is eight thousand drachmas. This leaves six talents from the seven and twenty mnai (from the forty). He cannot prove that he was robbed of this by pirates or that he lost it in business or that he has repaid debts …
