Evidence
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.