39
And consider how greatly he profited thereby; for when our attack on the city met with ill success, and the retreat did not succeed as we desired, and when he was wounded, unable to walk and in a faint condition, I and my servant carried him off on our shoulders to the ship. Consequently he often said to many persons that I was solely responsible for his coming through alive.
40
Yet what greater benefaction than this could a man receive? Moreover, when he had sailed to Lycia and died there, this woman, a few days after the news of his death, was sacrificing and holding festival, and had no shame before his surviving brother, so little regard did she have for the dead man, but I instituted mourning for him in the custom prescribed for relatives.
41
And it was my character and my affection for the two brothers that moved me to do all this and not any expectation of this trial; for I did not think that both would come to such an unhappy end that by dying without children they were going to oblige us to prove how each one of us had felt and acted toward them.
42
How this woman and myself conducted ourselves toward Thrasylochus and Sopolis you have, in the main heard; but perhaps they will have recourse to the one argument which remains to them—that Thrasyllus, the father of this woman, will feel that he is being dishonored (if the dead have any perception of happenings in this world)A frequent sentiment in Greek literature; cf. Isoc. 14.61 and Isoc. 9.2. when he sees his daughter being deprived of her fortune and me becoming the heir of what he had acquired.This passage is interesting as an example of an orator’s anticipation( anticipatio or προκατάληψις) of an opponent’s argument.
