9
however, he was not so wholly the slave of his passion as to deem it right even after my mother’s death to receive the woman into his own house, or to admit that the defendants were his children. No, for all the rest of the time they lived as not being sons of my father, as most of you know; but after Boeotus had grown up and had associated with himself a gang of blackmailers,On this whole passage compare the preceding oration, Dem. 39.2. whose leaders were Mnesicles and that Menecles who secured the conviction of Ninus, in connection with these men he brought suit against my father, claiming that he was his son.
10
Many meetings took place about these matters, and my father declared that he would never be convinced that these men were his children, and finally Plangon, men of the jury (for the whole truth shall be told you), having in conjunction with Menecles laid a snare for my father, and deceived him by an oath that among all mankind is held to be the greatest and most awful,A quotation from Hom. Il. 15.37 f. agreed that, if she were paid thirty minae, she would get her brothers to adopt these men, and that, on her own part, if my father should challenge her before the arbitrator to swear that the children were in very truth his sons, she would decline the challenge. For if this were done, she said, the defendants would not be deprived of their civic rights,These would be ensured to them by the fact of their being enrolled in the clan register; but if they were enrolled as sons of the brothers of Plangon, they could no longer make trouble for Mantias by claiming to be sons of his. but they would no longer be able to make trouble for my father, seeing that their mother had refused the oath.
