25
Since, then, these facts have been so convincingly established, there is no further need, I think, of more words. For when I am able to produce both laws and witnesses in support of everything that I have said, and also admissions made in my favor by my opponent himself, what further need can there be for a long argument? However, if Spudias perchance waxes indignant about the marriage portion and maintains that he is being defrauded to the amount of one thousand drachmae, he will be lying. For, while he disputes my claim to this sum, he has received not less, but more, as will presently be made clear to you.
26
Nay more, even if all these statements of his were indeed true, it is not just, I take it, if the laws are good for anything, that I should lose the marriage portion which was promised me, or that Polyeuctus, if he chose to give a smaller portion to one daughter and a larger to the other, should now be thwarted. For it was open to you, Spudias, not to marry his daughter, unless the thousand drachmae were given to you as well as to me. However you received no less than I, as I shall show.
26
(To the clerk.) But, first, take the deposition which shows on what terms the lady was given to him.
26
The Deposition
27
But how can it be that he has received as much as I, one may ask, if in his case the jewelry and the apparel, to the value of a thousand drachmae, were reckoned in the forty minae, while to me the ten minae were paid separately and in addition? This is precisely what I am going to explain. For Spudias, men of the jury, received his wife from Leocrates with the jewelry and apparel on which Polyeuctus set a value to Leocrates of more than a thousand drachmae, while in my case, if you set what was sent to me over and above the marriage portion—all that I have in my possession—over against what was given to Spudias, you will find them practically equal over and above what was reckoned in the thousand drachmae;
