51
Yet, if in the case of those who are proved to have hidden their real parentage and laid claim to a false one, you rightly hold this to be a proof that they are aliens, surely in my case the opposite should prove that I am a citizen. For in claiming the rights of citizenship I should never have inscribed myself as the son of parents who were both foreigners, but, if I had known any such thing, I should have sought out persons to claim as my parents. But I knew nothing of the sort, and so, holding fast to those who are my real parents, I claim Athenian citizenship.
52
Again, I was left an orphan; and yet they say that I am rich and that some of the witnesses testify that they are my relatives because they receive help from me. They taunt me with my poverty and make my birth a reproach, but at the same time they assert that I am rich enough to buy anything.
53
In which statement, then, is one to believe them? It surely would have been their right, if I had been illegitimate or an alien, to inherit all my property. Do they prefer, then, to take a little and jeopardize themselves by giving false testimony and to commit perjury, rather than to take everything, and that with safety, without having invoked a curse upon their own heads? This is not the case. No; in my opinion, seeing that they are my relatives, they are but doing what is right in aiding one of themselves.
54
And they are not doing this at this time because I have induced them to do so; on the contrary, when I was a child they at once took me to the clansmen, they took me to the temple of Apollo our ancestral god, and to the other sacred places. And yet I presume that as a child I did not induce these men to do this by giving them money. No; my father himself, while he still lived, swore the customary oath and introduced me to the clansmen, knowing that I was an Athenian, born of an Athenian mother, lawfully betrothed to himself; and these facts have been established by testimony.
