31
For Theocrines asserted that, if the boy should return to his father’s house, he would be found to have lost all the estate which Aeschylus, his adoptive father, had given him. This assertion was false, for no such thing, men of the jury, has ever happened to any adopted person. He made the further assertion that Polyeuctus, the husband of the boy’s mother, had been responsible for the whole scheme, since he wished to retain possession of the boy’s property. The jurymen were incensed at his assertions and held that, while the decree itself and the grant were both legal, the boy would in fact be robbed of his estate; and they fined my father ten talents as being in the scheme with Polyeuctus, and gave credence to Theocrines as having come to the boy’s defence.
32
Such, or substantially such, were the proceedings in court. But when this worthy fellow saw that the people were filled with wrath, and that he himself had been believed, as one who was not wholly depraved, he summoned Polyeuctus before the archon and lodged an indictment against him for maltreatment of an orphan, and put the case in the hands of the assessor Mnesarchides.Each of the three chief archons (the Eponymus, the King, and the Polemarch) had two assessors to whom he could delegate the conduct of business for him. This case would belong to the Eponymus. When, however, he had received two hundred drachmae from Polyeuctus and had sold for a trifling sum those awful charges for which he had fixed the damages in my father’s case at ten talents, he dropped the matter, withdrew the indictment, and left the orphan in the lurch.
32
(To the clerk.) Call, please, the witnesses who support these statements.
32
The Witnesses
33
If now my father had been well-to-do, men of the jury, and able to provide a thousand drachmae, he would have got off entirely free from the indictment for illegality; for that was the sum the defendant demanded of him.
