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This sum he promised but did not pay, and his name was posted on a list of defaulters in front of the statues of the Eponymous Heroes,The statues of the heroes who gave their names to the ten tribes stood below the north side of the Areopagus and above the Metroum and the Council Chamber (Paus. 1.5.1). which was headed: “These are they who voluntarily promised the people to contribute money for the salvation of the city and failed to pay the amounts promised.” Indeed, gentlemen, what ground is there for astonishment that he deceived me, a single citizen, when he acted in this manner towards all of you united in assembly? Of these facts I will now produce witnesses before you.
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Witnesses
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Such are the manner and extent of the public services which Dicaeogenes has rendered to the city out of so large a fortune.
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Towards his relatives he is the sort of man that you see; some of us he robbed of our property because he was stronger than we were, others he allowed to resort to paid employment through lack of the necessities of life. Everyone saw his mother seated in the shrine of EileithyiaThe goddess of childbirth. In his edition, Reiske (Leipzig, 1773) conjectures that the speaker is insinuating that Dicaeogenes committed incest with his own mother. and calling down upon him reproaches which I am ashamed to mention but which he was not ashamed to justify.
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Amongst his intimates he deprived Melas the Egyptian, who had been his friend from youth upwards, of money which he had received from him, and is now his bitterest enemy; of his other friends some have never received back money which they lent him, others were deceived by him and did not receive what he had promised to give them if he should have the estate adjudicated to him.
