41
And yet, gentlemen, our forefathers, who acquired and bequeathed this property, performed every kind of choregic office, contributed large sums for your expenses in war, and never ceased acting as trierarchs. As evidence of all these services they set up in the temples out of the remainder of their property,The expenses would be incurred in providing monuments, of which the well-known Choregic Monument of Lysicrates is a speciman, to support the tripods won as prizes. as memorials of their civic worth, dedications, such as tripods which they had received as prizes for choregic victories in the temple of Dionysus, or in the shrine of Pythian Apollo.
42
Furthermore, by dedicating on the Acropolis the first-fruits of their wealth, they have adorned the shrine with bronze and marble statues, numerous, indeed, to have been provided out of a private fortune. They themselves died fighting for their country; Dicaeogenes (I.), the son of Menexenus, the father of my grandfather Menexenus (I.), while acting as general when the battle took place at Eleusis;Nothing is known of any battle at Eleusis. Dobree reads Ἁλιεῦσι(cf. Thuc. 1.104). Menexenus (I.), his son, in command of the cavalry at Spartolus in the territory of Olynthus;In 429 B.C. (cf. Thuc. 2.79). Dicaeogenes (II.), the son of Menexenus (I.), while in command of the ParalusSee Isaeus 5.6 and note. at Cnidus.
43
It is the property of these men, Dicaeogenes, that you inherited and have wickedly and disgracefully squandered, and having converted it into money you now plead poverty. On what did you spend it? For you have obviously not expended anything on the city or your friends. You have certainly not ruined yourself by keeping horses—for you have never possessed a horse worth more than three minae—, nor by keeping racing teams—for you never owned even a pair of mules in spite of possessing so many farms and estates. Nor again did you ever ransom a prisoner of war.
