19
That it is neither possible for him to disown a son after having already once for all exhausted his paternal right and made use of the laws, nor yet just to thrust away one who has shown himself so great a benefactor and exclude him from the house has been, I think, sufficiently established.
20
Therefore let us now come to the ground of disownment and let us see what the nature of the charge is. It is necessary to recur once more to the intent of the lawgiver; for, suppose we grant you briefly the right to disown as often as you wish and also concede you this right even against your benefactor, you are not to disown casually, I take it, or for any and eve cause. The lawgiver does not say that the father may disown for any reason that he may chance to allege—that it is enough just to express the wish and find a fault. Else why should we need a court? No, he commits it to you, gentlemen of the jury, to consider whether the father’s anger is based upon just and sufficient grounds or not. This, then, is what you should now look into. And IJ shall begin with what immediately followed his insanity.
21
The first act of his sanity was to set aside the disownment, and I was a saviour, a benefactor, all in allto him. No charge, I take it, could go with that. And as to what followed, what do you censure in all of it? What service, what attention proper to a son did I omit? When did I sleep away from home? Of what ill-timed carouses, of what riotous revels do you accuse me? What licentiousness has there been? What pander have I assaulted? Who has filed any charges? Nobody at all. Yet these are the deeds for which the law especially sanctions disownment.
21
“No, but your stepmother began to be ill.” Well, do you accuse me of that, and demand satisfaction for the illness?
