23
For even if he might have got into some quarrel with the mother of these children, he would not have hated them, if he believed them to be his own.This passage is repeated with slight changes in the following oration, Dem. 40.29. For man and wife are much more apt, in cases where they are at variance with one another, to become reconciled for the sake of their children, than, on the ground of the injuries which they have done one to the other, to hate their common children also. However, it is not from these facts alone that you may see that he will be lying, if he makes these statements; but, before he claimed to be a kinsman of ours, he used to go to the tribe Hippothontis to dance in the chorus of boys.That is, to the tribe to which his mother belonged, not to that of Mantias, which was the Acamantis. The speaker would have this indicate that the mother was conscious that the boy was not the son of Mantias.
24
And yet, who among you imagines that his mother would have sent him to this tribe, if, as she alleges, she had been cruelly treated by my father, and knew that he had kept the tenth day, and afterward denied it? Not one, I am sure. For it would have been just as much your right to go to school to the tribe Acamantis, and then the tribe would have been in manifest agreement with the giving of the name.
24
To prove that I am speaking the truth in this, I shall bring before you as witnesses those who went to school with him, and know the facts.
24
The Witnesses
