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Why are you, then, so fond of wrangling? Desist, I beg you; do not be so ready to cherish enmity against me. I am not so minded toward you. For even now—lest the fact escape your notice—I am speaking rather in your interest than in my own, in insisting that we should not have the same name. If there were no other reason, at least anyone hearing it must ask which of us is meant if there are two Mantitheuses, sons of Mantias. Then he will say, The one whom he was compelled to adopt, if he means you. How can you desire this?
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Now take, please, and read these two depositions, proving that my father gave me the name Mantitheus, and him the name Boeotus.
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The Depositions
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It remains, I think, to show you, men of Athens, that not only will you be fulfilling your oaths, if you give the verdict for which I ask, but also that the defendant has given judgement against himself, that he should rightly bear the name of Boeotus, and not Mantitheus. For when I had entered this suit against Boeotus, son of Mantias, of Thoricus, at the first he accepted service of the suit, and put in an oath for delay, as being Boeotus; but finally, when there was no longer room for evasion, he allowed the arbitrators to give judgement against him by default, and then, in Heaven’s name, see what he did—
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he got this judgement for non-appearance set aside, entitling himself Boeotus. And yet he ought in the first place to have allowed me to get my suit finished as against Boeotus, if that name did not, in fact, pertain to him at all, and not subsequently be found getting the judgement for non-appearance set aside under this name. When, a man has thus given judgement against himself that he is properly Boeotus, what verdict can he demand that you sworn jurors shall give?
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To prove that I am speaking the truth in this, take the decision setting aside the judgement for non-appearance and this complaint.
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The Decision
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The Complaint
