25
Besides all this, my mother is shown to have been first given in marriage to Cleomedon, whose father Cleon, we are told,A striking instance of the Greek preference for the spoken rather than the written word. commanded troops among whom were your ancestors, and captured alive a large number of Lacedaemonians in Pylos,This was in 425 B.C. The account is given in Thuc. 4.3 ff. and won greater renown than any other man in the state; so it was not fitting that the son of that famous man should wed my mother without a dowry, nor is it likely that Menexenus and Bathyllus, who had large fortunes themselves, and who, after Cleomedon’s death, received back the dowry, defrauded their own sister; rather, they would themselves have added to her portion, when they gave her in marriage to my father, as they themselves and the others have testified before you.
26
And besides this, just consider why in the world, if my mother had not been a lawfully espoused wife, and had brought no dowry, while the mother of these men did, should my father have denied that they were his sons, and have acknowledged me, and brought me up? Because, forsooth, as these men will claim, he dishonored them in order to show favor to me and my mother.
27
But my mother died, leaving me still a little boy, whereas the mother of these men, Plangon, who was a handsome woman, maintained her connection with him both before and after that; so that it was much more likely that for the sake of the living woman, with whom he was in love all this time, he would dishonor the son of her who was dead, than that for my sake and my dead mother’s he would refuse to acknowledge the children of her who was living and maintaining her connection with him.
