117
It is, then, a monstrous thing that a man who was of the race of the Eumolpidae,The Eumolpidae were descendants of the legendary Eumolpus. Certain sacred functions connected with the worship of Demeter and Dionysus were theirs by ancestral right; for instance, the Hierophant had always to be a Eumolpid, as therefore Archias was. born of honorable ancestors and a citizen of Athens, should be punished for having transgressed one of your established customs; and the pleadings of his relatives and friends did not save him, nor the public services which he and his ancestors had rendered to the city; no, nor yet his office of hierophant; but you punished him, because he was judged to be guilty;—and this Neaera, who has committed acts of sacrilege against this same god, and has transgressed the laws, shall you not punish her—her and her daughter?
118
I for my part wonder what in the world they will say to you in their defense. Will it be that this woman Neaera is of Athenian birth, and that she lives as his wife with Stephanus in accordance with the laws? But testimony has been offered, showing that she is a courtesan, and has been the slave of Nicaretê. Or will they claim that she is not his wife, but that he keeps her in his house as a concubine? Yet the woman’s sons, by having been introduced to the clansmen by Stephanus, and her daughter, by having been given in marriage to an Athenian husband, prove beyond question that he keeps her as his wife.
119
I think, therefore, that neither Stephanus himself nor anyone on his behalf will succeed in proving that the charges and the testimony are false—that, in short, this Neaera is an Athenian woman. But I hear that he is going to set up some such defense as this—that he is keeping her, not as a wife, but as a mistress, and that the children are not hers, but were born to him by another woman, an Athenian and a relative of his, whom he will assert that he married at a earlier date.
