3
My father, gentlemen, Eponymus of Acharnae,A deme of Attica about seven miles north of Athens. was a friend and close acquaintance of Menecles and lived on terms of intimacy with him; there were four of us children, two sons and two daughters. After my father's death we married our elder sister, when she reached a suitable age, to Leucolophus, giving her a dowry of twenty minae.
4
Four or five years later, when our younger sister was almost of marriageable age, Menecles lost his first wife. When he had carried out the customary rites over her, he asked for our sister in marriage, reminding us of the friendship which had existed between our father and himself and of his friendly disposition towards ourselves.
5
Knowing that our father would have given her to no one with greater pleasure, we gave her to him in marriage—not dowerless, as my opponent asserts on every possible occasion, but with the same portion as we gave to our elder sister. In this manner, having been formerly his friends, we became his kinsmen. I should like first to produce evidence that Menecles received a dowry of twenty minae with my sister.
6
Evidence
6
Having thus settled our sisters, gentlemen, and, being ourselves of military age, we adopted the career of a soldier and went abroad with Iphicrates to Thrace.See Introduction, p. 39. Having proved our worth there, we returned hither after saving a little money and we found that our elder sister had two children, but that the younger, the wife of Menecles, was childless.
7
Two or three months later Menecles, with many expressions of praise for our sister, approached us and said that he viewed with apprehension his increasing age and childlessness: she ought not, he said, to be rewarded for her virtues by having to grow old with him without bearing children;
