14
When he was of age, he had the chance of marrying another woman with a great fortune; but he took my mother without a portion, merely because she was a daughter of Xenophon,One of the Athenian generals to whom the Potidaeans surrendered in 430 B.C. He was killed in a fight with the Chalcidians in Thrace, 429 B.C. (cf. Thuc. 2.70, 79). son of Euripides, a man not only known for his private virtues but also deemed worthy by you of holding high command, so I am told.
15
Again, my sisters he refused to certain very wealthy men who were willing to take them without dowries, because he judged them to be of inferior birth: he preferred to bestow one upon Philomelus of Paeania,A township of Attica. whom most men regard as an honorable rather than a wealthy man, and the other upon a man who was reduced to poverty by no misdemeanor,—his nephew, PhaedrusThe same person who appears in Plato’s Phaedrus and Symposium. of Myrrhinous,A township of Attica.—and with her a dowry of forty minae; and he later gave her to Aristophanes with the same sum.
16
Besides doing this, when I could have obtained a great fortune he advised me to take a lesser one, so long as I felt sure of allying myself with people of an orderly and self-respecting character. So now I am married to the daughter of Critodemus of Alopece,A township of Attica. who was killed by the Lacedaemonians after the sea-fight at the Hellespont.At Aegospotami, 405 B.C. After surprising the Athenian fleet (there was practically no sea-fight) Lysander executed 3000 Athenians who were captured.
17
Now I submit, gentlemen of the jury, that a man who has himself married a portionless woman, who has bestowed large sums with his two daughters, and who has accepted a small dowry for his son, ought surely in reason to be credited with allying himself to these people without a thought of money.
