25
Again, he dispatched to the Adriatic a cargo of two talents’ value, and told their mother, at the moment of its sailing, that it was at the risk of the childrenIt was unlawful for a guardian to venture a ward’s money in bottomry, and the Adriatic was notoriously perilous for navigation.; but when it went safely through and the value was doubled,Hume (Essay on the Populousness of Ancient Nations) has remarked on the fact that a profit of 100 per cent on such a venture does not seem to have been thought extraordinary. He declared that the venture was his. But if he is to lay the losses to their charge, and keep the successful gains for himself, he will have no difficulty in making the account show on what the money has been spent, while he will find it easy to enrich himself from the money of others.
26
To set the reckoning before you in detail, gentlemen of the jury, would be a lengthy affair; but when with some trouble I had got him to hand over the balance-sheet, in the presence of witnesses I asked Aristodicus, brother of Alexis,—the latter being now dead—whether he had the account for the equipment of a warship. He told me that he had, and we went to his house and found that Diogeiton had paid Alexis a contribution of twenty-four minae towards equipping the warship.
27
But the expenditure that he showed was forty-eight minae, so that the children have been charged exactly the total of what he has spent.Again the whole of his actual contribution (24 minae) has been charged to the children’s estate, as a half-share of an exaggerated total. Now, what do you suppose he has done in cases of which nobody else has had cognizance, and where he managed the business alone, when in those which were conducted through others and of which information could easily be obtained he did not shrink from falsehood in mulcting his own daughter’s children to an amount of twenty-four minae? Please come forward, witnesses, in support of this.
