F. A. Paley, Select Private Orations of Demosthenes

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πρατὴρ ‘If I became a vendor to them in behalf of the plaintiff's property.’ Kennedy, ‘if I withdrew and assumed the character of vendor in respect of his property.’ The property really and bona fide belonged to Nicobulus and Evergus. But, as Mnesicles had originally bought it from Telemachus for Pantaenetus (§ 5), the claimants seem to have preferred to buy it as from the plaintiff, but conveyed to them by Nicobulus.

ἠξίουν—διαλύεσθαι ‘I required that I should come to a settlement with him.’ (So Kennedy. Rather, ‘I thought it best to come,’ &c.)—ἐγκλημάτων, not that Pantaenetus had any real claims against Nicobulus, though he vexatiously prosecuted him. But Nicobulus knew his man, and guarded himself by this instrument against any future claims that Pantaenetus might make in respect of his former occupancy of the mine, even though, as he says just below, he never dreamed that a suit would be filed against him. The legal form, ‘a discharge from all claims,’ was one ground of the παραγραφὴ (§ 1), and it is here mentioned as such.

οὐδ᾽ ἂν εἴ τι γένοιτο ‘I never imagined that, happen what might, he would bring an action against me’ (Kennedy). [De Cor. § 168.] The negative, οὐκ ᾠήθην, is separated from the verb by the strengthening clause or condition. The ἂν, of course, belongs to λαχεῖν, but it is attracted, as usual, to the negative. See Shilleto on Thuc. I 76 § 4, who remarks, ‘the desire of the Greeks to show as early as possible that a sentence is intended to be contingent in duces them not only to construct such sentences as οὐκ ἂν οἶμαι (δοκεῖ) εἷναι, οὐκ ἂν ἔφασαν, but even to place this anticipative ἂν in a wrong clause.’ The Greeks greatly prefer οὐκ ἂν γένοιτο τοῦτο to οὐ γένοιτ᾽ ἂν τοῦτο, &c.