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[11]
For what man would be so foolish
as, first, to pay out so large a sum, then to take as security a single piece of
property, the title to which was under dispute, and finally, not satisfied with
his previous losses and assuming that the one who had wronged him was now going
to act justly, to become his bail for the damages assessed by the court? Nobody
would, to my thinking. The assumption is not even rational, that a man unable to
recover a talent for himself, should promise to pay that sum to another, and
further to give bail for it. No; from these facts alone it is clear that he has
never paid the dowry, but as a close friend of Aphobus he took this mortgage in
return for my large property, wishing to make his sister jointly with Aphobus an
inheritor of my estate.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by A. T. Murray, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1939.
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