[64]
Yet is it not
an outrage, if estates left to others of a value of one or two talents have as a
result of letting been doubled or trebled, so that the owners have been called
upon for state services,1 while mine, which has been
wont to equip triremes and to make large contributions in taxes, will be unable
to contribute even small sums thanks to the shameless acts of these men? What
words are gross enough to describe their conduct? They have done away with the
will, thinking to avoid discovery, their own estates they have administered from
the income, and have greatly increased their capital by drawing upon my funds,
while, as for my own estate, they have destroyed my entire capital, as if in
requital for some grievous wrong we had done them.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by A. T. Murray, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1939.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from
Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.
