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§§ 43—48. As to the de- fendant's wealth, and his having got it from your father's estate, you should be the last man in all the world to use such language. The defendant, like your own father, made his money by faithful and honest service, by personal integrity of character, and by that good credit and fair fame which in the commercial world is the best kind of capital. Again, if you claim the defendant's property on the ground that he was once your father's slave, then Antimachus, a surviving son of your father's former master, might go still further, and claim your own estate and the defendant's too; yet, though now in a humble position, far below his merits and his proper rank, he does not go to law with them, because they have money to spend while he is in destitution. Instead of making the most of the good fortune by which your father and the defendant alike received the rights of freedom and citizenship, you are heartless enough to cast contumely on yourself and your parents, and on Athens too, for granting her privileges to people like yourself; you are senseless enough to forget that, by insisting that the defendant's former servitude should not be brought up against him, we are really speaking on your side and defending your own position. The rule, that you lay down to the detriment of the defendant, can as easily be advanced against yourself by the house to which your father was once a slave. ὦν = περὶ τούτων ἅ. πόθεν—κέκτηται Φ.] In Or. 45 § 80, Apollodorus unfairly says of Phormion, εἰ ἦν δίκαιος, πένης ἂν ἦν τὰ τοῦ δεσπότου διοικήσας. ...Had I dragged you off to prison as a thief caught in the act, with your present property clapped upon your back, . .and had I, supposing you denied the theft, demanded the name of the person from whom you received it, to whose name would you have appealed? οὔτε γάρ σοι πατὴρ παρέδωκεν, οὔθ᾽ εὖρες. ἐκτήσαθ᾽ εὑρὼν ‘Got it by good luck’ as a ‘godsend,’ a ‘windfall,’ a εὕρημα or Ἑρμαῖον. Passages like the present and the parallel from Or. 45 § 81 (given above) should be quoted in Liddell and Scott (s. v. εὑρίσκω, 4). Ἀρχεστράτῳ Isocr. Trapez. § 43 Πασίων δὲ Ἀρχέστρατόν μοι ἀπὸ τῆς τραπέζης ἑπτὰ ταλάντων ἐγγυητὴν παρέσχεν. (A. Schaefer, Dem. u. s. Zeit, III 2, 131.) δίκαιος ‘Honest.’ ἐπιστεύθη ‘Won his master's confidence,’ ‘was trusted.’ So in Or. 50 § 56, Apollodorus describes the wide extent of his father's connexion and good credit (ἐπεξενῶσθαι πολλοῖς καὶ πιστευθῆναι ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι).
Select Private Orations of Demosthenes, Part II. J. E. Sandys, Litt. D., and F. A. Paley, M.A., LL.D. 1910. Cambridge University Press.
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