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§§ 49—52. The defendant's management of the family property was the very saving of the business, and in this and many other respects he has been a great benefactor to the plaintiff's father and to the plaintiff himself; and yet the latter is now demanding a verdict, which, if granted, will turn the defendant out of house and home, a ruined bankrupt, like those whom we remember. The plaintiff's father, esteeming the defendant more highly than his own son, wisely and prudently left him manager of his leases when he died, besides showing his esteem for him during his lifetime. And that esteem was well deserved, for (while the other bankers, to whose losses allusion has just been made, did business on their own account, and therefore had to pay no rent to another, and were nevertheless ruined) the defendant not only paid a rent for the bank but kept up the business for the family of the plaintiff, who, so far from being grateful, takes no account of all this, but even persecutes and calumniates him. Our friend, if for a moment we may call him so, little thinks that honesty is the best policy (as is proved by the defendant's prosperity). The plaintiff at any rate is a case in point; he has (if we are to believe him) lost all his money; had he been a man of sound sense he would not have thrown it away. ἐκβαλεῖν In Or. 45 κατὰ Στεφάνου A § 70, Apollodorus taunts Stephanus (one of Phormion's witnesses in the present trial) with turning his own uncle out of his patrimony for arrears of debt: τοκίζων...έξέβαλες ἐκ τῆς πατρῴας οὐσίας. οὐ γὰρ ἄλλο γ᾽ i.e. If heavy damages are granted the plaintiff, the penalty will prove none other than (will not fall short of) turning the defendant out of house and home. ‘Examine the nature of his property closely and you will soon see whose it really is, and into whose hands it will fall, if (which heaven forbid) the court is misled into condemning him.’ The property consists largely of deposits at the bank, invested in different speculations, and incapable of being realized at a moment's notice. If Phormion has to pay damages, there will at once be a run upon his bank; his customers, to secure their property before it is paid away in damages, will claim their deposits, and Phormion, like others before him, will be bankrupt. ἔχοις οὐδὲν ἂν Notice the strong affinity or attraction that ἂν has to the negative; which is the reason for the common hyperthesis οὐκ ἂν οῖμαί σε ποιεῖν, &c. Goodwin's Moods and Tenses, § 42, 2, n. = § 220, ed. 1889; and Short's Order of Words in Attic Greek Prose, p. xciv. (3) (b).
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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