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§§ 71—76. Against Phormion, who produced the defendant as his witness, you have a right to be indignant for his effrontery and his ingratitude. When Phormion was for sale, instead of being bought by a cook, or what not, and learning his master's trade, he had the good fortune to come into the hands of my father, who taught him the business of a banker, and conferred on him many other benefits. Yet, with all his wealth, he is ungrateful enough to allow the founders of his fortunes to remain in poverty and distress. He has not scrupled to marry her, who was once his own master's wife, thus securing to himself a large marriage-portion, while he suffers my daughters to languish without a dowry and become poor old maids in their father's house. Meanwhile, he counts and calculates the amount of my money, and criticises me as narrowly as a master might his slave. νεμεσῆσαι A poetic verb, rarely found in good Greek prose. It occurs, however, in Or. 20 (Lept.) § 161 τοιαῦτα... οἷς μηδεὶς ἂν νεμεσήσαι; twice in Plato, and also in Arist. Rhet. II 9. Here, as elsewhere, νεμεσᾶν is used in its regular sense of ‘indignation at undeserved good fortune’ (Arist. Eth. II 7 § 15 ὁ νεμεσητικὸς λυπεῖται ἐπὶ τοῖς ἀναξίως εὖ πράττουσι). ἂν μαθὼν ... ἦν] ἂν emphasises δεσπότου in the preceding context. It belongs solely to ἦν, the principal verb of the apodosis, although it is placed immediately before μαθών. 6 § 20. See Goodwin's Moods and Tenses § 42, 3 note 1; § 224 ed. 1889.
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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