27
I should not be surprised if they try to shed tears and make themselves seem worthy of pity. But I deem that, in view of this, you should all remember that it is the part of shameless men, or rather of men with no sense of right, after having squandered their fortune in gluttony and wine-bibbing along with Aristocrates and Diognetus and others of that stamp in shameful and evil fashion, to weep and wail now in the hope of getting what belongs to others. You would have good cause to weep over your former doings. Yet it is not now a time to weep, but to prove that you did not give a release, or that action may be had afresh for the matters released, or that it is legal to bring an action after the lapse of twenty years, when the law has fixed five years as the limit. These are the questions which these gentlemen are to decide.
28
If they are unable to prove these things, as they will be unable, we beg of you all, men of the jury, not to deliver us up as prey to these men, nor to give yet a fourth fortune to those who have mismanaged three others—that which they received from their guardians without compulsion, that which they exacted by compromising their suits, and that which the other day they took from Aesius by a judgement—but to allow us, as is right, to retain what is our own. It is of greater service to you in our hands than in theirs. And surely it is more just that we should have what is our own than that they should have it.
