55
And yet the risk is not the same for both of us. On my part, if you are now led astray by these men, it will not be open to me to bring suit again for the marriage-portion; but they, if they claim that the arbitrator was wrong in giving his decision in my favor, as at that time they had the right to appeal to your court, so now again will be permitted, if they so wish, to recover their rights from me in your court.
56
I, if you leave me in the lurch, which I pray may not happen, shall have no means of giving a dowry to my daughter, whose own father I am, although, if you see her size, you would deem she was not my daughter but my sisterSee above, Dem. 40.12.; but these men, if you come to my aid, will pay nothing out of their own property, but will restore to me what is my own from the house which by common agreement we reserved for the settlement of the marriage-portion, but in which these men have been living by themselves.
57
For it is not fitting that I, having a daughter of marriageable age, should dwell with men of their sort, who are not only themselves living licentious lives, but who also bring into the house a host of others of like stamp with themselves; nay, by Zeus, I do not deem it safe to live in the same house with them myself. When they have thus openly laid a plot, and got up a charge against me before the Areopagus, do you suppose there is any poisoning or any other such villainy from which they would abstain?
