19
That my mother, therefore, men of the jury, bringing a talent as her dowry, and given in marriage by her brothers, as the laws command, lived with my father as his wife; the manner, too, in which I received these men into the house after my father’s death; and the fact that I obtained a verdict in the suits which they brought against me;—all this has been established for you by proofs and by testimony.
19
Come now, take also this law concerning the marriage-portion.
19
The Law
20
Such being the law, I fancy that this man—call him Boeotus or Mantitheus, or any other name by which he likes to be addressed—will have no valid or genuine defence to offer, but, relying upon his own audaciousness and effrontery, will endeavor to attach to me the misfortunes of his own family, as he is wont to do also in private life; and will allege that when the property of Pamphilus, who was the father of Plangon, was confiscated, my father took from out the council-chamberThe Bouleuterion, the meeting-place of the Council of 500, has been identified with a building found on the east slope of the Theseum hill, overlooking the Agora. See Vanderpool, Hesperia, 4. pp. 470 ff. the surplus proceedsThe amount, that is, over and above the debt to the treasury. and he will thus try to show that his own mother brought a dowry of more than one hundred minae, while my mother (he will claim) brought my father no portion whatever.
