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ISAEUS

IN THE SUIT AGAINST DICÆOGENES AND LEOCHARES[1]

Born about 420 B.C.; studied oratory under Isocrates, and became a teacher of Demosthenes; eleven of his speeches, relating chiefly to the law of inheritance, have survived.


You have heard the testimony of these witnesses, and I am persuaded that even Leochares himself will not venture to assert that they are perjured; but he will have recourse perhaps to his defense, that Dicæogenes has fully performed his agreement, and that his own office of surety is completely satisfied. If he allege this, he will speak untruly and will easily be confuted; for the clerk shall read to you a schedule of all the effects which Dicæogenes, the son of Menexenus, left behind him, together with an inventory of those which the defendant unjustly took: and if he affirms that our uncle neither had them in his lifetime nor left them to us at his death, let him prove his assertion; or if he insists that the goods were indeed ours, but that we had them restored to us, let him call a single witness to that fact; as we have produced evidence on our part that Dicæogenes promised to give us back the two-thirds of what the son of Menexenus possessed, and that Leochares undertook to see him

  1. Delivered in Athens. Translated by Sir William Jones. Abridged.

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