[53]
Being sorely at a loss to explain any of
these matters before the arbitrator, and being convicted on each point, just as
he is now before you, he had the audacity to make an outrageously false
statement, to the effect that my father left me four talents buried in the
ground, and that he had put my mother in charge of them. He made this statement
in order that, if I should assume that he would repeat it here, I might waste my
time in refuting it, when I ought to be preferring the rest of my charges
against him; or if I should pass it over, not expecting him to repeat it, then
he himself might now bring it up, in the hope that I, by seeming to be rich,
might meet with less compassion from you.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by A. T. Murray, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1939.
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