[63]
What, pray, would have been my plight, if
I had continued longer as their ward? They would have hard work to tell. For
when, after the lapse of ten years, I have recovered so little from two of these
men, and by the third am even set down as a debtor, have I not good ground for
indignation? Nay, it is wholly clear. If I had been left an orphan of a year
old, and had been six years longer under their guardianship, I should never have
recovered even the pitiful amounts I now have. For, if the expenditures they
have made were justifiable, the sums they have handed over to me would not have
lasted six years, but they would either have had to support me themselves or to
have let me perish from hunger.
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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