Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 1.djvu/164

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS infamously prevailed against us, he ejected the daughter of Cephisophon, the niece of him who left the estate from the portion allotted to her; took from the wife of Democles what her brother had given her as coheiress: and deprived both the mother of Cephisodotus and the unfortunate youth himself of their whole fortune. Of all these he was at the same time guardian and spoiler, next of kin, and crudest enemy; nor did the relation which he bore them excite in the least degree his compassion; but the unhappy orphans, deserted and indigent, became destitute even of daily necessities.

Such was the guardianship of Dicæogenes their nearest kinsman! who gave to their avowed foes what their father Theopompus had left them, illegally possesses himself of the property which they had from their maternal uncle and their grandfather; and (what was the most open act of cruelty) having purchased the house of their father and demolished it, he dug up the ground on which it stood, and made that handsome garden for his own house in the city.

Still further, altho he receives an annual rent of eighty minas from the estate of his uncle, yet such are his insolence and profligacy that he sent my cousin, Cephisodotus, to Corinth as a servile attendant on his brother Harmodius; and adds to his other injuries this cruel reproach, that he wears ragged clothes and coarse buskins; but is not this unjust, since it was his own violence which reduced the boy to poverty? 104