On The Estate Of Pyrrhus

Judges, my mother’s brother, Pyrrhus, having no legitimate issue, adopted my brother Endius as his son. The latter inherited his estate and survived him by more than twenty years; and during all this long period of possession no one claimed the estate or questioned his right of inheritance. My brother having died last year, Phile, ignoring the existence of the last tenant, came forward, claiming to be the legitimate daughter of our uncle, and Xenocles of Coprus, as her legal representative, demanded to be given possession of the estate of Pyrrhus, who had died more than twenty years before, having fixed the value of the estate at three talents. When our mother, the sister of Pyrrhus, claimed the estate, the legal representative of the woman who was suing for the estate had the audacity to put in a protestation that the estate was not adjudicable to our mother, because Pyrrhus, to whom it originally belonged, had a legitimate daughter. We denounced his protestation and brought before you the man who had the audacity to make it; and, having clearly convicted him of having given false evidence, we obtained from you a verdict for perjury against him. At the same time we convicted Nicodemus, the present defendant, before the same judges, of the most shameless lying in the evidence which he then gave, since he had the impudence to bear witness that he had given his sister in marriage to our uncle in the proper legal manner. That in the former trial Nicodemus’s evidence was recognized as being false, the condemnation of the witness on that occasion most clearly proves. For if the present defendant had not been recognized as having given false evidence, the other witness would have been acquitted in the suit about the protestation, and the woman whom the protestation affirmed to be my uncle’s legitimate daughter would have been established as his heiress instead of our mother. But since the witness was convicted and the woman who claimed to be Pyrrhus’s legitimate daughter abandoned her pretensions to the estate, it follows by absolute necessity that Nicodemus’s evidence has been also condemned; for, having solemnly sworn to the truth of the same proposition, he was a party to the action for perjury which was to decide whether the woman who claimed my uncle’s estate was the issue of a legitimate wife or of a mistress. You, too, will realize that this is so when you have heard our affidavit, the evidence of Nicodemus, and the protestation which was overruled. Please take and read these documents to the court.