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[23]
For even if he might have got into some quarrel with the
mother of these children, he would not have hated them, if he believed them to
be his own.1 For man and wife are much more apt, in cases where they
are at variance with one another, to become reconciled for the sake of their
children, than, on the ground of the injuries which they have done one to the
other, to hate their common children also. However, it is not from these facts
alone that you may see that he will be lying, if he makes these statements; but,
before he claimed to be a kinsman of ours, he used to go to the tribe
Hippothontis to dance in the chorus of boys.2
1 This passage is repeated with slight changes in the following oration, Dem. 40.29.
2 That is, to the tribe to which his mother belonged, not to that of Mantias, which was the Acamantis. The speaker would have this indicate that the mother was conscious that the boy was not the son of Mantias.
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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