J. E. Sandys, Select Private Orations of Demosthenes

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δεινῆς—τούτου ‘The original outrage, atrocious as it was, does not surpass the subsequent brutality of the defendant.’ See § 26. The first clause may perhaps be taken as a genitive absolute.

παρανενομῆσθαι The passive is formed just as if the verb were directly transitive in the active, i.e. as if the active construction were παρανομεῖν τινα, and not εἴς τινα. So also the active παροινεῖν εἴς τινα has παροινεῖσθαι for its corresponding passive (see below § 4 init. and § 5 fin.).

βοηθῆσαί μοι τὰ δίκαια ‘assist me to my rights.’ For the phrase and the context, cf. Or. 27 § 3 δέομαι ὑμῶν...μετ᾽ εὐνοίας τ᾽ ἐμοῦ ἀκοῦσαι κἂν ἠδικῆσθαι δοκῶ, βοηθῆσαί μοι τὰ δίκαια, ποιήσομαι δ᾽ ὡς ἃν δύνωμαι διὰ βραχυτάτων τοὺς λόγους, ib. § 68, Or. 35 § 5; 38 § 2; 40 § 61. A fuller phrase may be noticed in § 42 of this speech, βοηθεῖν καὶ τὰ δίκαια ἀποδιδόναι. Kuhner, Gk Gr. 264 § 410 C, quotes Xen. Mem. II 6 § 25 “ὅπως αὐτός τε μὴ ἀδικῆται καὶ τοῖς φίλοις τὰ δίκαια βοηθεῖν δύνηται” , — zum Rechte verhelfen. It is an extension of the cogn. acc. βοηθεῖν βοήθειαν.

The exordium has several points of coincidence with that of Or. 45. See p. 58.

In the next four sections the plaintiff states the origin of the bad blood between the defendant's family and himself. The narrative, though part of the διήγησις which naturally follows immediately after the προοίμιον of a forensic speech, is only preliminary to the recital of the facts on which the suit is really founded. It is to this portion of the statement of the case that Rhetoricians like Theodorus of Byzantium would have given the name of προδιήγησις (Arist. Rhet. III 13).