The paper focuses on three guardianship cases from 4th century Athens: the well known one of young Demosthenes (or. 27–29), and those presented in Lysias or. 32 and in the recently published fragment of Hyperides’ speech Against Timandros held for a former ward Akadēmos. In all of them former guardians are called to account through dikē epitropēs. They are liable for “holding in their hands” (echein) the value of the wards’ assets. From Hyperides one gets new information about misthōsis oikou, leasing out the ward’s estate, whereby the guardian can avoid rendering account. In all three speeches the wards’ mothers are players in the background, and the speechwriters use the rhetorical technique of ‘isolating the facts’.
