Apollodorus Against Timotheus

Then, when he was about to leave the country to take service with the king, and had arranged to sail as the king’s general to carry on the Egyptian war, in order that he might not have to submit an account and vouchers for his military administration here, he sent for my father to come to the Paralion,[*](The monument in the Peiraeus of the Attic hero Paralus.) thanked him for his former services to him,

and, introducing to him Philondas, a Megarian by birth, but one who resided as an alien at Athens,—a man who at that time was loyally devoted to the defendant and was employed in his service—he begged my father, that when Philonidas (whom he then introduced to him) should come back from Macedonia bringing some timber, which had been given to the defendant by Amyntas,[*](Amyntas was king of Macedonia.) he would supply him with money for the freight of the timber, and let him deliver the timber to the defendant’s house in Peiraeus; for he declared the timber belonged to him.

At the same time in preferring this request, he made statements which are quite inconsistent with his present actions. For he said that even if he should not obtain what he asked of my father, he would not be angry, as another might who failed to obtain what he wanted, but would show his gratitude, if he should ever find himself able to do so, for the services which my father had rendered him at his request. On hearing this my father was pleased at his words and commended him for remembering the favors shown him, and promised to do all that he asked.

Timotheus, then, after this set sail to join the king’s generals, but Philondas, to whom he had presented my father as one who would pay the freight, when he should come back with the timber, set out on his journey to Macedonia. The time was about the month Thargelion,[*](Thargelion corresponds to the latter half of May and the prior half of June.) in the archonship of Asteius.

In the following year Philondas came back from Macedonia, bringing the timber, while Timotheus was absent in the king’s service. He approached my father and asked him to furnish the freight for the timber, in order that he might settle with the shipowner, as Timotheus had begged my father to do, when he was about to sail and had introduced Philondas to him. So my father took him to the bank and ordered Phormio to pay him the freight of the timber, one thousand seven hundred and fifty drachmae.

And Phormio counted out the money, and set down Timotheus as owing it (for it was he who had asked my father to furnish the freight for the timber, and the timber was his), and he wrote a memorandum of the purpose for which the money was received, and the name of the person who received it. The date of the transaction was the archonship of Alcisthenes,[*](The archonship of Alcisthenes falls in 372-371 B.C.) the year after Timotheus set sail to take service with the king.

About the same time Timosthenes of Aegilia[*](Aegilia was a deme of the tribe Antiochis.) also arrived home from a journey abroad which he had made on private business. Timosthenes was a friend and partner of Phormio, and when he set sail he had given to Phormio to put away for him along with other articles two bowls of Lycian workmanship. By chance the boy, not knowing that these bowls were the property of someone else, gave them to Aeschrion, the body-servant of the defendant, when he was sent to my father by Timotheus and requested the bedding and the cloaks and the bowls, and borrowed the mina of silver at the time when Alcetas and Jason came to the defendant’s house.

When Timosthenes reached home and asked for the return of the bowls, Timotheus being still abroad in the king’s service, my father persuaded him to accept the value of the bowls, as much as they were worth by weight, namely two hundred and thirty-seven drachmae. So he paid to Timosthenes the value of the bowls and entered on his books the defendant as owing what he paid to Timosthenes for the bowls in addition to the rest of the debt which the defendant owed him.

To prove that all these statements of mine are true the clerk shall read you the depositions which bear upon them; first, that of those who were at that time clerks in the bank and paid the money from its funds to the persons to whom Timotheus bade them pay it, and then that of the man who received the price of the bowls.

The Depositions

You have learned, then, from the depositions which have just been read, that I am telling you nothing but the truth regarding the matters which I mentioned. And that the defendant himself admits that the timber brought by Philondas was delivered to his house in the Peiraeus,—this, too, is proved by the deposition which will be read to you.

The Deposition