Against Aphobus III

If I were not conscious, men of the jury, that in a former suit against Aphobus I had readily (so absolutely manifest were his wrongdoings) convicted him of lies greater and more outrageous than these which he now utters, I should have grave doubts of my ability to show how he seeks to lead you astray in regard to each one of them. As it is, however (be it said with the favor of heaven), if you prove fair and impartial hearers, I have strong hopes that you will become as fully aware of the shamelessness of this man as were the jurors in the former trial. If the case required eloquence or cleverness I should shrink through distrust of my youth; but, as matters are, I need merely point out and rehearse to you what the plaintiff’s conduct toward us has been. From this it will be easy, I think, for all of you to determine which of us is the villain.

I know that the plaintiff has instituted this suit, not because he believes he can convict anyone of having borne false witness against him, but because he thinks that the large amount of damages which he was condemned to pay will give rise to a feeling of prejudice against me, and of compassion toward himself. For this reason he is now seeking to defend himself against charges made in a suit that has already been decided, regarding which he had at the time no reasonable defence to make. I, for my part, men of the jury, if I had proceeded to execute the judgement against him and had been unwilling to make any reasonable concession, should even so have done no wrong in exacting the damages awarded by your decision; but for all that it might have been said that I had shown undue ruthlessness and enmity toward a man who is a relative in depriving him of all his property.

But, as it is, the precise contrary is the truth. This man with his co-trustees has robbed me of my entire patrimony, and, even after being clearly convicted in your court, he does not consider himself obliged to do anything reasonable. On the contrary he has dispersed his property, giving his farm-buildings to Aesius and his farm to Onetor, against whom he has forced me to engage in a troublesome lawsuit. He himself stripped the house of its furniture, took away the slaves, destroyed the wine-vat, tore off the doors, and all but set fire to the house itself; then he made off to Megara, where he has settled and paid the alien’s tax. You would, therefore, with better ground loathe this man for deeds like these, than judge me guilty of undue severity.

Regarding the rapacity and vile character of the plaintiff I purpose to speak at length before you later on, though what you have even now heard gives you a fair idea of it. But I shall now undertake to show you, that the testimony which has been given, about which you are going to cast your votes, is true. But one request I make of you, men of the jury, and it is a reasonable one—that you will give us both a fair hearing. This is as much in your interest as in mine, for the more accurate your knowledge of the facts, the more just and in harmony with your oaths will be the vote you will cast regarding them.

I shall show that Aphobus has not only acknowledged Milyas to be a freeman, but has even proved it by his actions; that, furthermore, about this matter he has declined the absolutely sure test by torture,[*](On the high value attributed by the Greeks to evidence extracted from a slave by torture see Dem. 30.37, and Aristot. Rh. 1.15) and does not wish to have the truth brought to light that on the contrary he has recourse to trickery, brings forward false witnesses, and by his own words distorts the truth regarding what has taken place. So strong and so plain is the evidence by which I shall prove these statements that you will all see clearly that it is I who am speaking the truth, and that he has uttered not a word worthy of credence. I shall begin at a point which will make it easiest for you to learn the facts, and for me to instruct you regarding them in the briefest time.

I instituted suit, men of the jury, against Demophon, Therippides and the plaintiff for breach of trust in their guardianship, for I had been defrauded by them of all my inheritance. When my suit against Aphobus in the first instance came up for trial, I proved clearly to the jury, as I shall prove to you, that he, in conjunction with the others, had robbed me of all the property that had been left me; and I relied upon no false testimony.

Here is a clear proof of this. A host of depositions was read at the trial, some of the deponents declaring that they had given to the plaintiff property of mine, others that he had received such property in their presence, still others that they had purchased goods from him, and paid him the price; yet he has charged not a single one of these with bearing false testimony. He has dared to attack this one piece of testimony, and it alone, although in it he cannot show that there was mention even of one single drachma.

And yet for the computation of the sums of which I had been robbed, I relied not so much on this man’s testimony, for there was no mention of money in it, but on the several statements of the others, against whom the plaintiff has made no charges. Therefore the jurymen who at that time heard my plea, not only found him guilty, but fixed the damages at the full amount stated in my complaint. Why was it, then, that he passed over the other witnesses and sued the defendant alone? I will tell you.

In regard to all the witnesses who testified that he had received the money, he knew that the more discussion there should be over each separate point, the more convincingly would he be convicted of possessing it, and this was bound to be the case in a trial for false witness; for the accusations which I then made along with all the others in a small part of the time allotted me, I should now discuss severally and in detail in the time of an entire speech;

whereas, if he attacked an answer given, he thought that as he had made an admission before, so now it would be in his power to make a denial.[*](That is, in attacking the testimony of the deponent he would deny his own previous admissions.) That is the reason why he attacks the testimony of this witness, the truth of whose testimony I mean to prove conclusively to you all, not on the basis of probabilities, or of arguments made up to fit the occasion, but by reasoning which, I am sure, will approve itself to you all as just and fair. Listen, and judge.

I knew, men of the jury, that I should find the whole contest centring about the deposition inserted in the record, and that it would be regarding the truth or falsehood of this that you would cast your votes, and I therefore determined that the first step for me to take was to offer Aphobus a challenge. What, then, did I do? I offered to surrender to him for examination by torture a slave who knew how to read and write, and who had been present when Aphobus made the admission in question, and who wrote down the statement of the witness. This man had been ordered by me not to use any fraud or trickery, nor to write down some and suppress others of the statements made by the plaintiff regarding the matters at issue, but simply to write the absolute truth, and what Aphobus actually said.

What better opportunity could he have had of convicting us of falsehood than by putting my slave to torture? But Aphobus knew better than anyone else that the slave had borne true testimony, and therefore he declined the test. And in truth it is not one or two only who know these facts; the challenge was not made in secret, but in the midst of the agora where many were present.

Call, please, the witnesses to these facts.

The Witnesses

The fellow is so cunning, and so ready to pretend ignorance of what is right, that, although he is pressing a suit for false witness, and although you are to cast your votes regarding this, and have sworn so to do, he refused the proffered examination by torture in regard to the testimony (the point to which he should have devoted his argument), and declares that he requires the slave to be given up for testing in regard to other matters. In this he is lying.

Is it not indeed monstrous that he should claim that he is being outrageously treated by my refusal of his demand to have delivered to him for torture a freeman (for such I shall conclusively prove Milyas to be), and should not consider that my witnesses are being outrageously treated, when I offer him one who is admittedly a slave, to be tested by torture regarding their testimony, and he refuses? For he surely cannot maintain this, that for some matters, which he himself desires, torture is a certain test, and for others not.

Furthermore, men of the jury, the first witness to give this testimony was Aesius, the brother of the plaintiff. He now denies it, because he has allied himself in the suit with Aphobus; but at that time he gave this testimony along with the other witnesses, for he had no desire to perjure himself, or to suffer the penalty which would straightway follow. Surely now, if I had been getting up false testimony, I should not have put this man in my list of witnesses, seeing that he was more intimate with Aphobus than with anyone else in the world, and knowing that he was going to plead for him in the suit, and that he was an adversary of my own. It is not reasonable that one should call as witness to a false statement one who is an opponent of his own, and a brother of his adversary.

I have many witnesses to these facts, and circumstantial proofs no fewer in number than the witnesses. In the first place, if he did not in very truth give this testimony, he would not be denying it now, but would have done so at once in the courtroom, when the deposition was read, for it would have answered his purpose better then than now. In the second place Aesius would not have kept quiet, but would have sued me for damages, if without cause I had made him liable to a charge of bearing false witness against his brother, a charge on which men run the risk both of damages in money and the loss of citizenship.

Again, in seeking to bring the truth of the matter to light, he would have demanded of me the slave who wrote the depositions, in order that, if I refused to give him up, I might seem to have no just ground for my statements. But, as it is, so far from doing anything of the sort, he refused to accept the slave for torture, when I, on his denial that he had given the evidence, offered him. So plain is it that regarding this matter too both he and Aphobus as well were alike unwilling to have recourse to torture.

To prove that my words are true, that after Aesius had given his testimony with the other witnesses, he made no denial of the fact, when, standing by the plaintiff’s side in the courtroom, he heard the deposition read, and that, when I offered the slave to them to be questioned by torture regarding all these matters, he refused to accept the offer—regarding each of these points severally I shall produce witnesses. Please call them here.

The Witnesses

I wish now to set forth to you, men of the jury, what I consider a stronger proof than all those that have been mentioned, to show that the plaintiff did give this answer. When, despite the admissions which he is proved to have made, he demanded of me Milyas for torture, I was so eager to show on the spot that this, too, was a subterfuge on his part, that what do you think I did?

I summoned Aphobus to give evidence against Demo, his uncle and a partner in his crimes. I wrote out the testimony which he now attacks as false and ordered him to make a deposition to it. At first he brazenly refused, but when the arbitrator bade him depose, or deny the fact under oath, he deposed, sorely against his will. And yet if the man was a slave, and had not been already admitted by Aphobus here to be free, what in the world induced him to make this deposition? Why did he not deny it on oath, and so get free of the affair?