Against Pantaenetus

Inasmuch as the laws, men of the jury, have granted that a special plea be entered in cases where a man, after having given a release and discharge, nevertheless brings suit, and as both of these have been given me by Pantaenetus here, I have pleaded, as you have just now heard, that his suit is not admissible. I did not think that I should forgo this right, or that, after I had proved among other things that the plaintiff had released me, and that I had got rid of him, it should be open to him to declare that I was uttering a falsehood and to try to employ the argument that, if any such release had been granted me, I should have put in a special plea to bar his suit. No, I determined to come before you relying on this plea and to prove both points—that I have never done the plaintiff any wrong, and that he is suing me contrary to law.

If Pantaenetus had suffered any of the wrongs with which he now charges me, he would be found to have brought suit against me at the time when the contract between us was made, for these actions must be decided within the month,[*](That is, within a month from the time of filing the suit; the object being that the mine-proprieter might not be too long detained from his business. (Boeckh, quoted by Sandys).) and both Evergus and I were in town; since all men are wont to be most indignant at the very time of their wrongs, and not after a period has intervened. Since, however, the plaintiff, though he has suffered no wrong, as I know well you will yourselves agree when you have heard the facts, elated by the success of his suit against Evergus,[*](Evergus and Nicobulus, as stated in the Introduction, had leased the mining property to Pantaenetus. As the lessee failed to pay the interest, Evergus, in the absence of Nicobulus, who had gone abroad, took possession of the property and even seized some silver which a slave of Pantaenetus was bringing to his master that he might make a payment due to the state. Because of this Pantaenetus became a debtor to the state and was required to pay double the amount due. He then sued Evergus, and won a verdict of two talents damages.) brings a malicious and baseless action, there is no other course left me, men of the jury, than to prove in your court that I am guilty of no wrong whatever, to produce witnesses in support of what I say, and to endeavor to save myself.

I shall make a reasonable and fair request of you all, that you hear with goodwill what I have to say regarding my special plea, and that you give your attention to every aspect of the case. For, while hosts of cases have been tried in Athens, I think it will be shown that no man has ever brought before you one so marked by shamelessness and malice as this, which this fellow has had the audacity to bring into your court. I shall with all possible brevity set before you all the facts of the case.

Evergus and I, men of the jury, lent to this man Pantaenetus one hundred and five minae on the security of a mining property in Maroneia[*](Maroneia was a small district in the mining area of Laurium in Attica.) and of thirty slaves. Of this loan forty-five minae belonged to me, and a talent to Evergus. It happened that the plaintiff also owed a talent to Mnesicles of Collytus[*](Collytus was a deme of the tribe Aegeïs.) and forty-five minae to Phileas of Eleusis and Pleistor.

The vendor to us of the mining property and the slaves was Mnesicles, for he had purchased them for the plaintiff from Telemachus, the former owner; and the plaintiff leased them from us at a rent equal to the interest accruing on the money, a hundred and five drachmae a month. We drew up an agreement in which the terms of the lease were stated, and the right was given the plaintiff of redeeming these things from us within a given time.

When these transactions had been completed in the month of Elaphebolion in the archonship of Theophilus,[*](That is, in March 347 B.C.) I at once sailed away for Pontus, but the plaintiff and Evergus remained here. What transactions they had with one another while I was away, I cannot state, for they do not tell the same story, nor is the plaintiff always consistent with himself; sometimes he says that he was forcibly ousted from his leasehold by Evergus in violation of the agreement; sometimes that Evergus was the cause of his being inscribed as a debtor to the state;[*](See note on Dem. 37.2 and the Introduction.) sometimes anything else that he chooses to say.

But Evergus tells a plain and consistent story, that since he was not receiving his interest, and the plaintiff was not performing any of the other things stipulated in the agreement, he went and took from the plaintiff, with the latter’s consent, what was his own, and kept it; that after this the plaintiff went away, but came back bringing men to make claim to the property; that he on his own part did not give way in their favour, but made no objection to the plaintiff’s holding that for which he had given a lease, provided he should observe the terms of the agreement. From these men, then, I hear stories of this sort.

This, however, I know well, that, if the plaintiff speaks the truth, and has been outrageously treated, as he says, by Evergus, he has had satisfaction to the amount at which he himself assessed his damages; for he came into your court and won his suit against him; and surely he has no right to obtain damages for the same wrongs both from the one who committed them and from me, who was not even in Athens. But, if it is Evergus who speaks the truth, he has been made the object, it appears, of a baseless and malicious charge; but even so there is no ground for my being sued on the same charge.

To prove, in the first place, that I am speaking the truth in this, I shall bring before you the witnesses to establish these facts.

The Witnesses

That, therefore, the man who sold us the property was the man who had been the original purchaser; that under the agreement the plaintiff rented the mining establishment and the slaves, recognizing them as belonging to us; that I was not present at the transactions which subsequently took place between the plaintiff and Evergus, and indeed was not even in Athens; that he brought suit against Evergus, and never made any charge against me,—all this, men of the jury, you hear from the witnesses.

Well, then, when I came back, having lost practically everything I had when I sailed, I heard, and found it was true, that the plaintiff had given up the property and that Evergus was in possession and control of what we had purchased. I was distressed beyond words, seeing that the matter had got into an awkward predicament; for it was now necessary for me either to enter into partnership with Evergus for the working and management of the property, or have him for a debtor instead of Pantaenetus, and draw up a new lease and enter into a contract with him; and I liked neither of these alternatives.

Being vexed at the matters of which I am telling you, and happening to see Mnesicles, who had sold us the property, I came up to him, and reproached him, telling what sort of a man he had recommended to me, and I questioned him regarding the claimants, asking what this was all about. On hearing this, he laughed at the claimants, but stated that they wished to have a conference with us. He declared that he would bring us together, and that he would urge the plaintiff to do all that was right in my regard, and he thought he would persuade him to do so.

When we had our meeting—what need is there to tell you all the details?—the men came who claimed to have made loans to the plaintiff on the security of the mining property and the slaves, which we bought from Mnesicles; and there was nothing straightforward or honest about them. Then, when they were convicted of falsehood in all their statements and Mnesicles confirmed our having bought the property, they offered us a challenge, assuming that we should not accept it, either to take all our money from them and withdraw, or to settle with them by paying their claims; for the security which we held was, they claimed, worth far more than the sums we had lent.

When I heard this, on the spur of the moment and without even taking thought, I agreed to take my money, and I persuaded Evergus to adopt the same course. But when the time came for us to receive our money, the matter having been brought to this conclusion, the people who had previously made the offer declared then that they would not pay us unless we became vendors to them of the property, and in this point anyway, men of Athens, they were prudent; for they saw in what baseless and malicious charges we were involved by this fellow.

To prove that I am speaking the truth in this, take, please, these depositions also.

The Depositions

When the matter stood thus, and the people whom the plaintiff had introduced to us would not give up the money, and it was clear that we were rightfully in possession of what we had purchased, he begged, and implored, and besought us to sell the property. As he made this demand and begged me most earnestly—there is nothing he did not do—I gave way in this matter also.

I saw, however, men of Athens, that he was a man of evil disposition, that at the outset he had made charges to us against Mnesicles, and then had quarrelled with Evergus, with whom he was on terms of closest friendship; that at the first, when I returned from my voyage, he pretended that he was glad to see me, but when the time came for him to do what was right, he became surly with me; that he was a friend to all men until he got some advantage and attained what he wanted, and thereafter became their foe and was at variance with them;

I therefore thought it best, if I withdrew and assumed the position of vendor in this man’s interest, that I should obtain a full release and discharge from all claims, and thus make a final settlement with him. This was agreed to, and he gave me a release in full, while I, as he begged me to do, assumed the position of vendor of the property, exactly as I had myself bought it from Mnesicles. Having, then, recovered my money, and having done the plaintiff no wrong whatsoever, I imagined, by the gods, that, no matter what should happen, he would never bring a suit against me.

These, men of the jury, are the facts regarding which you are to cast your votes, these are the grounds upon which I have entered the special plea that this baseless and malicious suit is not maintainable. I shall bring forward witnesses who were present when I was given a release and discharge by the plaintiff, and shall then proceed to prove that under the law the suit is not maintainable.

Please read this deposition.

The Deposition

Now, please, read the deposition of the purchasers, that you may be assured that I sold the property at the bidding of the plaintiff and to the persons to whom he bade me sell it.

The Deposition

Not only have I these witnesses to prove that I have been released and am now the object of a baseless and malicious charge, but Pantaenetus himself is a witness also. For when, in bringing suit against Evergus, he left me out of the question, he himself bore witness that he had no further claim against me. For surely, assuming that he had the same charge to bring against both for the same wrongdoing, he would not, when both were at hand, have passed over the one and brought suit against the other. However, that the laws do not allow a fresh suit to be brought regarding matters that have been thus settled you know, I presume, even without my telling you.

Nevertheless, read them this law also.

The Law

You hear the law, men of Athens, expressly stating that in cases where anyone has given a release and discharge, there shall be no further action. And that both these have been effected between the plaintiff and myself, you have heard from the witnesses. One should not, of course, bring suit in any case when the law forbids it, but least of all ought one in a case like this. For in regard to sales made by the state, one might claim that it had made the sale unjustly, or had sold what was not its own;

and in regard to court decisions it might be claimed that the decision had been rendered through error; and in all other cases where the law forbids action exception might plausibly be taken to each one. But when anyone has himself yielded to argument and given a release, he cannot in the very nature of the case charge himself with having acted unjustly. Those who bring suit in defiance of any other of these provisions fail to abide by what others have determined to be just; but he who again brings suit in matters regarding which he has given a release fails to abide by his own decision. Therefore, against all such your anger should be particularly severe.