Against Evergus and Mnesibulus

yet after he left the courtroom he did not pay any the more because of that, but decided that for the time being he would keep out of the way and remain quiet until I should have sailed with the fleet, and some time should have elapsed, thinking that I should have to pay for the equipment which he owed to the state either when I returned here, or else to my successor who should come from the navy-boards to take command of the ship. For what answer could I have given this man, when he produced decrees and laws showing that I was obliged to recover the equipment?

And Theophemus, after a lapse of time, when I had come back and made demands upon him, would have said that he had paid back the equipment, and to show that he had paid would have insisted upon these proofs—the crisis, the urgency, and that I was not such a fool and had never been such a friend of his as to wait; for what possible reason, then, when I was serving the state as trierarch and was overseer of the navy-board, and when decrees of such a nature and such a law were in force, should I have obliged him by delaying the collection?