Against Evergus and Mnesibulus

So when the pledge which I had seized had been taken from me by Theophemus, and I had been beaten, I went to the senate and showed them the marks of the blows, and told them how I had been treated, and also that it was while I was seeking to collect for the state the ship’s equipment. The senate, angered at the treatment which I had received and seeing the plight that I was in, thinking, too, that the insult had been offered, not to me, but to itself and the assembly which had passed the decree and the law which compelled us to exact payment for the equipment,—

the senate, I say, ordered me to prefer an impeachment, and that the prytanes[*](Since the entire senate of five hundred members could not always meet as a whole, the fifty members from each tribe served in turn (the order being determined by lot) as a sort of executive committee for one-tenth of the year, the presiding officer for the day being chosen from their number. These groups were called the prytanes.) should give Theophemus two days’ notice of trial on a charge of breaking the law and of impeding the fleet’s departure, charging further that he had refused to return the ship’s equipment and had taken from me the pledge which I had seized, and beaten me when I was seeking to collect what was due and was performing my duty to the state. Well, then, the trial of Theophemus came on before the senate in accordance with the impeachment which I had preferred; and after both sides had been heard and the senators had cast their votes secretly, he was convicted in the senate-chamber and adjudged to be guilty.

And when the senate was going into a division on the question whether it should remand him to a jury-court or sentence him to a fine of five hundred drachmae, the highest penalty which the law allowed it to inflict, while all these men were making pleas and entreaties and sending any number of people to intercede for them, and offering us right there in the senate-chamber the inventory of the equipment due, and promising to submit the question of the assault to any one of the Athenians whom I should name, I consented that a fine of twenty-five drachmae[*](The text would naturally mean an additional fine, but the speaker is emphasizing his reasonableness in his treatment of his opponents. This was shown by his consenting to a fine of merely 5 drachmae, whereas it might have been 500 drachmae with confiscation of the defendant’s property. I think the προς- means a fine in addition to the other charges to which the defendant was already liable.) should be imposed upon Theophemus.

To prove that I am speaking the truth in this, I beg all of you who were senators in the archonship of Agathocles[*](This was in 356 B.C.) to tell the facts to those who sit by you, and I will bring before you as witnesses all those whom I have been able to find who were senators that year.

The Depositions

I, you see, men of the jury, showed myself thus reasonable toward these men. And yet the decree ordered the confiscation of the property, not only of those who had ship’s equipment and did not return it to the state, but also of anyone who, having such equipment, refused to sell it; such a scarcity of equipment was there in the city at that time.

(To the clerk.) Read the decree, please.

The Decree

When I had come back from my voyage, men of the jury, as Theophemus refused to refer to anyone the matter of the blows which he had dealt me, I summoned him, and began an action against him for assault. He summoned me in a cross-action, and while the arbitrators had the causes before them, and the time came for making the award, he put in a special plea and an affidavit for postponement; I, however, being conscious that I had done no wrong, came in for trial before your court.

Theophemus, by bringing this testimony to which no one else has deposed, but only his brother and his brother-in-law, to the effect that he was willing to deliver up the woman, and by pretending to be a man without guile, deceived the jurors. But now I make of you a fair request, both to decide regarding the testimony whether it is true or false, and at the same time to consider the whole case from the beginning.

I, for my part, hold that the proof should be drawn from the very course of procedure to which the fellow at that time fled for refuge, that is, from the examination of the woman by the torture, to determine which party struck the first blow; for this is what constitutes assault. And it is for this reason that I am suing the witnesses for false testimony, because they deposed that Theophemus was willing to deliver up the woman, whereas he never would produce her in person either at that time before the arbitrator or subsequently, despite my repeated demands.

They ought, therefore, to suffer a double punishment, both because they deceived the jurors by bringing forward false testimony—that of the brother-in-law and the brother—, and because they wronged me while I was zealously performing a public service, doing what the state commanded me, and obeying your laws and your decrees.

Now to prove to you that I was not the only one thus commissioned, when I received from the magistrates the name of this man with orders to exact from him the equipment which he owed to the state, but that others of the trierarchs took such measures against others whose names they had received, read, please, their depositions.

The Depositions

I wish now, men of the jury, to set forth before you the treatment with which I have met at their hands. For when I had lost to them the suit in which the witnesses gave the false testimony for which I am suing them, and the time for paying the judgement was about to expire, I came up to Theophemus and begged him to oblige me by waiting a little while, telling him what was true, that although I had got together the money which I was going to pay him, a trierarchy had fallen to my lot,

and it was necessary to despatch the trireme with all speed, and that Alcimachus, the general, had ordered me to furnish this ship for his own use; the money, therefore, which I had got together to pay Theophemus, I had to use up for this purpose. So I asked him to extend the time of payment until I should have sent off the ship. And he answered me quite readily and guilelessly: There is no objection to that, he said, but, when you shall have despatched the ship, also bring the money to me.

When Theophemus had given me this answer and had extended the time of payment, and especially because I relied upon my impeachment for false testimony and his unwillingness to deliver up the woman, and so thought he would take no violent measures in my affair, I despatched the trireme, and a few days later, having got the money together, I approached him and bade him to go with me to the bank to receive the amount of his judgement.

To prove that I am speaking the truth in this, the clerk shall read you the depositions regarding these matters.

The Depositions

Theophemus, however, instead of going with me to the bank and receiving the amount of his judgement, went and seized fifty soft-woolled sheep of mine that were grazing and with them the shepherd and all that belonged to the flock, and also a serving-boy who was carrying back a bronze pitcher of great value which was not ours, but had been borrowed. And they were not content with having these,

but went on to my farm (I have a piece of land near the Hippodrome, and have lived there since my boyhood), and first they made a rush to seize the household slaves, but since these escaped them and got off one here and another there, they went to the house, and bursting open the gate which led into the garden (these were this man Evergus, the brother of Theophemus, and Mnesibulus, his brother-in-law, who had won no judgement against me, and who had no right to touch anything that was mine)—these men, I say,[*](This was an unpardonable outrage.) entered into the presence of my wife and children and carried off all the furniture that was still left in the house.

They thought to get, not so much merely, but far more, for they expected to find the stock of household furniture which I formerly had; but because of my public services and taxes and my liberality toward you, some of the furniture is lying in pawn, and some has been sold. All that was left, however, they took away with them.

More than this, men of the jury, my wife happened to be lunching with the children in the court and with her was an elderly woman who had been my nurse, a devoted soul and a faithful, who had been set free by my father. After she had been given her freedom she lived with her husband, but after his death, when she herself was an old woman and there was nobody to care for her, she came back to me.

I could not suffer my old nurse, or the slave who attended me as a boy, to live in want; at the same time I was about to sail as trierarch and it was my wife’s wish that I should leave such a person to live in the house with her. They were lunching in the court when these men burst in and found them there, and began to seize the furniture. The rest of the female slaves (they were in a tower room where they live), when they heard the tumult, closed the door leading to the tower, so the men did not get in there; but they carried off the furniture from the rest of the house,

although my wife forbade them to touch it, and declared that it was her property, mortgaged to secure her marriage portion; she said to them also, You have the fifty sheep, the serving boy, and the shepherd, whose value is in excess of the amount of your judgement (for one of the neighbors knocked at the door and told her this). Furthermore she told them that the money was lying at the bank for them, for she had heard me say so. And, if you will wait here, she said, or if one of you will go after him, you shall take the money back with you at once; but let the furniture alone, and do not carry off anything that is mine—especially since you have the full value of your judgement.

But although my wife spoke in this way, they not only did not desist, but when the nurse took the cup which was set by her and from which she had been drinking, and put it in her bosom to prevent these men from taking it, when she saw that they were in the house, Theophemus and Evergus, this brother of his, observing her, treated her so roughly in taking the cup from her

that her arms and wrists were covered with blood, as they wrenched her arms and pulled her this way and that in taking the cup from her, and she had lacerations on her throat, where they strangled her, and her breast was black and blue. And they pushed their brutality to such extremes, that they did not stop throttling and beating the old woman, until they had taken the cup from her bosom.

The servants of the neighbors, hearing the tumult and seeing that my house was being pillaged, some of them called from the roofs of their own houses to the people passing by, and others went into the other street and seeing Hagnophilus passing by, bade him to come. Hagnophilus, when he came up, summoned by a servant of Anthemion, who is a neighbor of mine, did not enter the house (for he thought he ought not to do so in the absence of the master), but, standing on Anthemion’s land, saw the furniture being carried off and Evergus and Theophemus coming out of the house.