Against Conon

With gross outrage I have met, men of the jury, at the hands of the defendant, Conon, and have suffered such bodily injury that for a very long time neither my relatives nor any of the attending physicians thought that I should survive. Contrary to expectation, however, I did recover and regain my strength, and I then brought against him this action for the assault. All my friends and relatives, whose advice I asked, declared that for what he had done the defendant was liable to summary seizure as a highwayman, or to public indictments for criminal outrage[*](As guilty of highway robbery the defendant had made himself liable to summary arrest (ἀπαγωγή), and the gravity of his assault would have justified a public indictment for criminal outrage (ὕβρεως γραφή), for either of which crimes he would, if convicted, have suffered a heavy penalty. The private suit for assault and battery (αἰκείας δίκη) entailed merely a fine to be paid to the plaintiff.); but they urged and advised me not to take upon myself matters which I should not be able to carry, or to appear to be bringing suit for the maltreatment I had received in a manner too ambitious for one so young. I took this course, therefore, and, in deference to their advice, have instituted a private suit, although I should have been very glad, men of Athens, to prosecute the defendant on a capital charge.

And for this you will all pardon me, I am sure, when you hear what I have suffered. For, grievous as was the injury which at that time fell to my lot, it was no more so than the subsequent insults of the defendant. I ask as my right, therefore, and implore you all without distinction, to listen with goodwill, while I tell you what I have suffered, and then, if you think that I have been the victim of wrongful and lawless acts, to render me the aid which is my due. I shall state to you from the beginning each incident as it occurred in the fewest words I can.

Two years ago I went out to Panactum,[*](Panactum was an Athenian fort on the borders of Boeotia. An expedition to this point in 343 B.C . is mentioned by Demosthenes in Dem. 19.326. However, as we are told by Aristot. Ath. Pol. 42.4, that the ἔφηβοι (young men of military age), in the second year of their training, patrolled the country and spent their spare time in the forts, it may be that no formal military expedition is meant. In that case the loose discipline is more understandable.) where we had been ordered to do garrison duty. The sons of the defendant, Conon, encamped near us, as I would to heaven they had not done; for our original enmity and our quarrels began in fact just there. How these came about, you shall hear. These men used always to spend the entire day after luncheon in drinking, and they kept this up continually as long as we were in the garrison. We, on our part, conducted ourselves while in the country just as we were wont to do here.

Well, at whatever time the others might be having their dinner, these men were already drunk and abusive, at first toward our body-slaves, but in the end toward ourselves. For, alleging that the slaves annoyed them with smoke while getting dinner, or were impudent toward them, or whatever else they pleased, they used to beat them and empty their chamber-pots over them, or befoul them with urine; there was nothing in the way of brutality and outrage in which they did not indulge. When we saw this, we were annoyed and at first expostulated with them, but they mocked at us, and would not desist, and so our whole mess in a body—not I alone apart from the rest—went to the general and told him what was going on.

He rebuked them with stern words, not only for their brutal treatment of us, but for their whole behavior in camp; yet so far from desisting, or being ashamed of their acts, they burst in upon us that very evening as soon as it grew dark, and, beginning with abusive language, they proceeded to beat me, and they made such a clamor and tumult about the tent, that both the general and the taxiarchs[*](The taxiarchs were the commanders of the infantry detachments of the several tribes.) came and some of the other soldiers, by whose coming we were prevented from suffering, or ourselves doing, some damage that could not be repaired, being victims as we were of their drunken violence.

When matters had gone thus far, it was natural that after our return home there should exist between us feelings of anger and hatred. However, on my own part I swear by the gods I never saw fit to bring an action against them, or to pay any attention to what had happened. I simply made this resolve—in future to be on my guard, and to take care to have nothing to do with people of that sort.

I wish in the first place to bring before you depositions proving these statements, and then to show what I have suffered at the hands of the defendant himself, in order that you may see that Conon, who should have dealt rigorously with the first offences, has himself added to these far more outrageous acts of his own doing.

The Depositions

These, then, are the acts of which I thought proper to take no account. Not long after this, however, one evening, when I was taking a walk, as my custom was, in the agora with Phanostratus of Cephisia,[*](Cephisia, a deme of the tribe Erectheïs.) a man of my own age,[*](This suggests that they were in the same military age-class, and may have been together in camp at Panactum.) Ctesias, the son of the defendant, passed by me in a drunken state opposite the Leocorion,[*](This was a monument erected in honor of the three daughters of Leos, whom, in obedience to an oracle, their father had sacrificed for the safety of their country.) near the house of Pythodorus. At sight of us he uttered a yell, and, saying something to himself, as a drunken man does, in an unintelligible fashion, passed on up, toward Melitê.[*](Melitê was a hilly district in the western part of Athens, its entrance from the agora being through the hollow between the extremity of the Areopagus and the Κολωνὸς Ἀγοραῖος.) Gathered together there for a drinking bout, as we afterwards learned, at the house of Pamphilus the fuller, were the defendant Conon, a certain Theotimus, Archeblades, Spintharus, son of Eubulus, Theogenes, son of Andromenes, and a number of others. Ctesias made them all get up, and proceeded to the agora.

It happened that we were turning back from the temple of Persephonê,[*](The site of this temple, as that of the Leocorion, remains uncertain.) and on our walk were again about opposite the Leocorion when we met them. When we got close to them one of them, I don’t know which, fell upon Phanostratus and pinned him, while the defendant Conon together with his son and the son of Andromenes threw themselves upon me. They first stripped me of my cloak, and then, tripping me up they thrust me into the mud and leapt upon me and beat me with such violence that my lip was split open and my eyes closed; and they left me in such a state that I could neither get up nor utter a sound. As I lay there I heard them utter much outrageous language,

a great deal of which was such foul abuse that I should shrink from repeating some of it in your presence. One thing, however, which is an indication of the fellow’s insolence and a proof that the whole affair has been of his doing, I will tell you. He began to crow, mimicking fighting cocks that have won a battle and his fellows bade him flap his elbows against his sides like wings. After this some people who happened to pass took me home stripped as I was, for these men had gone off taking my cloak with them. When my bearers got to my door, my mother and the women servants began shrieking and wailing, and it was with difficulty that I was at length carried to a bath. There I was thoroughly bathed, and shown to the surgeons.

To prove that these statements of mine are true, I shall call before you the witnesses who attest them.

The Witnesses

It happened, men of the jury, that Euxitheus of Cholleidae,[*](Cholleidae, a deme of the tribe Leontis.) who is here in court and is a relative of mine, and with him Meidias, on their way back from a dinner somewhere, came up to me, when I was now near my home, followed after me as I was borne to the bath, and were present when men brought the surgeon. I was so weak, that, as it was far for me to be carried from the bath to my home, those who were with me decided to carry me to the house of Meidias for that night; and so they did.

Now let the clerk take the depositions establishing these facts, that you may understand that a host of people know what outrage I suffered at the hands of these men.

The Depositions

(To the clerk.) Take now the deposition of the surgeon also.

The Deposition

At that time, then, as the immediate result of the blows and the maltreatment I received, I was brought into this condition, as you hear from my own lips, and as all the witnesses who saw me at the time have testified. Afterwards, although the swellings on my face and the bruises, my physician said, did not give him great concern, continuous attacks of fever ensued and violent and acute pains throughout all my body, but especially in my sides and the pit of my stomach, and I was unable to take my food.

Indeed, the surgeon said that, if a copious hemorrhage had not spontaneously occurred, while my agony was extreme and my attendants were at their wits’ end, I should have died of internal suppuration; but as it was, this loss of blood saved me.

To prove now that these statements of mine are true, and that from the blows which these men dealt me there resulted an illness so severe that it brought me to the point of death. Read the depositions of the surgeon and of those who came to see me.

The Depositions

That the wounds I received, then, were not slight or trifling, but that I was brought near to death by the outrage and brutality of these men, and that the action which I have entered is far more lenient than the case deserves, has been made clear to you, I think, on many grounds. I fancy, however, that some of you are wondering what in the world there can be that Conon will have the audacity to say in reply to these charges. I wish, therefore, to tell you in advance the defence which I hear he is prepared to make. He will try to divert your attention from the outrage and the actual facts, and will seek to turn the whole matter into mere jest and ridicule.

He will tell you that there are many people in the city, sons of respectable persons, who in sport, after the manner of young men, have given themselves nicknames, such as Ithyphalli or Autolecythi,[*](These words are best left untranslated (Kennedy, following Auger, renders them Priapi and Sileni). The former suggests gross licentiousness, and the latter, for which various meanings have been proposed, has been plausibly interpreted by Sandys as indicating one who carried his own oil-flask (λήκυθος). He would thus dispense with the customary slave, and be freed from having even such an one as witness to his wanton doings.) and that some of them are infatuated with mistresses; that his own son is one of these and has often given and received blows on account of some girl; and that things of this sort are natural for young men. As for me and all my brothers, he will make out that we are not only drunken and insolent fellows, but also unfeeling and vindictive.[*](Conon, the speaker says, will represent us as being as much addicted to drunkenness and violence as himself and his sons, but surly and vindictive in going to law over such trifling matters!)

For myself, men of the jury, deeply indignant though I am at what I have suffered, I should feel no less indignation at this, and should count myself the victim of a fresh outrage, if you will pardon the strong expression, if this fellow Conon shall be deemed by you to be speaking the truth about us, and you are to be so misguided as to assume that a man bears the character which he claims for himself or which someone else accuses him of possessing, and respectable people are to derive no benefit from their daily life and conduct.

No man in the world has ever seen us drunken or committing outrages, and I hold that I am doing nothing unfeeling in demanding to receive satisfaction according to the law for the wrongs I have suffered. This man’s sons are welcome, so far as I am concerned, to be Ithyphalli and Autolecythi; I only pray the gods that these things and all things like them may recoil upon Conon and his sons;

for they are those who initiate one another with the rites of Ithyphallus, and indulge in acts which decent people cannot even speak of without deep disgrace, to say nothing of performing them.

But what has all this to do with me? Why, for my part, I am amazed if they have discovered any excuse or pretext which will make it possible in your court for any man, if convicted of assault and battery, to escape punishment. The laws take a far different view, and have provided that even pleas of necessity shall not be pressed too far. For example (you see I have had to inquire into these matters and inform myself about them because of the defendant), there are actions for evil-speaking;

and I am told that these are instituted for this purpose—that men may not be led on, by using abusive language back and forth, to deal blows to one another. Again, there are actions for battery; and these, I hear, exist for this reason—that a man, finding himself the weaker party, may not defend himself with a stone or anything of that sort, but may await legal redress. Again, there are public prosecutions for wounding, to the end that wounds may not lead to murder.

The least of these evils, namely abusive language, has, I think, been provided for to prevent the last and most grievous, that murder may not ensue, and that men be not led on step by step from vilification to blows, from blows to wounds, and from wounds to murder, but that in the laws its own penalty should be provided for each of these acts, and that the decision should not be left to the passion or the will of the person concerned.

This, then, is what is ordained in the laws; but if Conon says, We belong to a club of Ithyphalli, and in our love-affairs we strike and throttle whom we please, are you, then, going to let him off with a laugh? I think not. No one of you would have been seized with a fit of laughter, if he had happened to be present when I was dragged and stripped and maltreated, when I was borne home on a litter to the house which I had left strong and well, and my mother rushed out, and the women set up such a wailing and screaming (as if someone had died in the house) that some of the neighbors sent to inquire what it was that had happened.