Theomnestus and Apollodorus Against Neaera

For the property of Apollodorus did not amount to as much as three talents to enable him to pay in full a fine of such magnitude, yet if it were not paid by the ninth prytany[*](The prytany was a tenth of the year, properly, the period during which each of the tribes held the presidency of the senate. See note a of Dem. 47.42) the fine would have been doubled and Apollodorus would have been inscribed as owing thirty talents to the treasury, all the property that he has would have been scheduled as belonging to the state, and upon its being sold Apollodorus himself and his children and his wife and all of us would have been reduced to extremest distress.

And more than this, his other daughter would never have been given in marriage; for who would ever have taken to wife a portionless girl from a father who was a debtor to the treasury and without resources? Of such magnitude, you see, were the calamities which Stephanus was bringing upon us all without ever having been wronged by us in any respect. To the jurors, therefore, who at that time decided the matter I am deeply grateful for this at least, that they did not suffer Apollodorus to be utterly ruined, but fixed the amount of the fine at one talent, so that he was able to discharge the debt, although with difficulty. With good reason, then, have we undertaken to pay Stephanus back in the same coin.

For not only did Stephanus seek in this way to bring us to ruin, but he even wished to drive Apollodorus from his country. He brought a false charge against him that, having once gone to Aphidna[*](Aphidna, a deme of the tribe Aeantis.) in search of a runaway slave of his, he had there struck a woman, and that she had died of the blow; and he suborned some slaves and got them to give out that they were men of Cyren,[*](An important city in Libya in Northern Africa.) and by public proclamation cited Apollodorus before the court of the Palladium[*](For the court of the Palladium, see note b on Dem. 47.70. In the case alluded to an ordinary court of five hundred jurors seems to have sat in the place of the Ephetae (see note a on Dem. 43.57.).) on a charge of murder.

This fellow Stephanus prosecuted the case, declaring on oath that Apollodorus had killed the woman with his own hand, and he imprecated destruction upon himself and his race and his house, affirming matters which had never taken place, which he had never seen or heard from any human being. However, since he was proved to have committed perjury and to have brought forward a false accusation, and was shown to have been hired by Cephisophon and Apollophanes to procure for pay the banishment or the disfranchisement of Apollodorus, he received but a few votes out of a total of five hundred, and left the court a perjured man and one with the reputation of a scoundrel.

Now, men of the jury, I would have you ask yourselves, considering in your own minds the natural course of events, what I could have done with myself and my wife and my sister, if it had fallen to the lot of Apollodorus to suffer any of the injuries which this fellow Stephanus plotted to inflict upon him in either the former or the latter trial, or how great were the disgrace and the ruin in which I should have been involved.

People came to me privately from all sides exhorting me to exact punishment from my opponent for the wrongs he had done us. They flung in my teeth the charge that I was the most cowardly of humankind, if, being so closely related to them, I did not take vengeance for the injuries done my sister, my father-in-law, my sister’s children, and my own wife, and if I did not bring before you this woman who is guilty of such flagrant impiety toward the gods, of such outrage toward the commonwealth, and of such contempt for your laws, and by prosecuting her and by my arguments convicting her of crime, to enable you to deal with her as you might see fit.