Accusation of Calumny

It is a suitable opportunity, I consider, that I have taken to deal with matters on which I had long been wishing to speak; for we have here present the persons against whom I have to complain, and those present also before whom I am anxious to reprove the men who have done me wrong. To be sure, one is far more earnest towards men in their presence; for although I suppose that my opponents will count it as nothing to be considered unfriendly by their friends (else they would never have made even a first attempt to offend against me),

to the rest I would like to show that I have done no wrong to these men, but that they were beforehand in wronging me. Now of course it is painful to be compelled to speak of these matters but it is impossible not to speak, when I meet with ill-treatment against my expectation, and find that I am wronged by those whom I took to be friends.

Well then, first of all, so that none of you may perchance defend his faults by scraping up an excuse for his error, let him say who among you has been ill-treated by me in speech or in act, or who has made a request of me without getting what I was able to give as he proposed. Why, I ask, do you endeavor to do me harm, sometimes in word, and sometimes in deed;

and, what is more, to traduce me to these men, whom you traduced to myself? Nay, indeed, you were making so much mischief that one man preferred to appear to be concerned for me rather than have another give me information of it. I could not tell you the whole of what he said—the mere hearing of it was grievous to me—nor, for my protest against your aspersions on me, would I speak in the same terms; for I should be absolving you of my charge against you if I used the same language to you on my own behalf.

But I will tell you how, in thinking to do me an outrage, you made yourselves ridiculous. You asserted that it was an intrusion when I associated and talked with you; that despite all your efforts you did not know how to get rid of me; and finally, that it was against your will that you went with me on a mission to Eleusis. In making these statements you think you are defaming me, but you only reveal yourselves as utter dunderheads; for you were covertly abusing the same man whom at the same moment you were openly treating as a friend!

You ought to have refrained either from defaming him or from associating with him, and that by an open renunciation of his company. But if you felt that to be dishonorable, how was it dishonorable for you to associate with a man whom you did not even feel it honorable to renounce?

And, mark you, I for my part have discovered no ground on which you could reasonably have despised my company. For neither could I see that you were very clever and myself very stupid, nor indeed that you were surrounded with friends and myself destitute of them, nor again that you were wealthy and I poor, nor again that you were in particularly good repute and myself in ill odor, nor were my interests in danger and yours in safety. What reasonable ground, then, had I for suspecting that you were annoyed by my association with you?

Moreover, when you made these statements to our newest members, you did not expect that they would report them to us, and there you were, supposing it a fine stroke of cleverness to go round accusing yourselves to everyone of consenting to be in the company of evil men! As to my informant, it would be vain for you to inquire. For, first of all, you know the person who told me, before you ask: how can you not know him, the man to whom you made your statement?

In the second place, I should do wrong to deal with him as he did with you. For he had not the same view in reporting it to me as you had in making it to him. He reported it to my relatives out of kindness to me, but you made it to him with the intention of injuring me. And if I disbelieved his words, I should seek to test them:

as it is, they tally with the former reports, and I find in them corroboration of those, as those amply corroborated them. So, first of all, dealing entirely through you with Hegemachus about the deposit of the horse, I wished to cancel the transaction as the horse was in a sickly state: Diodorus here tried to dissuade me, asserting that Polycles would make no objection to refunding the twelve minae. So he said at the time; but after the death of the horse he ranged himself in the end with these men as my opponent, saying that I had no right to recover the money.

Yet in fact they were merely accusing themselves. For if I had no rightful claim in regard to a wrong suffered through an arrangement shared with them, surely they were wrong in so sharing it. And I also thought it was for the mere theory of the thing that they took up the argument in opposition; but I found they were not arguing but acting against me,

and the purpose of their argument was to enable Polycles to know my argument. This became evident: in the presence of the arbitrators Polycles angrily said that even my friends considered that I was in the wrong,—so they told him. Now, does this tally with what was reported to me? My informant himself reported that you declared you would hinder those who intended to speak on my behalf, and had prevented several others already. What need have I to set the proof of these facts in a yet clearer light? I ask you, could that man know that, having asked Cleitodicus to speak next, I was refused?

I was told he was not present at the meeting. Then what profit was he seeking, when he was so zealous in getting me into disgrace with you that he busied himself with fabricating such a story for my relatives?

And I observe that not only now, but for a long time past, you have been seeking a pretext; as when you declared that Thrasymachus was defaming you because of me. Well, I asked him if it was because of me that he was defaming Diodorus; and how he disdained that because of me! For he said he was far from defaming Diodorus because of anybody. If I should prefer this charge, Thrasymachus was anxious to be put to the test in regard to this man’s statements;

but to settle it thus was the last thing that the latter would have done. After that Autocrates told Thrasymachus in my presence that Euryptolemus was complaining of him, with the assertion that he was being defamed by him, and that the reporter of this was Menophilus. Immediately Thrasymachus walked over with me to see Menophilus; who asserted that at no time had he either heard it or reported it to Euryptolemus, and what was more, that he had not even talked with him for a long time.

Such were the pretexts that you clearly invented then from my association with Thrasymachus; but now that pretexts have failed you, in more straightforward oppression you show that you stop at nothing. I ought indeed to have understood then that this fate was in store for me, when you were actually defaming to me your own members; and then I have told you my whole opinion of Polycles, whom you are now supporting.

What can have made me so incautious? It was a fatuous lapse in me. I thought I was a friend of yours who was exempt from all defamation for the very reason that you defamed the others to me, since I held a pledge from each of you,—your malicious statements about one another.

I therefore willingly resign your friendship, since, by Heaven, I cannot see what penalty I shall suffer by not associating with you; for neither did my association with you bring me benefit. Shall I find, when I have some suit, that I feel the lack of a pleader and witnesses? At present, instead of pleading in my defence, you try to prevent anyone from doing this, and instead of supporting me and bearing just witness, you associate with my opponents and bear witness for them.

Or, as my well-wishers, will you speak the best you can about me? Why, today you are the only persons who speak ill of me! Well, for my part I shall not hinder you. And this is what will happen to you among yourselves, since it is your habit to be ever injuring one of your associates in speech and in act; when I have left your association, you will turn against yourselves; then you will conceive a hatred of each one of your number in turn; and finally the last one left will defame himself.

And my advantage will be at least this,—that, by being the first to rid myself of you now, I shall suffer the least injury at your hands: for you injure both in speech and in act the people who have to do with you, but never a single one of those who have not.