Greek Texts & Translations

Call, please, the witnesses to these facts.Witnesses

29.13The fellow is so cunning, and so ready to pretend ignorance of what is right, that, although he is pressing a suit for false witness, and although you are to cast your votes regarding this, and have sworn so to do, he refused the proffered examination by torture in regard to the testimony (the point to which he should have devoted his argument), and declares that he requires the slave to be given up for testing in regard to other matters. In this he is lying. 29.14Is it not indeed monstrous that he should claim that he is being outrageously treated by my refusal of his demand to have delivered to him for torture a freeman (for such I shall conclusively prove Milyas to be), and should not consider that my witnesses are being outrageously treated, when I offer him one who is admittedly a slave, to be tested by torture regarding their testimony, and he refuses? For he surely cannot maintain this, that for some matters, which he himself desires, torture is a certain test, and for others not.

29.15Furthermore, men of the jury, the first witness to give this testimony was Aesius, the brother of the plaintiff. He now denies it, because he has allied himself in the suit with Aphobus; but at that time he gave this testimony along with the other witnesses, for he had no desire to perjure himself, or to suffer the penalty which would straightway follow. Surely now, if I had been getting up false testimony, I should not have put this man in my list of witnesses, seeing that he was more intimate with Aphobus than with anyone else in the world, and knowing that he was going to plead for him in the suit, and that he was an adversary of my own. It is not reasonable that one should call as witness to a false statement one who is an opponent of his own, and a brother of his adversary. 29.16I have many witnesses to these facts, and circumstantial proofs no fewer in number than the witnesses. In the first place, if he did not in very truth give this testimony, he would not be denying it now, but would have done so at once in the courtroom, when the deposition was read, for it would have answered his purpose better then than now. In the second place Aesius would not have kept quiet, but would have sued me for damages, if without cause I had made him liable to a charge of bearing false witness against his brother, a charge on which men run the risk both of damages in money and the loss of citizenship. 29.17Again, in seeking to bring the truth of the matter to light, he would have demanded of me the slave who wrote the depositions, in order that, if I refused to give him up, I might seem to have no just ground for my statements. But, as it is, so far from doing anything of the sort, he refused to accept the slave for torture, when I, on his denial that he had given the evidence, offered him. So plain is it that regarding this matter too both he and Aphobus as well were alike unwilling to have recourse to torture.

29.18To prove that my words are true, that after Aesius had given his testimony with the other witnesses, he made no denial of the fact, when, standing by the plaintiff's side in the courtroom, he heard the deposition read, and that, when I offered the slave to them to be questioned by torture regarding all these matters, he refused to accept the offer—regarding each of these points severally I shall produce witnesses. Please call them here.Witnesses

29.19I wish now to set forth to you, men of the jury, what I consider a stronger proof than all those that have been mentioned, to show that the plaintiff did give this answer. When, despite the admissions which he is proved to have made, he demanded of me Milyas for torture, I was so eager to show on the spot that this, too, was a subterfuge on his part, that what do you think I did? 29.20I summoned Aphobus to give evidence against Demo, his uncle and a partner in his crimes. I wrote out the testimony which he now attacks as false and ordered him to make a deposition to it. At first he brazenly refused, but when the arbitrator bade him depose, or deny the fact under oath, he deposed, sorely against his will. And yet if the man was a slave, and had not been already admitted by Aphobus here to be free, what in the world induced him to make this deposition? Why did he not deny it on oath, and so get free of the affair?