Greek Texts & Translations

29.38Now look you, as to the ivory and iron, I have this to say: all the slaves of the household know that the plaintiff used to sell these articles. I am ready now, as I was then, to give over to him any one of these slaves whom he may choose to be examined by torture. If then, he alleges that I refuse to surrender the man who has knowledge of the facts, and offer him others who have no such knowledge, he will but show that he ought all the more to have accepted my offer. For if those whom I offered to him as having knowledge of the facts, declared that he had none of these articles in his possession, he would of course have been acquitted of the charge. 29.39But nothing of the sort is the truth. It would have been proved past all question that he had sold the goods, and appropriated the profits. Therefore, he passed over those who were admittedly slaves, and demanded that a freeman be examined by torture, whom it would have been a crime for me to surrender; for it was not his purpose that he should sift out the matter, but that he might make a specious argument out of the fact that his demand was refused.

Regarding, therefore, all these facts, first the marriage-portion, then his connivance with fraud, then all the rest, there shall be read to you the laws and the depositions, that you may have full knowledge.Laws
Depositions

29.40Not only from the facts already adduced can you see that Aphobus was not in any respect whatever prejudiced by my refusal to give the man up for torture, but also from a consideration of the matter itself. Let us suppose that Milyas is being racked upon the wheel, and consider what Aphobus would most wish him to say. Would it not be that he was not aware that the plaintiff had any of the property in his possession? Well, suppose he says so. Does that prove that the plaintiff has none? Far from it; for I produced men who knew, men who paid him the money, men who were present in person, as witnesses. It is convincing proof, not if one is ignorant that a man has something in his possession (for there might be many such), but if one knows that he has it. 29.41But of the many witnesses who testified against you, what one have you sued for false testimony? Tell us. But you cannot. Yet you plainly convict yourself, and prove that you lie when you declare that you have been outrageously treated, and that you lost the suit unjustly, because this man was not given up to you—you who made no charge of giving false testimony against the witnesses who testified that you received and had in your possession the property, concerning which you demanded Milyas for torture to prove that it was never left us. If you had really been wronged, it would have been more fitting to proceed against them. But you were not wronged, and are bringing a baseless suit out of malice.

29.42There are many points from which one may see your rascality, but most of all if one hears how you acted regarding the will. For although my father, men of the jury, wrote a will containing an inventory of all that he left, with instructions for letting the property, this will Aphobus never gave up to me, lest I should learn from it the value of the estate, and admitted possessing only those items which were so well known that he could not deny that he had them. 29.43The will, according to his statement, contained these provisions: that Demophon should at once receive two talents, and should marry my sister when she should come of age (this would be in ten years); that Aphobus himself should have eighty minae with my mother, and the house to live in; and that Therippides should enjoy the interest on seventy minae until I should reach manhood. All the rest of the property left to me apart from these items, and the clause regarding the letting of the estate, he suppressed from the will, not thinking that it was to his interest that these matters should be made known in your court. 29.44However, since it was admitted by Aphobus himself that my father on his death-bed gave to each of these men such large sums of money, the jurymen at the former trial considered these admissions to be a proof of the size of the estate. For when a man gave out of his estate four talents and three thousand drachmae by way of marriage-portion and legacy, it was plain that he took these sums, not from a small estate, but from one (bequeathed to me) of more than double this amount. 29.45 ^note For it cannot be supposed that he would wish to leave me, his son, in poverty, and be eager further to enrich these men, who were already wealthy. No; it was because of the size of the estate left to me that he gave to Therippides the interest on seventy minae, and to Demophon that on the two talents—though he was not yet to marry my sister. These moneys it has been proved that Aphobus never gave over to me, nor even an amount slightly less. Part of it he said he had spent, part he had never received, part he knew nothing about, part was in the hands of so-and-so, part was in the house, and of part he could say anything except when and where he had paid it over.