| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 30.29 | Dem. 30.38 (Greek) | >>Dem. 31.1 |
30.35I knew, men of the jury, that the defendant, immediately on the conclusion of the suit, had received the goods from the house of Aphobus, and had come into control of his property and all my estate as well, and I knew, further, that beyond all doubt the woman was living with Aphobus. I therefore demanded of Onetor three female slaves, who knew that the woman was living with Aphobus and that the effects were in the hands of these men, in order that we might not have mere statements but that the matters might be established by proof from the torture.
30.36But Onetor, when I made this challenge to him, and all those present declared that my proposal was just, refused to have recourse to this certain test, but, as though there were other and surer proofs regarding such matters than torture and testimony, he produced no witnesses to prove that he had paid the dowry, nor would he give up for torture the female slaves who knew the fact, to prove that his sister was not living with Aphobus; and, because I made this demand of him, he in an outrageous and insulting manner refused to let me talk to him. Could there be a man more impossible to deal with than he, or more ready to pretend ignorance of what is right? Take the challenge itself and read it.
Challenge
30.37You on your part hold that in both private and public matters the torture is the most certain of all methods of proof, and when slaves and freemen are both available, and the truth of a matter is to be sought out, you make no use of the testimony of the freemen, but seek to ascertain the truth by torturing the slaves; and very properly, men of the jury. For of witnesses who have given testimony there have been some ere now who have been thought not to tell the truth; but of slaves put to the torture no one has ever been convicted of giving false testimony. 30.38Yet Onetor, after refusing a test so fair, and rejecting proofs so clear and so convincing, will produce Aphobus and Timocrates as witnesses, the one that he has paid the dowry, and the other that he has received it, and will demand that you believe him, when he pretends that his transactions with them were without witnesses. For such simpletons does he take you. 30.39But that their words are neither true nor like the truth I think I have—by the fact that at the first they confessed that they had not paid the dowry, that again they pretended to have paid it without witnesses, that the dates do not admit of their having paid the money, seeing that the property was already in litigation, and finally by all the other evidences adduced I have, as I think, conclusively proved.
| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 30.29 | Dem. 30.38 (Greek) | >>Dem. 31.1 |
