Greek Texts & Translations

Nevertheless, read them this law also.Law

37.19You hear the law, men of Athens, expressly stating that in cases where anyone has given a release and discharge, there shall be no further action. And that both these have been effected between the plaintiff and myself, you have heard from the witnesses. One should not, of course, bring suit in any case when the law forbids it, but least of all ought one in a case like this. For in regard to sales made by the state, one might claim that it had made the sale unjustly, or had sold what was not its own; 37.20and in regard to court decisions it might be claimed that the decision had been rendered through error; and in all other cases where the law forbids action exception might plausibly be taken to each one. But when anyone has himself yielded to argument and given a release, he cannot in the very nature of the case charge himself with having acted unjustly. Those who bring suit in defiance of any other of these provisions fail to abide by what others have determined to be just; but he who again brings suit in matters regarding which he has given a release fails to abide by his own decision. Therefore, against all such your anger should be particularly severe.

37.21Well then, that he released me from all claims, when I sold the slaves to him, I have proved to you; and that the laws do not allow suits to be brought in such cases you have heard from the law which has just been read. However, that no one of you, men of Athens, may suppose that it is because I am at a disadvantage regarding the rights of the matters at issue that I have recourse to this special plea, I propose to show you that in every one of his charges against me his statements are false.

37.22Read the complaint itself, which he brings against me.Complaint

Nicobulus has harmed me by laying a plot against me and against my property, having ordered Antigenes, his slave, to take away from my slave the silver which he was bringing to be paid to the state for the mining property which I bought for ninety minae, ^note and having also caused me to be inscribed as debtor to the treasury for double that amount.

37.23Stop reading. All these charges which he has now lodged against me he previously made against Evergus, and won his suit. Now evidence has been brought before you in the opening of my speech that I was not in the country when these men quarrelled with one another; but the fact is clear from the complaint itself. For he nowhere stated that I have done any of these things, but, suggesting that I laid a plot against him and against his property, he declares that I ordered my slave to commit these acts; and in this he lies. For how could I have given this order, seeing that at the time I set sail I could by no possibility have had knowledge of what was going to happen here? 37.24And then how absurd when he says that I plotted to disenfranchise him and bring him to utter ruin, to have written in the charge that I ordered a slave to do this,—a thing which even a citizen could not do to another citizen. ^note What, then, is the meaning of this? I suppose that, being unable to refer to me the doing of any of these acts, but wishing to go on with his malicious suit, he wrote in the complaint that I had given the order. There was no sense in his charge, if he had not done this.

37.25Read what follows.Complaint

And after I had become a debtor to the state, having stationed his slave Antigenes in my mining property at Thrasyllus, ^note in full control of my works, although I forbade him . . .

Stop reading. In all this he will again be convicted of falsehood by the facts themselves; for he has written in the complaint that I stationed the slave and that he forbade me. But this was impossible in the case of one who was not in the country. Neither did I station anyone, seeing that I was in Pontus, nor did he forbid a man who was not in Athens. 37.26How could he? What was it, then, that forced him to make this statement? I fancy that Evergus, at the time he made the mistakes ^note for which he has paid the penalty, being on friendly terms with me and well known, took the slave from my house and stationed him at his own works to keep guard. If, then, he had written the truth, it would have been ridiculous. For, if Evergus stationed the slave there, wherein do I wrong you? It was to avoid this absurdity that he was compelled to write as he did, that his charge might be directed against me.

Read what follows.Complaint

And then having persuaded my slaves to sit in the foundry ^note to my prejudice.