| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 37.1 | Dem. 37.8 (Greek) | >>Dem. 37.17 |
37.4Evergus and I, men of the jury, lent to this man Pantaenetus one hundred and five minae on the security of a mining property in Maroneia note and of thirty slaves. Of this loan forty-five minae belonged to me, and a talent to Evergus. It happened that the plaintiff also owed a talent to Mnesicles of Collytus note and forty-five minae to Phileas of Eleusis and Pleistor.
37.5The vendor to us of the mining property and the slaves was Mnesicles, for he had purchased them for the plaintiff from Telemachus, the former owner; and the plaintiff leased them from us at a rent equal to the interest accruing on the money, a hundred and five drachmae a month. We drew up an agreement in which the terms of the lease were stated, and the right was given the plaintiff of redeeming these things from us within a given time.
37.6When these transactions had been completed in the month of Elaphebolion in the archonship of Theophilus, note I at once sailed away for Pontus, but the plaintiff and Evergus remained here. What transactions they had with one another while I was away, I cannot state, for they do not tell the same story, nor is the plaintiff always consistent with himself; sometimes he says that he was forcibly ousted from his leasehold by Evergus in violation of the agreement; sometimes that Evergus was the cause of his being inscribed as a debtor to the state; note sometimes anything else that he chooses to say.
37.7But Evergus tells a plain and consistent story, that since he was not receiving his interest, and the plaintiff was not performing any of the other things stipulated in the agreement, he went and took from the plaintiff, with the latter's consent, what was his own, and kept it; that after this the plaintiff went away, but came back bringing men to make claim to the property; that he on his own part did not give way in their favour, but made no objection to the plaintiff's holding that for which he had given a lease, provided he should observe the terms of the agreement. From these men, then, I hear stories of this sort.
37.8This, however, I know well, that, if the plaintiff speaks the truth, and has been outrageously treated, as he says, by Evergus, he has had satisfaction to the amount at which he himself assessed his damages; for he came into your court and won his suit against him; and surely he has no right to obtain damages for the same wrongs both from the one who committed them and from me, who was not even in Athens. But, if it is Evergus who speaks the truth, he has been made the object, it appears, of a baseless and malicious charge; but even so there is no ground for my being sued on the same charge.
To prove, in the first place, that I am speaking the truth in this, I shall bring before you the witnesses to establish these facts.Witnesses
37.9That, therefore, the man who sold us the property was the man who had been the original purchaser; that under the agreement the plaintiff rented the mining establishment and the slaves, recognizing them as belonging to us; that I was not present at the transactions which subsequently took place between the plaintiff and Evergus, and indeed was not even in Athens; that he brought suit against Evergus, and never made any charge against me,—all this, men of the jury, you hear from the witnesses. 37.10Well, then, when I came back, having lost practically everything I had when I sailed, I heard, and found it was true, that the plaintiff had given up the property and that Evergus was in possession and control of what we had purchased. I was distressed beyond words, seeing that the matter had got into an awkward predicament; for it was now necessary for me either to enter into partnership with Evergus for the working and management of the property, or have him for a debtor instead of Pantaenetus, and draw up a new lease and enter into a contract with him; and I liked neither of these alternatives. 37.11Being vexed at the matters of which I am telling you, and happening to see Mnesicles, who had sold us the property, I came up to him, and reproached him, telling what sort of a man he had recommended to me, and I questioned him regarding the claimants, asking what this was all about. On hearing this, he laughed at the claimants, but stated that they wished to have a conference with us. He declared that he would bring us together, and that he would urge the plaintiff to do all that was right in my regard, and he thought he would persuade him to do so. 37.12When we had our meeting—what need is there to tell you all the details?—the men came who claimed to have made loans to the plaintiff on the security of the mining property and the slaves, which we bought from Mnesicles; and there was nothing straightforward or honest about them. Then, when they were convicted of falsehood in all their statements and Mnesicles confirmed our having bought the property, they offered us a challenge, assuming that we should not accept it, either to take all our money from them and withdraw, or to settle with them by paying their claims; for the security which we held was, they claimed, worth far more than the sums we had lent. 37.13When I heard this, on the spur of the moment and without even taking thought, I agreed to take my money, and I persuaded Evergus to adopt the same course. But when the time came for us to receive our money, the matter having been brought to this conclusion, the people who had previously made the offer declared then that they would not pay us unless we became vendors to them of the property, and in this point anyway, men of Athens, they were prudent; for they saw in what baseless and malicious charges we were involved by this fellow.
To prove that I am speaking the truth in this, take, please, these depositions also.Depositions
| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 37.1 | Dem. 37.8 (Greek) | >>Dem. 37.17 |
