Against Aphobus III

​Thus, it was not only I who was ready for this, while the witnesses did not have the same mind as I; on the contrary, they, having placed beside them the children on whose behalf they testified, wished to pledge an oath upon them. But he did not deign to offer the oath either to them or to me, but having based his case upon fabricated words and witnesses accustomed to testifying what is not true, he hopes easily to deceive you. Take, then, for them also this testimony. WITNESSES.

​How then could anyone more clearly prove that we are being falsely accused, that the truth has been testified against him, and that the lawsuit was justly lost, than by demonstrating in this manner? By showing, first, that this man was unwilling to torture the slave who wrote the testimony, concerning the very things that had been testified; and that Aesius, his own brother, testified to these same things which he claims are false;

​and that this man himself testified to the same things as the witnesses whom he is prosecuting, in my favour against Demon, who was his uncle and fellow-guardian; and that he was unwilling to torture the female slaves to prove that the man was free; and that my mother was willing to make a solemn pledge concerning these things against us; and that he was unwilling to receive any of the other slaves, who knew everything better than Milyas; and that he has not prosecuted for false testimony any of the witnesses who testified against him that he had the money;

​and that he did not produce the will, nor did he lease the estate as the laws command; and that, when I and the witnesses took a preliminary oath so that he might be released from the money for which he demanded Milyas, he did not think it necessary to make a solemn pledge? By the gods, I indeed could not show these things more precisely than in this manner. Thus, although he so clearly lies against the witnesses, and suffers no damage from the facts, and has justly lost the lawsuit, he nevertheless behaves shamelessly.

​And if indeed he were making these arguments without having been already judged to be in the wrong both by his own friends and by the arbitrator, it would be less worthy of wonder; but as it is, having persuaded me to refer the matter to Archeneos, Dracontides, and Phanus here (who is now being prosecuted by him for false testimony), he dismissed them when he heard from them that, if they were to decide these matters under oath, they would condemn his guardianship; and having gone to the public arbitrator chosen by lot, and having nothing by which to clear himself of the charges, he lost the arbitration.

​And the judges, to whom he appealed, having heard the case, decided the same things as his friends and the arbitrator had concerning them, and assessed the damages at ten talents—not, by Zeus, because he had admitted that Milyas was free (for this was nothing), but because, when an estate of fifteen talents had been left to me, he did not lease the estate, and having managed it together with his fellow-guardians for ten years, while for the tax-syndicate, on behalf of me who was a child, he agreed to contribute five minae, just as much as Timotheus the son of Conon and those possessing the largest assessments contributed, ​and having for so long a time wardened these funds, on behalf of which he himself deemed it fit to pay so great a contribution, he handed over to me on his own part property worth not even twenty minae, and together with them had deprived me of the entire principal and the revenues. The judges, therefore, having calculated for the whole property a rate of interest, not at which estates are usually leased, but the very lowest, found that in all they were depriving me of more than thirty talents; and for this reason, they assessed his share of the damages at ten talents.