Against Nicostratus

​Furthermore, men of the jury, you will also know from the following facts that these men belong to Arethusius. For whenever these men either bought autumn-fruit or hired a harvest to reap, or undertook any other of the farming works, it was Arethusius who bought or hired on their behalf. And to prove that I am speaking the truth, I will present to you witnesses to these facts. [WITNESSES]

​Now, the testimonies which I had to present to you, proving that the slaves belong to Arethusius, I have shown to you. I wish also to speak about the challenge which they offered to me and I to them. For they challenged me, when the first preliminary hearing was held, saying that they were ready to deliver up the slaves to me myself to be examined by torture, wishing this to become a kind of evidence for themselves.

​But I answered them in the presence of witnesses, that I was ready to go to the Council with them and to receive the slaves with the Council or with the Eleven, saying that, if I were prosecuting them in a private suit, and if they delivered them to me, I would have received them, but now the slaves and the registration belonged to the state; therefore, they ought to be tortured publicly.

​For I thought it was not proper for me, being a private citizen, to torture public property; for neither did I become master of the torture, nor was it right that I should judge the statements made by the men, and I thought that the magistrate or those chosen by the Council ought to write down and, having sealed the records of the torture, whatever the men said, produce it to the court, so that you, having heard from these records, might vote as seemed best to you.

​For if the men were tortured privately by me, everything would have been disputed by these men; whereas if it were done publicly, we would keep silent, and the magistrates or those chosen by the Council would go on torturing until they thought fit. But although I was willing to do this, they said they would not deliver them to the magistrate, nor were they willing to follow me to the Council. To prove, then, that I am speaking the truth, call the witnesses to these facts. [WITNESSES]

​In many respects, indeed, they seem to me to be shameless in disputing what belongs to you, and not least will I demonstrate this to you from your own laws. For these men, when the jurors wished to sentence Arethusius to death, begged the jurors to sentence him to a fine and me to agree to it, and they themselves agreed to help pay it.

​They are so far from paying according to what they guaranteed, that they actually dispute what belongs to you. And yet the laws command that the property of anyone who has guaranteed anything to the state and does not pay the guarantee shall be public property; so that even if the slaves belonged to these men, they ought to be public property, if indeed there is any utility in the laws.

​And before he owed money to the treasury, Arethusius was acknowledged to be the richest of the brothers; but since the laws command that his property belongs to you, from that moment Arethusius appears to be poor, and of some of his property their mother claims ownership, and of other parts his brothers. But they ought, if indeed they wished to act justly toward you, to have disclosed all his property first, and only then, if anyone registered any of their own private property, to dispute it.

​If, therefore, you consider that there will never be any lack of persons to dispute what belongs to you with you (for either by producing orphans or heiresses they will demand to be pitied by you, or by speaking of old age and poverty and maintenance for their mother, and by lamenting with those means by which they especially hope to deceive you, they will try to deprive the state of the debt owed), if, therefore, you disregard all these things and vote against them, you will decide rightly.