32
This, men of the jury, is the agreement which Phormio produced, alleging that he had leased the bank upon these terms. You learn from hearing it read that Phormio, over and above the daily expenditure, was to pay as rent two talents and forty minae each year, and that it was not to be permitted him to carry on a banking business, unless he obtained our consent; and there is added as a final statement, Pasio owes eleven talents upon the deposits.
33
Now, is there any man who would have submitted to the payment of so large a rental for the counter, the site, and the books? And is there any man who would have entrusted the rest of the assets to a man thanks to whom the bank had incurred so great a liability?Pasio is stated by Phormio to have owed the bank eleven talents (Dem. 36.4). This debt may be assumed to have been properly secured, so that it was in no sense a deficit. The present speaker, however, represents it as such, and implies that the bank had been brought to insolvence through Phormio’s incompetence. For, if there was a shortage of so large an amount, it was incurred while Phormio was manager. For you all know that, while my father was engaged in the banking business, Phormio sat at the counter and was his manager; so that he ought rather to be in the millSlaves were often condemned to the heavy labor of turning the millstone. than to become master of the rest of the property.
34
However, I pass over this and all else that I might find to say about the eleven talents, to show that my father did not owe them but that Phormio secretly appropriated them.
