33
Why should I? No; the man who was first to strike me and from whom I suffered the greatest indignity, he it is whom I am suing, whom I abhor, and whom I am now prosecuting. My words, then, are all true and are proved to be so, whereas the defendant, if he had not brought forward these witnesses, had, I take it, not an argument to advance, but would have had silently to undergo an immediate conviction. But it stands to reason, that these men, who have been partners in his drinking bouts and have shared in many deeds of this sort, have given false testimony. If matters are to come to this pass, if once certain people shall prove shameless enough to give manifestly false testimony, and there shall be no advantage in the truth, it will be a terrible state of things.
34
Ah but, they will say, they are not people of that sort. I am inclined to think, however, that many of you know Diotimus and Archebiades and Chaeretimus, the grey-headed man yonder, men who by day put on sour looks and pretend to play the SpartanMany men in Athens in the days of Plato and Demosthenes, as an indication of their contempt for democracy and a protest against the decay of morals, sought to imitate the Spartan severity in dress and manners. Men such as those whom the writer is here depicting would not unnaturally seek by this means to build up a spurious reputation for austerity. and wear short cloaks and single-soled shoes, but when they get together and are by themselves leave no form of wickedness or indecency untried.
