50
But not to delay, call first, if you please, those who know that Timarchus here lived in the house of Misgolas, then read the testimony of Phaedrus, and, finally, please take the affidavit of Misgolas himself, in case fear of the gods, and respect for those who know the facts as well as he does, and for the citizens at large and for you the jurors, shall persuade him to testify to the truth.
50
Testimony
50
[Misgolas, son of Nicias, of Piraeus, testifies. Timarchus, who once used to stay at the house of Euthydicis the physician, became intimate with me, and I hold him today in the same esteem as in all my past acquaintance with him.]
51
Now, fellow citizens, if Timarchus here had remained with Misgolas and never gone to another man’ s house, his conduct would have been more decent—if really any such conduct is decent—and I should not have ventured to bring any other charge against him than that which the lawgiver describes in plain words, simply that he was a kept man. For the man who practises this thing with one person, and practises it for pay, seems to me to be liable to precisely this charge.
52
But if, saying nothing about these bestial fellows, Cedonides, Autocleides, and Thersandrus, and simply telling the names of those in whose houses he has been an inmate, I refresh your memories and show that he is guilty of selling his person not only in Misgolas’ house, but in the house of another man also, and again of another, and that from this last he went to still another, surely you will no longer look upon him as one who has merely been a kept man, but—by Dionysus, I don’ t know how I can keep glossing the thing over all day long—as a common prostitute. For the man who follows these practices recklessly and with many men and for pay seems to me to be chargeable with precisely this.
