82
I hardly think I need remind you that many a man with unclean hands or some other form of defilement who has embarked on shipboard with the righteous has involved them in his own destruction.Oddly reminiscent of Aesch. Seven 602 ff.: ἢ γὰρ ξυνεισβὰς πλοῖον εὐσεβὴς ἀνὴρ ναύταισι θερμοῖς καὶ πανουργίᾳ τινὶ ὄλωλεν ἀνδρῶν σὺν θεοπτύστῳ γένει. Others, while they have escaped death, have had their lives imperilled owing to such polluted wretches. Many, too, have been proved to be defiled as they stood beside a sacrifice, because they prevented the proper performance of the rites.
83
With me the opposite has happened in every case. Not only have fellow-passengers of mine enjoyed the calmest of voyages: but whenever I have attended a sacrifice, that sacrifice has invariably been successful. I claim that these facts furnish the strongest presumption in my favor that the charge brought against me by the prosecution is unfounded; I have witnesses to confirm them.
84
Witnesses
84
I know furthermore, gentlemen of the jury, that if the witnesses were testifying against me that my presence on shipboard or at a sacrifice had been the occasion of some unholy manifestation, the prosecution would be treating that fact as supremely significant; they would be showing that here, in the signs from heaven, was to be found the clearest confirmation of their charge. As, however, the signs have contradicted their assertions and the witnesses testify that what I say is true and that what the prosecution say is not, they urge you to put no credence in the evidence of those witnesses; according to them, it is their own statements which you should believe. Whereas every one else uses the facts to prove the worth of mere assertion, they use mere assertion for the purpose of discrediting the facts.
