3
When considering the matter, gentlemen of the jury, we ought to begin with the charges which my accusers themselves brought against me at the outset in the Assembly. My relatives communicated the impeachment to me by letter, and also the charges which they made against me in the Assembly when they brought the impeachment in. Among these was recorded a statement of Lycurgus, who claimed to have been told by the relatives that during the wedding of Charippus to the woman I followed and tried to persuade her to reserve herself and have nothing to do with Charippus.
4
Let me now repeat to you the answer which I gave to the relatives and also to my own relations directly I arrived, namely this. If these accusations are true, I agree to having done all the other things set down in the impeachment. But they are false, as is surely obvious to everyone.
5
For who is there in Athens so uncritical as to believe these allegations? There must have been attenders, gentlemen of the jury, with the carriage that conveyed the bride: first a muleteer and a guide, and then her escort of boys, and also Dioxippus.For Dioxippus, the athlete who accompanied Alexander to India (Diod. Sic. 17.100.2), see Introduction to the speech. For he was in attendance, too, since she was a widow being given away in marriage.
6
Was I then so utterly senseless, do you think, that with all those other people in the procession, as well as Dioxippus and Euphraeus his fellow-wrestler, both acknowledged to be the strongest men in Greece, I had the impudence to pass such comments on a free woman, in the hearing of everyone, and was not afraid of being strangled on the spot? Would anyone have listened to such remarks about his sister as these men accuse me of having made, without killing the speaker?
