25
And he has carried audacity to such lengths that it does not suffice him merely to lie about this matter of having given the money, but he even says that he has recovered it! Yet how is it likely that I first committed such a crime as he has laid to my charge—of seeking to deprive him of his three hundred dracmaeEither simply by carrying off the young man or else by arranging with him for a share in the money.— and then, after we had had our affray, paid him back the money, without either obtaining a quittance of all claims or being subjected to any compulsion?
26
Why, gentlemen, this is all mere invention and artifice of his: he says that he gave it, so as to avoid the scandal of daring to commit such an outrage on the lad without any bargain struck between them; and he pretends that he has got it back, because it is clear that he never laid a claim to money or made the least mention of the matter.His pretence of having got the money back by private arrangement is the excuse he makes for not having formally claimed the money of which he says he was defrauded.
27
He says that I gave him a beating at the door of his house, which left him in a terrible state. But we find that he pursued the boy for more than four stadesAbout 800 yards. from his house with no sign of injury, and I this he denies, although it was seen by more than two hundred people.
28
He states that we went to his house with potsherds in our hands, and that I threatened to kill him, and that this is premeditation. But I think that this lie of his, gentlemen, is easily detected, not only by you who are used to investigating this sort of case, but by everyone else as well.
