20
But surely, Nicomachus, you ought, at the time, both to have called up those who were present as witnesses, and to have exposed the affair: you would then have left me without any defence, while on your own part, if I was your enemy, you would have achieved by this means your vengeance upon me while if you were acting in the interest of the State, you would in this way have convicted me without being regarded as a slanderer. If you were looking for profit, you would have made the largest then;
21
for, the fact being exposed, I should have decided that my sole deliverance lay in seducing you. Well, you did nothing of the sort, and you expect that your statements will effect my ruin: you put in the plea that owing to my influence and my means there is no one willing to bear you witness.
22
Yet if, when you saw me—as you say—clearing away the sacred olive, you had brought the nine archons on the scene, or some other members of the Areopagus, you would not have had to seek witnesses elsewhere; for then the truth of your statements would have been ascertained by the very persons who were to decide upon the matter.
23
So he makes my situation most perplexing; for if he had produced witnesses, he might claim that they should be believed, but as he has none, he thinks it is I who should suffer so much detriment from that. And I am not surprised—at him; for, to be sure, in his slanderous proceedings he is not going to be as hard up for statements of this sort as he is for witnesses; but you, I trust, will not be in agreement with this man.
24
For you understand that in the plain there are many sacred olives and burnt stumps on my other plots which, had I so desired, it would have been much safer to clear away or cut down or work over, inasmuch as among so many of them the wrongful act was likely to be less evident.
