9
In the second place, I should do wrong to deal with him as he did with you. For he had not the same view in reporting it to me as you had in making it to him. He reported it to my relatives out of kindness to me, but you made it to him with the intention of injuring me. And if I disbelieved his words, I should seek to test them:
10
as it is, they tally with the former reports, and I find in them corroboration of those, as those amply corroborated them. So, first of all, dealing entirely through you with Hegemachus about the deposit of the horse, I wished to cancel the transaction as the horse was in a sickly state: Diodorus here tried to dissuade me, asserting that Polycles would make no objection to refunding the twelve minae. So he said at the time; but after the death of the horse he ranged himself in the end with these men as my opponent, saying that I had no right to recover the money.
11
Yet in fact they were merely accusing themselves. For if I had no rightful claim in regard to a wrong suffered through an arrangement shared with them, surely they were wrong in so sharing it. And I also thought it was for the mere theory of the thing that they took up the argument in opposition; but I found they were not arguing but acting against me,
12
and the purpose of their argument was to enable Polycles to know my argument. This became evident: in the presence of the arbitrators Polycles angrily said that even my friends considered that I was in the wrong,—so they told him. Now, does this tally with what was reported to me? My informant himself reported that you declared you would hinder those who intended to speak on my behalf, and had prevented several others already. What need have I to set the proof of these facts in a yet clearer light? I ask you, could that man know that, having asked Cleitodicus to speak next, I was refused?
