Kitap 12
9
Let us now, then, examine the method of Timaeus, and Timaeus’s account of his investigations in the history of the colony of Locri. compare his account of this colony, that we may learn which of the two better deserves such vituperation. He says in the same book: I am not now proceeding on conjecture, but have investigated the truth in the course of a personal visit to the Locrians in Greece. The Locrians first of all showed me a written treaty which began with the words, as parents to children. There are also existing decrees securing mutual rights of citizenship to both. In fine, when they were told of Aristotle’s account of the colony, they were astonished at the audacity of that writer. I then crossed to the Italian Locri and found that the laws and customs there accorded with the theory of a colony of free men, not with the licentiousness of slaves. For among them there are penalties assigned to man-catchers, adulterers, and run-away slaves. And this would not have been the case if they were conscious of having been such themselves.
