12
No doubt there are many who side against you and favour others in your stead, and each of them stealthily shoots at you, so to speak, from ambush. Then too imagine a man with a long beard and grey hair undergoing examination to see if he knows anything worth while, and some thinking that he does, others that he does not!
12
Then a period intervenes, and your whole past life is pried into. If a fellow-countryman. out of jealousy or a neighbour offended for some insignificant reason says, when questioned, that you are a follower of women or boys, there they have it! the witness speaks by the book of Zeus; but if all with one accord commend you, they are considered questionable, dubious, and suborned. You must have great good fortune, then, and no opposition at all; for that is the only way in which you can win.
12
Well, suppose you have been fortunate in everything beyond your fondest hopes. The master himself has commended your discussions, and those of his friends whom he holds in the highest esteem and trusts most implicitly in such matters have not advised him against you. Besides, his wife is willing, and neither his attorney nor his steward objects, nor has anyone criticized your past; everything is propitious and from every point of view the omens are good.
