Against Callimachus (54-56)

Cratinus and his friends went to the house where she had been hidden, seized her by force and, bringing her into court, presented her alive to all present. The result was that, in a tribunal of seven hundred judges, after fourteen witnesses had given the same testimony as that of Callimachus, he failed to receive a single vote. Please call witnesses to these facts.

Witnesses

Who, therefore, would be able to condemn his acts as they deserve? Or who would be able to find a more flagrant example of wrongdoing, of malicious prosecution, and of villainy? Some misdeeds, it is true, do not reveal in its entirety the character of the evil-doers, but from acts such as his it is easy to discern the whole life of the culprits.

For any man who testifies that the living are dead, from what villainy do you think that he would abstain? What outrageous deed would a man not have the effrontery to commit in his own interest who is so knavish a villain in the interest of others ? How is it right to trust this man when he speaks in his own behalf, who is proved guilty of perjury in his testimony on behalf of another? Who was ever more convincingly proved to be a giver of false testimony? You judge all other defendants by what is said of them, but this man’s testimony the jurors themselves saw was false.