Against Callimachus (9-10)

Although so many persons had been present when the events took place, Callimachus here, as if no one had any knowledge of the matter, himself mixed with the crowds, sat in the workshops, and related again and again his story, how he had suffered outrageous treatment at my hands and had been of his money. And some of his friends came to me and advised me to settle the dispute with him, and not deliberately to risk defamation and great financial loss, even though I had the greatest confidence in my cause; and they went on to say that many decisions rendered in the tribunals were contrary to the expectation of litigants,

and that chance rather than justice determined the issue in your courts. Consequently, they asserted, it was in my interest to be freed of serious charges by paying a petty sum, rather than by paying nothing to run the risk of penalties of such gravity. Why need I relate to you all the details? They omitted none of the arguments which are customarily urged in such cases. In any case I was finally prevailed upon (for I will tell you the whole truth) to give him two hundred drachmas. But in order that it might not be in his power to blackmail me again, we committed the arbitration under stated terms[*] to Nicomachus of Bat ⋯[*]

Witnesses