Trapeziticus (16-20)

Because of our disagreement the examiners refused to put the slave to torture themselves, but decreed that Pasion should surrender him to me. But Pasion was so anxious to avoid the employment of torture that he refused to obey them in respect to the surrender of the slave, but declared that he was ready to restore to me the money if they should pronounce judgement against him. Please call for me witnesses to these facts.

When, as a result of these meetings, men of the jury, all declared that Pasion was guilty of wrong-doing and of scandalous conduct (since, in the first place, it was Pasion himself who had spirited away the slave who, so I had asserted, had knowledge of the money-dealings, although he accused us of having concealed him, and next, when the slave was arrested, had prevented him from giving testimony under torture on the ground that he was a freeman, and finally, after this, having surrendered him as a slave and having chosen questioners, he nominally gave orders that he be tortured but in point of fact forbade it), Pasion, I say, understanding that there was no possibility of escape for himself if he came before you, sent a messenger to beg me to meet him in a sanctuary.

And when we had come to the Acropolis, he covered his head and wept, saying that he had been compelled to deny the debt because of lack of funds, but that he would try to repay me in a short time. He begged me to forgive him and to keep his misfortune secret, in order that he, as a receiver of deposits, might not be shown to have been culpable in such matters. In the belief that he repented of his past conduct I yielded, and bade him to devise a method, of any kind he wished, that his affairs might be in order and I receive back my money.

Two days later we met again and solemnly pledged each other to keep the affair secret, a pledge which he failed to keep, as you yourselves will learn as my story proceeds, and he agreed to sail with me to the Pontus and there pay me back the gold, in order that he might settle our contract at as great a distance as possible from Athens, and that no one here might know the nature of our settlement, and also that on his return from the Pontus he might say anything he pleased; but in the event that he should not fulfil these obligations, he proposed to entrust to Satyrus an arbitration on stated terms[*] which would permit Satyrus to condemn Pasion to pay the original sum, and half as much in addition.

When he had drawn up this agreement in writing we brought to the Acropolis Pyron, of Pherae,[*] who frequently sailed to the Pontus, and placed the agreement in his custody, stipulating that if we should come to a satisfactory settlement with each other, he should burn the memorandum; otherwise, he was to deliver it to Satyrus.