Against Aphobus III (11-15)

I knew, men of the jury, that I should find the whole contest centring about the deposition inserted in the record, and that it would be regarding the truth or falsehood of this that you would cast your votes, and I therefore determined that the first step for me to take was to offer Aphobus a challenge. What, then, did I do? I offered to surrender to him for examination by torture a slave who knew how to read and write, and who had been present when Aphobus made the admission in question, and who wrote down the statement of the witness. This man had been ordered by me not to use any fraud or trickery, nor to write down some and suppress others of the statements made by the plaintiff regarding the matters at issue, but simply to write the absolute truth, and what Aphobus actually said.

What better opportunity could he have had of convicting us of falsehood than by putting my slave to torture? But Aphobus knew better than anyone else that the slave had borne true testimony, and therefore he declined the test. And in truth it is not one or two only who know these facts; the challenge was not made in secret, but in the midst of the agora where many were present.

Call, please, the witnesses to these facts.

The Witnesses

The fellow is so cunning, and so ready to pretend ignorance of what is right, that, although he is pressing a suit for false witness, and although you are to cast your votes regarding this, and have sworn so to do, he refused the proffered examination by torture in regard to the testimony (the point to which he should have devoted his argument), and declares that he requires the slave to be given up for testing in regard to other matters. In this he is lying.

Is it not indeed monstrous that he should claim that he is being outrageously treated by my refusal of his demand to have delivered to him for torture a freeman (for such I shall conclusively prove Milyas to be), and should not consider that my witnesses are being outrageously treated, when I offer him one who is admittedly a slave, to be tested by torture regarding their testimony, and he refuses? For he surely cannot maintain this, that for some matters, which he himself desires, torture is a certain test, and for others not.

Furthermore, men of the jury, the first witness to give this testimony was Aesius, the brother of the plaintiff. He now denies it, because he has allied himself in the suit with Aphobus; but at that time he gave this testimony along with the other witnesses, for he had no desire to perjure himself, or to suffer the penalty which would straightway follow. Surely now, if I had been getting up false testimony, I should not have put this man in my list of witnesses, seeing that he was more intimate with Aphobus than with anyone else in the world, and knowing that he was going to plead for him in the suit, and that he was an adversary of my own. It is not reasonable that one should call as witness to a false statement one who is an opponent of his own, and a brother of his adversary.