Against Onetor, An Ejectment Suit II (11-12)

For what man would be so foolish as, first, to pay out so large a sum, then to take as security a single piece of property, the title to which was under dispute, and finally, not satisfied with his previous losses and assuming that the one who had wronged him was now going to act justly, to become his bail for the damages assessed by the court? Nobody would, to my thinking. The assumption is not even rational, that a man unable to recover a talent for himself, should promise to pay that sum to another, and further to give bail for it. No; from these facts alone it is clear that he has never paid the dowry, but as a close friend of Aphobus he took this mortgage in return for my large property, wishing to make his sister jointly with Aphobus an inheritor of my estate.

Then he seeks now to deceive and beguile you by claiming that he set up the pillars before judgement was given against Aphobus. Aye, Onetor; but not before it was given by you, if what you now say is true. For it is clear that you acted as you did because you were convinced of his guilt. Again, this language of yours is absurd, as though you, men of the jury, did not know that all those who commit frauds of this sort determine what they are going to say, and that no one ever lost a suit through keeping quiet, or admitting that he was in the wrong; but it is, I think, when he has been convicted of making a false statement, that men know what manner of man he is.