Against Onetor, An Ejectment Suit II (7-10)

Or, when it suits your purpose to save all of the property of Aphobus, is the land to be worth a talent only, and are you to hold the house on a mortgage of two thousand drachmae more; and the marriage-portion being eighty minae, will you claim the right to hold both the land and the house; or again, when this is not to your interest, is all to be different: the house is to be worth a talent, because now it is I that hold it, and what is left of the farm is to be worth not less than two talents, in order that it may seem that I am wronging Aphobus, not myself being robbed?

Do you see that, while you pretend to have paid the dowry, you are shown not to have paid it in any way whatsoever? For that line of conduct is sincere and free from guile, which remains throughout such as it was at the first, but you are proven to have followed the contrary course, so as to fulfil your service as an underling to my detriment.

It is worth while to consider in the light of these facts what sort of an oath he would have sworn, if an oath had been tendered him. For, when he declared that the dowry was eighty minae, if one had granted that he should recover that sum on condition of his swearing that this statement of his was true, what would he have done? Is it not plain that he would have taken the oath? What can he say to deny that he would have sworn it under those circumstances, when he demands the right to do so now? Well then, his own words prove that he would have perjured himself; for he now claims that he paid, not eighty minae, but a talent. What reason is there why one should believe that he is forswearing himself in one statement rather than in the other? Or what opinion should one rightly hold of a man who thus lightly convicts himself of perjury?

But perhaps not all of his acts have been of this nature, nor is he proven in every instance to be a trickster. Yet it has been shown that he sought in Aphobus’s interest to have the damages fixed at a talent, and himself offered to act as bail for the payment to me of that sum. Yet observe that this is a proof not only that his wife was living with Aphobus and that Onetor was on intimate terms with him, but also that he had not paid the dowry.