Plea of Chrysipus and Partner Against Phormio (31-35)

But, as it was, instead of securing many witnesses to these acts you did everything you could that none should know, as though you were committing some crime! Again, had you been making payment to me, your creditor, in person, there would have been no need of witnesses, for you would have taken back the agreement and so got rid of the obligation; whereas in making payment, not to me, but to another on my behalf, and not at Athens but in Bosporus, when your agreement was deposited at Athens and with me, and when the man to whom you paid the money was mortal and about to undertake a voyage over such a stretch of sea, you called no one as a witness, whether slave or freeman.

Yes, he says, for the agreement bade me pay the cash to the shipowner.[*] But it did not prevent you from summoning witnesses, or from delivering the letters! The parties here present[*] drew up two agreements with you in the matter of the loan, showing that they greatly distrusted you, but you assert that without a single witness you paid the gold to the shipowner, although you well know that an agreement against yourself was deposited at Athens with my colleague here!

He says that the agreement bids him pay back the money, when the ship reaches port in safety. Yes, and it bids you also to put on board the ship the goods purchased, or else to pay a fine of five thousand drachmae. You ignore this clause in the agreement, but after having from the first violated its provisions by failing to put the goods on board, you raise a dispute about a single phrase in it, though you have by your own act rendered it null and void. For when you state that you did not put the goods on board in Bosporus, but paid the cash to the shipowner, why do you still go on talking about the ship? For you have had no share in the risk, since you put nothing on board.

At first, men of Athens, he seized upon this excuse, pretending that he had shipped the goods; but when he saw that the falsity of this claim was likely to be exposed in many ways,—by the entry filed with the harbor-masters in Bosporus, and by the testimony of those who were staying in the port at the same time—then he changes his tack, enters into a conspiracy with Lampis, and declares that he has paid him the money in cash,

finding a support for his plea in the fact that the agreement so ordered, and thinking that we should not find it easy to get at the truth regarding all that they did by themselves alone. And Lampis declares that all that he said to me[*] before he was corrupted by this Phormio was spoken when he was out of his head; but as soon as he got a share of my money, he declares that he is in his right mind and remembers everything perfectly!