A Friend Pleading for Phormio (16-20)

Yet, as you see, he is suing him again, having trumped up all sorts of accusations, and gathered from all past time charges (and this is the most outrageous thing of all) which he had never made before.

To prove that I am speaking the truth in this, take, please, the award that was made in the Acropolis, and the deposition of those who were present, when Apollodorus, on receiving this money, gave a release from all claims.

The Award. The Deposition

You hear the award, men of the jury, which was rendered by Deinias, whose daughter the plaintiff has married, and Nicias, who is husband to her sister. However, even though he has received this money, and has given a release from all claims, he has the audacity to bring suit for so many talents, just as if all these people were dead, or as if the truth would not be brought to light.

All the dealings, then, and transactions which Phormio has had with Apollodorus you have heard, men of Athens, from the beginning. But I fancy that Apollodorus, the plaintiff, being unable to advance any just grounds in support of his claim, will repeat what he had the audacity to say before the arbitrator, that his mother made away with the papers at Phormio’s instigation, and that, owing to the loss of these, he has no way of proving his claim strictly.

But in regard to these statements and this accusation, observe what convincing proofs one could advance to show that he is lying. In the first place, men of Athens, what man would have accepted a distribution of his inheritance, if he had not papers from which he could determine the amount of estate left him? No man, assuredly. Yet it is eighteen years, Apollodorus, since you accepted the distribution, and you cannot show that you at any time made any complaint about the papers.

In the second place, when Pasicles had come of age, and was receiving the report of his guardians’ administration, what man, even though he shrank from accusing his mother with his own lips of having destroyed the papers, would have failed to reveal the fact to his brother, so that through him it might have been thoroughly investigated? In the third place, what were the papers upon which you based the action which you brought? For the plaintiff has brought suits against many citizens, and has recovered large sums of money, charging in his complaints, So and so has injured me by not paying back to me the money which my father’s papers show he owed the latter at his death.